‘La Décadente a fait son temps’: Rachilde and Georges de Peyrebrune's Une décadente

Abstract

In 1886, Georges de Peyrebrune (1841–1917) published the novella Une décadente, a scarcely veiled depiction – and biting critique – of Rachilde (1860–1953) and her unconventional lifestyle. In her depiction of Hélione, a fictionalized version of Rachilde, she borrows from contemporary medical discourses on hysteria and suggests that her heroine's true fulfillment can only be realized through motherhood. Peyrebrune positions these male-authored discourses alongside a concurrent ridicule of Hélione's aspirations as a writer of decadent literature. However, in an unanticipated twist in the final pages, the discursive medical framework of her narrative collapses, exposing the precariousness of the literary and scientific constructions of hysteria and thus leading readers to rethink Peyrebrune's traditionalist views. In positioning these discourses within the larger aesthetic and ideological interrogations of the text, we may uncover Peyrebrune's own revision – albeit subtle at times – of a fictional model and the medical rhetoric that shapes it.