Sex & The Book / Disguise and perversion in Rachilde's eroticism

Born in Cros, in the Dordogne, in 1860, the eccentric and talented Rachilde - aka Marguerite Eymery - became a prominent figure in the intellectual landscape of turn-of-the-century Paris. Not only was she a prolific author (she wrote about seventy works including novels, poems, dramas and essays), but also a real cultural animator: after marrying Alfred Vallette, director of the illustrious "Mercure de France", she opened a literary hall in the magazine's offices, where all the major poets, writers and artists of the Symbolist milieu gathered, including Mallarmé, Verlaine, Oscar Wilde. An irreverent and nonconformist spirit, Marguerite grew up with a mother obsessed with occultism, so much so that she would derive her pseudonym Rachilde from the name of a medieval Swedish gentleman that she herself would have evoked during a séance.

Raoule pulled the curtain up to him, plunging the bed into a delightful semi-darkness, in the middle of which Jacques's body took on the reflections of a star. "I have a whim," he said, speaking only in a low voice now. "This is the time for tantrums," Raoule replied, dropping one knee on the carpet. "I want you to really woo me, as, in such circumstances, a bridegroom can do when he is a man of your rank." And she was writhing tenderly in Raoule's arms, closed around her naked waist. oh! "she said, holding him in her embrace," So I have to be very correct? " "Yes ... look, I'm hiding, I'm a virgin ..."

Perhaps also due to the refusal of her father, a soldier who had not recognized her because she wanted a son in her place, Rachilde used to dress and comb her hair like a man. In 1885 he had even requested and obtained official permission from the prefecture of Paris to be able to go around en travesti. The theme of disguise and sexual inversion deeply attracted her, so much so that she decided to dedicate the novel that made her famous to it, Monsieur Vénus. Written at the age of twenty and published in Belgium in 1884, it was immediately seized and earned the author an exorbitant fine and a year in prison, even accused of having invented a "new vice". To escape the sentence, Rachilde had to take refuge permanently in Paris.

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Protagonist of Monsieur Vénus is the beautiful, rich and authoritarian Raoule, who, one morning like any other, goes to a flower girl to request a headdress for a costume ball. In his place, a man of delicate, feminine beauty is in front of him, who replies: "For now, I am the flower girl." This is how Raoule begins to fantasize about Jacques, to desire him as a prey is desired, as a strong-willed man desires a delicate girl. Discovering his artistic streak, he decides to keep it and offers him and his sister an apartment, a studio where he can paint and become his full-time lover, exclusively. In a very secret and mysterious blue room, Raoule can finally put into action her perversion, that of loving him by reversing roles: she arrives dressed as a man, when she feels like it, and he - in a woman's dressing gown - indulges his insatiable passion . Jacques accepts the slavery that is imposed on him by Raoule in the name of love and even goes so far as to marry her, convinced that after all - whatever their sex - it is the caresses and their deep meaning that count. But how long can such a relationship last, in which one lover is forced to flatten himself on the obsession of the other? And how far can Raoule's perversion go, the metamorphosis of their sexes, without harming them?

It is clear that the protagonist's desire is not limited to being a simple sexual game, but has much deeper roots: what drives her is a desire to totally govern Jacques, almost depriving him of a personality of his own to make him become something of his own. And here then the shadow of death stretches over this scandalous novel at the time, which perhaps today would no longer cause such a stir, but which certainly would have something to teach about the difference between possession and love.

by Giuliana Altamura

Here you can read the previous appointment with the Sex & The Book / L "love for sale between prostitution and luxury brothels in Nell Kimball's extreme verses
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