Rachilde and French Women's Authorship from Decadence to Modernism (review)

Abstract

Melanie Hawthorne's unconventional new biography of Rachilde is the first book-length English language text devoted to the notorious turn-of-the-century writer, and thus a welcome addition to nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary and cultural studies. Between 1880 and 1947, Rachilde published over sixty volumes of fiction and theatre, serving as a central figure in French literary circles for nearly half a century. Through her exclusive salon and her contributions to the Mercure de France (co-founded by her husband Alfred Vallette), she mingled with, debated, alienated, and befriended a range of well-known figures including Jean Lorrain, Guillaume Apollinaire, Alfred Jarry, Maurice Barrès, and Natalie Clifford Barney. Best remembered for her audacious decadent writing and in particular the succès de scandale of Monsieur Vénus (not her first novel, but "the first one that still counts" according to Hawthorne [100]), as well as for widely publicized eccentricities including transvestism, Rachilde has been treated by critics since her own day as an exception, sharing little with her female peers. Hawthorne pokes holes in this theory all around, arguing that Rachilde's eccentricities as well as her exceptionality were the product of a skillful campaign by the author herself. The reputation she enjoyed—through her hairstyles, clothing and early image of youthfulness—was the product of rumors she both circulated herself [End Page 151] and allowed to circulate, and was inspired by the burgeoning Parisian culture of advertising. Rachilde, for example, allowed Barrès to describe her as a twenty-year-old hysteric in his introduction to Monsieur Vénus, thus amplifying the subversive nature of its authorship. According to Hawthorne the cultivation of this reputation enabled Rachilde to overcome the primary literary obstacle shared by all women writers of her generation: the illegitimacy of the woman writer in France. In other words, rather than consider Rachilde's life as an exception to French women's literary history, Hawthorne suggests that it is in fact exemplary of this history, shedding light on the many difficulties encountered by a woman who dared to enter a traditionally male domain.