‘The Queen of Decadence': Rachilde and Sado-Masochistic Feminism

Abstract

In 1884, the novel Monsieur Venus took the French literary world by storm, and inaugurated its controversial female author, Rachilde, the ‘queen of decadence.’ Many critics did not believe that a young, aristocratic woman could possibly have devised such a salacious story. A literary press which specialized in erotica first published the book, but it was banned regardless, and Rachilde was even condemned to prison for pornographic writing. Subsequent editions therefore required fake male co-authors and introductions by famous male writers that consigned the novel not literature at all, but the case study of a hysterical woman. Rachilde also publicly denounced the feminism of her moment, a proclamation that affected the twentieth-century reception of her writing. Yet, following new French and English editions published in 2004, Monsieur Venus has been hailed a queer forerunner in contemporary academic circles, even while questions about Rachilde’s feminist affiliations persist. This paper goes beyond the biographical details that have dominated conversation about Rachilde’s writing to closely interrogate the use of sexual violence in Monsieur Venus, and in her much lesser-known novel, La Marquise de Sade (1887). Based on the definition of sadomasochism Gilles Deleuze outlines in his book, Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty (1991), the respective use of masochism in Monsieur Venus and of sadism in La Marquise de Sade places its female characters in the unlikely positions of masochist and sadist to offer a provocative critique of the decadent moment, and its representations of sexuality, the body, and even nationalism.