Monsieur Vénus

by Rachilde, Melanie C. Hawthorne (Translator)

When the rich and well-connected Raoule de Vénérande becomes enamored of Jacques Silvert, a poor young man who makes artificial flowers for a living, she turns him into her mistress and eventually into her wife. Raoule's suitor, a cigar-smoking former hussar officer, becomes an accomplice in the complications that ensue.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, France, Queer, French Literature, Romance, Literature

211 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1884

About the author

Rachilde was the nom de plume of Marguerite Vallette-Eymery, a French author who was born February 11, 1860 in Périgueux, Périgord, Dordogne, Aquitaine, France during the Second French Empire and died in April 4, 1953.
She is considered to be a pioneer of anti-realistic drama and a participant in the Decadent movement.
Rachilde was married to Alfred Vallette.

Reviews

[Monique · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 'A Demon or a Woman?' stars

This is not exactly a review for this book but rather a short summary of my article about the representation of femme fatale in literature and art of Symbolism and Decadence.

Femme fatale was a popular motif in Symbolism and Decadence. Both movements - despite being quite distinguishable - are also similar in many matters. One of them being an emphasis on sensuality and sexuality. The characters who usually embodied femme fatale were Eve, Lilith, Judith, Salome, Sfinx, personifications of sins... What these characters have in common is a woman involved in sin and/ or a woman, who dares 'to defy' man's dominance.



On this painting Die Sinnlichkeit by Franz von Stuck we see a woman standing in a bath with a snake wrapping obscenely around her body, which indicates that the woman is literally wrapped in sin. The woman and the snake both stare directly at the observer, completely without shame in their display.



The similar composition has a painting Judith by Gustav Klimt. Judith is facing the observer and proudly displaying the severed head of Holofernes. Her eyes are half-closed in pleasure and the expression on her face indicates that she is very pleased with herself. We could even say her lips are just about to curve into a cruel smile.



One of the most famous depictions of Salome is this illustration of the French edition of Oscar Wilde's play Salome - J’ai baisé ta bouche Iokanaan by Aubrey Beardsley. Floating Salome is holding John The Baptiste's severed head in her hands, ready to kiss its dead lips. Salome's hair resembles snakes and makes her look like Medusa. Blood trickling from the severed head is gathering in the lily that has a phallic connotation.



Femme fatale that Gustave Moreau depicted does not have Biblical origin but a mythological one. In the painting Œdipe et le sphinx we see Oedipus and Sphinx in an unusual situation. In the original myth, Oedipus defeated Sphinx, however, in Moreau's painting he seems to fell under Sphinx's erotic spell. The hybrid creature is literally climbing Oedipus' body. They are intensely gazing at each other - not being in the battle of riddles but the battle of sexes. Who will submit and who will prevail - a man or a woman?



This provocative painting Pornocrates is a work of Félicien Rops. It has various meanings that can be explained as a woman blindly following her sexual desires which are represented in the pig - also being able to be understood as the Devil. On the other hand, the pig could be personifying a man, who is led on a leash by a woman. Meaning - a man is possessed by a woman, a woman is possessed by the Devil.

Very similar to these women is the heroine of Rachilde's novel - Raoule de Vénérande. Not only she possesses many characteristics of femme fatale, for most of the novel she is actually acting like a man. She transforms her lover Jacques Silvert first into her mistress and then her wife. She gets total control over his life - manipulating him in dressing himself in women's clothes, controlling his every action, and being physically and emotionally violent toward him. Her actions are actually not that much different from the actions of aristocratic men, and yet she has been judged because of them because she is a woman. The novel forces the reader to face the fact that some actions seem to be acceptable by society when they are done by a man but not by a woman.

And let us not forget that in the first edition of this book chapter 8. was censored from the novel and was finally being included only years later. And what was the crime of that said 8. chapter? Rachilde dared to speak of a woman's pleasure and desire in this chapter. Apparently women being raped and murdered in gruesome matters were acceptable topics for that time but a woman having an orgasm - that had to be forbidden.

In the end, I will return to the original question A Demon or a Woman? and the answer is quite simple. A woman is just a woman, a human being. And if a woman is a demon, then so is a man. Then we are all demons.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent decadent novel: moving and disturbing, with an ending that echoes, in an abstract way, many later horror films and stories.

The perversions presented are, by this point in time, passe: mainly a dominant/submissive relationship between a masculine rich woman and her "kept" lover, an already effeminate male artist whom she further feminizes through the course of the novel. This is the crux, but the novel also strays into both vague and specific transvestism, wanton and calculated lust, prostitution, mild and not-so-mild sadism and masochism, drug abuse (Jacques Silvert, the effeminate artist, is initially made compliant through liberal lashings of hashish), homosexuality, "homsexual panic", and the whole thing winds up as essentially an examination of fetishism in general. I'd also expect that the brash mixing between two "obviously incompatible" classes (the idle rich and the poor gutter dwellers) was probably intended as shocking and perverse as well. In fact, I'd bet this aspect was the most shocking part for some at the time. There's even some implied necrophilia, to end on a sad note, possibly implying the inescapable hopelessness of such rational calculations in matters of the heart (sometimes) and loins (sometimes).

I say possibly because the excellent essay which accompanies this novel's appearance in Zone Books' The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France, "Venus in Drag, or Redressing the Discourse of Hysteria: Rachilde's Monsieur Venus" by Janet Beizer, makes a good case that the novel can either be read straight, as a condemnation of its decadent times, or ironically, as a tweaking of society's expectations of those times. The fact that Rachilde was an "innocent" 20-year-old when she wrote it, raised on secret readings of the Marquis de Sade from the forbidden part of her uncle's library, should be calculated in as well.

Still, I enjoyed it immensely. Unlike some decadent writing, which consists of vague gestures (with the other hand reflexively covering the mouth in "horror') or lumpen shock tactics, Rachilde's book builds a nice seedy feeling, a generalized perverse and feverish atmosphere of lust and desire gone out of control. No character is an angel or a devil - the poverty stricken Silvert and his scheming streetwalking sister come across as mostly pathetic (I assume that Jacque's lack of masculinity and his inability to engage the code of social etiquette that his "betters" demand probably made him more detestable at the time than now, where such codes are seen for the class & gender control tactics they always were) and while Raoule De Venerande, the main character, is the focus (and thus, presumably, our identifier), what is initially presented as her whim driven by lust, and eventually seen as a full blown romantic/sexual obsession, also scans at times like a childish game played by a member of the spoiled, jaded wealthy classes. A bitter game in which non-privileged, non-people (i.e. the poor) are the pieces to be moved at whim. Which, of course, just makes it more decadent and perverse.

It is somewhat humorous to note that Raoule's social equal and possible fiancee, the military man Raittolbe, first guesses her secret new perversion as being lesbianism, only for the suggestion to be met with laughter at how bland and passe that particularly popular "perversion" has become. This in 1884 and yet, modern television's heart still beats quickly at the suggestion of sapphic coupling. The more things change...the stupider people still are.

A fun read for the perverse but unjaded. Ignore the "dead-behind-the-eyes" and "more-jaded-than-thou" negative reviews on Amazon.com and come have a febrile wallow. This would make a great, weird, indie movie!

[Rowena · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. One of the novels included in Asti Hustvedt's "The Decadent Reader", which I'm currently reading. Very well-written, bizarre story that explores gender roles, transvestism, and sado-masochism. Weird, yet I couldn't stop reading. I can't believe the author was only 20 when she wrote this.

[Hagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back to reading my comfort genre: perverted decadent lit 👀

I've been on a Rachilde kick. This woman is the definition of "off." I've been trying to make sense of her novels and was so disappointed by the few academic articles I could find (tbf I only read the abstracts). Most of them were about the banal "gender subversion" shit that's shoehorned in any analysis of books like this.

I think Rachilde was a woman utterly agonized by her own sexual perversion (which many women fortunately don't experience). She knew how corrosive sex could be. The protagonist of Monsieur Venus tries to feminize her lover, gets him killed, and makes him into her private automoton (spoiler lol). This book reeks of death. It's too real and too visceral to be "subversive." It's hard to trust oneself having felt all this. Not to mention, she wrote this at 20 as a virgin. It's about the depravity of virginity, not innocent play-like imagination. It's the hatred of feminine grace AND masculine strength. 

She published "Why I am not a feminist" in the 1920s, later in life. I found it to be rambly and incoherent. But now, having read her novels, it makes complete sense why she wrote a whole tirade on feminism and why she was against women in politics/public life :D 

[Libros Prestados · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aquí la videoreseña: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zy_e...

Iba a darle 5 estrellas por lo divertida que me ha resultado su lectura, pero la verdad es que tiene varios puntos que me parecieron mejorables. Sin embargo, no le quito nada de mérito a esta novela que se publicó en 1884, escrita por una veinteañera y que plantea una historia de ¿amor? ¿lujuria? ¿las dos cosas? que rompía los roles de género. En la superficie. La verdad es que los refuerza (Rachilde no era revolucionaria, solo le iba lo de epatar a la burguesía conservadora), pero no se puede obviar lo innovadora que es la relación que presenta entre Raoule, una mujer de vestimenta y actitud "masculinas", y Jacques, un hombre de rasgos y maneras "femeninas".

Cuando digo que me resultó una lectura divertida no me refiero a que sea una comedia. No lo es, es más bien una tragedia, pero el empeño de la autora de meter todos los tabús sexuales posibles llega a veces a un punto hilarante. Inversión de los roles de género, homosexualidad, consumo de drogas, sadomasoquismo, necrofilia... Da la impresión de que Rachilde tenía una lista de la que iba tachando conceptos al tiempo que escribía. Quería que la obra fuera escandalosa (necesitaba vender muchos ejemplares) y a fe mía que lo es. Sobre todo porque se escribió en el siglo XIX.

Al parecer, Oscar Wilde se inspiró en parte en este libro para escribir "El retrato de Dorian Grey". Y se nota. Al menos se nota en el descenso a un mundo de vicio y decadencia que sufre el protagonista y que también une a Raoule y Jacques. Al fin y al cabo, "Monsieur Venus" entra dentro del movimiento decadentista francés y hay ciertos rasgos comunes en las obras de este movimiento. Aún así, es original porque la autora es mujer, por la relación que presenta, por lo lejos que llega a veces, por lo explicita que es a la par de todo lo que deja a la imaginación, y porque creo que la crítica Camille Paglia tiene razón al decir que: es «una de las cosas más extrañas jamás escritas por una mujer».

[Celia T · Rating 4 out of 5]

God. Imagine you're living in England in, like, 1885, and you've learned French from tutors because you're upper-class and all, but you've never really encountered anything racier than that one pun in Mansfield Park, and then you somehow stumble across a copy of this book and half an hour later the maid comes in to find you with your eyes bugging out and your bow tie spinning around like Roger Rabbit. No wonder that when Dorian Gray discovered Symbolist literature he had to spend an entire chapter going off his entire gourd about it.

[Vittorio Ducoli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il decadentismo delle origini: non solo spleen

Anche Rachilde fa parte dei numerosi autori importanti quasi dimenticati dall’editoria italiana. Degli oltre sessanta lavori di cui è stata autrice, comprendenti romanzi, racconti e opere teatrali, da più di venticinque anni ai lettori italiani non è proposto alcunché, e anche le edizioni precedenti si contano sulle dita di una mano.
Eppure dalla lettura di Monsieur Vénus, il suo romanzo più noto, nonché dalle note biografiche reperibili in rete emerge un’autrice tutt’altro che marginale, sorta di musa della grande rottura artistica che caratterizzò, in tutta Europa ma in particolare in Francia, la seconda metà del XIX secolo, e che va sotto il nome di decadentismo.
Nata Marguerite Eymery nel 1860 in provincia, un padre militare che non la amava perché avrebbe voluto un maschio e una madre che praticava lo spiritismo, a quattordici anni tenterà il suicidio per rifiutare un fidanzamento impostole dalla famiglia. Dopo due anni di collegio in convento giunge a Parigi a diciotto anni, conducendo una vita bohémienne punteggiata da numerose relazioni, con uomini e con donne. Ottima cavallerizza, tira di spada e con la pistola e si presenta con un biglietto da visita su cui è scritto «Rachilde, homme de lettres». Nel 1885 ottiene dalla Prefettura di Parigi il permesso di vestirsi da uomo, cosa allora vietata, e nel 1889 sposa per convenienza Alfred Villette, che di lì a poco fonderà il Mercure de France, una delle riviste letterarie di riferimento del decadentismo e del modernismo francesi; Rachilde collaborò alla redazione della rivista sino al 1924. Sotto l’ombrello del Mercure diede vita ad un salotto letterario frequentato tra gli altri da Verlaine, Louÿs, Jarry, Bataille, Apollinaire, Gide, Mallarmé e Oscar Wilde. Morì, in qualche modo sopravvissuta a sé stessa e completamente dimenticata, nel 1953.
Monsieur Vénus - Roman matérialiste è uno dei primi romanzi scritti da Rachilde: la sua stesura risale infatti al 1880, quando la scrittrice aveva vent’anni. Venne pubblicato in Belgio quattro anni più tardi e immediatamente sequestrato sulla base di ben cento capi d’accusa; l’autrice fu condannata ad un anno di carcere e duemila franchi di multa, pene che evitò tornando velocemente in Francia.
Perché questa condanna? Perché Monsieur Vénus è un romanzo scandaloso che, pur non essendo propriamente pornografico, affronta in maniera esplicita tematiche legate alla sessualità e alle stesse identità sessuali maschile e femminile: ed il sesso, è noto, ha nella storia fatto molta paura al potere, sinché non è stato definitivamente disinnescato attraverso la sua offerta illimitata.
Due sono i protagonisti del romanzo, scritto in terza persona: Raoule de Vénérande, ventiquattrenne rampolla di una delle famiglie più in vista della nobiltà parigina, e Jacques Silvert, ventenne, mediocre aspirante pittore di origini proletarie, che vive in una squallida mansarda con la sorella Marie, la quale per campare, oltre a confezionare fiori di stoffa, si prostituisce.
Raoule è orfana sin da bambina e vive, nel palazzo di famiglia sull’Avenue des Champs-Elysées, con la zia Elizabeth, pia donna cui è stata affidata per la sua educazione. Ha lineamenti vagamente androgini ed è uno spirito ribelle e dominante, conscio della sua superiorità sociale: si veste spesso come un uomo, è sportiva ed ha già avuto alcuni amanti; attualmente le fa una corte insistente il marchese di Raittolbe, un ussaro che vorrebbe sposarla o quantomeno divenire suo amante, ma che Raoule vede come amico e confidente.
Raoule e Jacques si conoscono perché la giovane ha bisogno di una decorazione floreale per un vestito che indosserà durante un ballo in maschera, e la giovane fiorista le è stata segnalata per la sua bravura. Quando entra nella mansarda dei Silvert Marie è a letto malata, e Jacques sta confezionando fiori in sua vece. Raoule rimane turbata dalla grazia sensuale e femminea di Jacques, dal suo viso sul quale spiccano le labbra, dalla pelle rosea cosparsa di una bionda peluria che intravede sotto la vestaglia. Decide quindi di farne il suo amante: arreda per lui e la sorella un lussuoso appartamento e fornisce loro i mezzi per vivere; suscitando sconcerto e riprovazione nell’alta società cui appartiene ne farà il suo fidanzato ufficiale.
Ma l’amore che Raoule prova per Jacques non è quello di una donna per un uomo: nel rapporto è lei che diventa uomo, e impone a Jacques una progressiva femminilizzazione, anche e soprattutto a letto.
Così, la storia erotica ed esistenziale dei due protagonisti, raccontata con una prosa sapiente che lascia intuire tutto pur senza addentrarsi in particolari tecnici è quella di una doppia perversione, di una coppia nella quale avviene un doppio scambio di ruoli, con la donna che diventa uomo e viceversa, ricostruendo così una sorta di inedita, speculare normalità a parti invertite. La vicenda avrà un superbo, drammatico esito, che non espongo, ma al quale dovrò comunque accennare, perché costituisce senza dubbio il punto più alto del racconto e una delle chiavi di una sua interpretazione che vada al di là della morbosità che ne forma la superficie.
Da quanto detto si può facilmente dedurre che Monsieur Vénus è facilmente ascrivibile alla categoria del decadentismo che in quei decenni, a partire dall’opera di grandi precursori come Baudelaire, stava recependo il senso di smarrimento derivante dalla crescente disumanizzazione della società operato dalla borghesia dominante per le sue necessità di organizzazione della produzione e di lotta imperialista e colonialista per la conquista delle materie prime, esprimendolo attraverso il rifiuto del realismo di stampo positivista e approdando a lidi vuoi di chiusura individualistica interpretati dal poeta maledetto e veggente, vuoi di recupero di miti, simboli e corrispondenze segrete tra le cose, vuoi infine di piena coscienza della crisi e – in qualche caso – di formulazione più o meno esplicita di possibili risposte.
È, quello del romanzo di Rachilde, un decadentismo della prima ora, considerato l’anno della sua pubblicazione, ma è anche dotato di una notevole modernità, sia per le tematiche trattate, che risultano in qualche modo in grande anticipo rispetto allo sviluppo di strumenti, come la psicanalisi, che forniranno a scrittori della generazione seguente la strumentazione per affrontarle adeguatamente, sia per alcuni elementi strutturali che permettono a mio avviso di collocare Monsieur Vénus tra le opere dotate di un solido contesto di riferimento che non si esaurisce in uno sterile autobiografismo, che pure è presente, o nella voglia di stupire di un’autrice alle prime armi.
Vi è un indizio, forse casuale ma a mio avviso emblematico, della modernità del romanzo rispetto ai tempi in cui fu scritto. La copertina dell’edizione da me letta, di fatto l’unica italiana del romanzo - molto curata quanto a forma anche se meno quanto a sostanza - riporta un bel ritratto di donna in abiti maschili, facilmente attribuibile a Tamara de Lempicka: il risvolto di copertina informa che si tratta effettivamente di un’opera della pittrice polacca, il Ritratto della duchessa de la Salle del 1925. I curatori grafici del volume, quindi, per trovare un’opera d’arte che in qualche modo esprimesse la personalità di Raoule de Vénérande hanno dovuto far ricorso ad un quadro realizzato quasi mezzo secolo dopo il romanzo.
Indubbiamente la figura di Raoule presenta molti tratti che rimandano alla autobiografia della scrittrice, la quale come detto aveva una identità sessuale ambigua, cui faceva da sfondo una buona dose di misoginia. Nel breve ritratto che le dedica Wikipedia è riportata infatti una sua frase, contenuta nel saggio del 1928 Perché non sono femminista, che recita: "non ho mai avuto alcuna fiducia nelle donne in quanto l'eterno femminino mi ha tradito per primo in veste materna." Non è difficile desumere, quindi, che il difficile rapporto con i genitori abbia fortemente influito sulla personalità della scrittrice e che Raoule de Vénérande rappresenti in certo qual modo una estroflessione di tale personalità. Tuttavia Raoule è personaggio troppo complesso per essere ridotto semplicemente a ciò. Innanzitutto è presentata al lettore come appartenente all’élite più esclusiva: i Vénérande (cognome che in francese assume probabilmente un significato più evocativo di quello vagamente comico che prende in italiano, e che significativamente Rachilde associa ad un nome proprio molto maschile) sono una famiglia di antico lignaggio, e il loro palazzo, che somiglia a quello di Versailles, è tra i più preziosi e tra i meglio frequentati di Parigi. A questa collocazione elitaria per censo corrisponde, oltre che la piena coscienza del proprio ruolo sociale, la consapevolezza di poter essere di diritto al di fuori ed al di sopra di ogni convenzione. C’è un passaggio, nel capitolo quinto - durante il colloquio in cui Raoule confessa a Raittolbe il suo amore per Jacques con un perentorio ”sono innamorato!” - che è una vera e propria esposizione del significato del personaggio, delle ragioni profonde del suo essere doppiamente perverso. Raittolbe infatti, di fronte al dichiararsi maschile di Raoule, pensa ad un normale amore lesbico. Raoule però ribatte così: ”Si sbaglia, signor de Raittolbe, essere Saffo sarebbe essere chiunque! La mia educazione mi vieta la colpa delle collegiali e i difetti della prostituta.” E poco più avanti: "Rappresento qui […] l’élite delle donne della nostra epoca. Un campione del femminile artista e del femminile gran signora, una di quelle creature che si ribellano all’idea di perpetuare una razza impoverita o di regalare un piacere che non condivideranno. Ebbene! Mi presento davanti al suo tribunale, delegata dalle mie sorelle, per dichiararle che noi tutte, desideriamo l’impossibile, considerato quanto male ci amate.” Così, molto esplicitamente, la perversione di Raoule non è altro che l’affermazione della sua libertà sessuale, che a sua volta è lo strumento chiave per una liberazione tout-court dalle costrizioni cui le donne sono sottoposte nella società maschile. Scusate se è poco, nel 1880, per una donna che non si definiva femminista.
Ovviamente per Rachilde, che si sentiva essa stessa parte di un’élite intellettuale e diffidava delle masse, la liberazione non poteva che provenire dall’alto, che essere affidata ad una de Vénérande, ma ciò nulla toglie, a mio avviso, alla forza del personaggio e a ciò che rappresenta.
Il romanzo però non si limita a dare centralità alla figura complessa di Raoule: altrettanto importante è il personaggio di Jacques Silvert, il suo amante e vittima. Jacques è un personaggio debole, senza forza di volontà. Senza arte né parte, stretto tra le due personalità forti di Raoule e della volgare e cinica sorella Marie, che intravede subito la possibilità di scalata economica e sociale se il fratello aggancerà la nobile ereditiera, viene sbatacchiato ora dall’una ora dall’altra, accettando in particolare passivamente ogni decisione di Raoule, rispetto sia alle forme private del loro ménage erotico, sia agli aspetti che esso assume in pubblico. Rachilde non chiarisce al lettore se tale remissività derivi da vero amore nei confronti della sua domina o dal fatto che deve accettare il suo rapporto con lei quale modo per uscire dalla miseria, come auspicato dalla sorella, ed anche in questa incertezza rispetto al carattere vero del personaggio - derivante forse anche dal fatto che la psicanalisi era di là da venire - risiede una parte del suo fascino. Sta di fatto che Jacques diviene proprietà di Raoule e si femminilizza dietro suo ordine sino a perdere completamente la virilità; quando proverà a ribellarsi a questo stato di cose, peraltro con modalità drammaticamente ironiche, Raoule ne farà per sempre il suo vero e proprio oggetto del desiderio, in un finale tragicamente sublime oltreché inaspettato, che rimanda esplicitamente alla grande tradizione romantica di stampo tedesco.
Così, come il personaggio di Raoule de Vénérande possiede la forza per divenire, forse malgrado le intenzioni dell’autrice, un precoce simbolo della liberazione della donna dalla gabbia di una sessualità ad uso maschile, Jacques assume oggettivamente le vesti – anche lui forse al di là di quanto si proponesse Rachilde – della vittima di una classe emarginata che non può far altro, per poter vivere, che obbedire agli ordini che giungono dall’alto, di un pezzo di società che a tutti gli effetti poteva aspirare solo ad essere un oggetto nelle mani delle classi dominanti.
Molto bella, nella sapiente costruzione del breve romanzo, è anche la caratterizzazione dei due personaggi che stanno a fianco dei due protagonisti: zia Elizabeth, bigotta che rappresenta magnificamente l’ipocrisia della religione di fronte ai fatti della vita, e Marie, sorella di Jacques, come detto popolana cinica e volgare, dotata però proprio per questo di una sua saggezza ed immediatezza che si esprimono in un linguaggio colorito - infarcito anche di qualche grossolana bestemmia - reso solo parzialmente dalla traduzione.
Proprio la traduzione di Alix Turolla Tardieu è a mio avviso il punto più debole di questa edizione del romanzo. Leggendolo, capita infatti spesso di imbattersi in virgole messe apparentemente a casaccio, che disturbano il ritmo di lettura creando stacchi arbitrari nel corpo delle frasi. Sapendo che in francese l’impiego della virgola differisce leggermente rispetto alla nostra lingua, ho reperito in rete il testo originale, per verificare se l’interpunzione derivasse da una pedissequa ripresa da quella usata dall’autrice. Ho così potuto verificare che gran parte delle virgole arbitrarie erano state …arbitrariamente aggiunte al testo dalla traduttrice, che dimostra così scarsa dimestichezza con l’ortografia italiana. Oltre a ciò si ritrovano qua e là termini desueti, quale l’attributo di zelatrice per zia Elizabeth, che avrebbe potuto essere tradotto più propriamente con benefattrice, essendo riferito al suo status di laica che supporta numerosi conventi.
Nonostante ciò, Monsieur Vénus è un romanzo sicuramente da leggere e sul quale meditare, non solo perché come detto anticipa di alcuni decenni tematiche che saranno tipiche del secolo successivo, ma soprattutto in quanto, rimandando alle radici del decadentismo, permette di confutare letture semplicistiche di quel movimento, visto spesso solo come il ritrarsi dell’artista in un orizzonte solipsistico ed estetizzante. Non a caso la lezione di Rachilde sarebbe stata di lì a poco raccolta da un certo Oscar Wilde.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hmmmmm…a precocious Colette wearing a strap-on, Pierrot’s greasepaint, and not a damn thing more. Wonderful.

Yep, ‘bout nails it (oh, the innuennui!)

[Aslı Can]

Reading Monsieur Venus is as hard as reading something deeply theoratical. Despite the subject and language is so simple, most of the time I hardly understand what's going on, who talks with whom. I don't know Rachilde did it purposely or not, but all the narration is like covered with blanket. And I always felt like: please take me in.

[viktor · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is so badass. i love transgenderism (dubious) even when it’s 1880 so it’s made to seem a little bit weird and gross but also SUPER COOL AND SEXY. literally what was she thinking when she wrote this it’s amazing

[Julie Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

ret nice bog, bliver ikke en nice eksamensopgave

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must the French writers always end their novels this way? Not trying to spoil it for anyone. This was such a unique read. The writing style was somewhere between Colette and Radclyffe Hall. I kind of wish there had been a little more passion in the writing style, but I enjoy the simplicity too. What makes this story so exciting for me is the art of bending gender so far that it turns its way back straight. I know the United States just recently embraced homosexuality, but I'm telling you people, masculine women dating effeminate men is the way of the future. There's honestly not a lot of representation out there for people that are into that, and I don't have a label for it in my vocabulary. So it's comforting and exhilarating to see someone else experience it...over one hundred years ago. And of course it highlights what I view as the ongoing epidemic of males forcing other males into being more masculine. The world is a hostile place for the men too delicate or different to conform to ideas of "manliness". And that, my friends, is why sexism hurts every gender. I think I'm almost done with this rant. But one last question, and I know this is crass of me...is she doing butt stuff with him? Because they were never really clear about that and I'd like a Victorian literary analyst to go ahead and look that up for me. Thanks.

[Andrew]

I've harped on about the misuse of the term decadent in the boring dystopia of modern America many, many times to friends and acquaintances and unfortunate people stuck next to me at parties (see my review of Sologub's Petty Demon, for example). Monsieur-Venus is decadent. Full stop. Like, reconsider your definitions of "kinky"-level decadent.

Especially when you consider how staid Anglo-American literature was at the time, you have to think that all of these French weirdos (Huysmans, Mirbeau, Baudelaire, the Symbolists) were truly moving the form forward. I'll take this over 1000 Henry Jameses any day of the week.

[BookLovingLady (deceased Jan. 25, 2023...) · Rating 3 out of 5]

When one considers the time it was written in, it is certainly fascinating and one can see how it must have been shocking at the time.

For a review in Dutch, see the winteruitdaging 2019/2020 of the Netherlands & Flanders group.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

Rachilde appropriated Baudelaire's legacy of representing women as split into two sharply contrasting types: on the one hand, idealized woman-beauty as artifice and artifact; on the other hand, organic, embodied woman, monstrously insatiable in her sensual appetites, a degenerate and disease-bearing body. But she rewrote and regendered the male decadent gaze that split woman into a costumed, made-up, bejewled, inorganic, and inanimate representation of beauty (woman as work of art) and the unadorned person of corporeal appetites. Huysmans also adopts this construction but merely elaborates and develops its duality using the perspective of his male protagonist Des Esseintes in A rebours (Against the Grain). This novel—published, like Monsieur Vénus, in 1884—is widely accepted as the quintessential decadent novel. The divergent fates of the two novels—A rebours's fame as a classic of decadence and Monsieur Vénus's relative obscurity—tells an important tale.

Being a queer person who's too old for the teen trends of the 21st century and too young to have either died of AIDS or sold out during the heyday of radical feminism means navigating a landscape of virulently bad faith and concerted ignorance on one side and predatory dehumanization and cult-like indoctrination on the other. Throw in my willingness to get down and dirty with the actual history and relevant literature written during the decades just after 'heterosexuality' was first established as anything worth paying attention (which, by the way, if you're thinking that this occurred at any point before the 19th c. for a particularly Anglo heavy portion of the world, you've got a lot of learning to do), and it's borderline nauseating watching people read translations of ancient Greek texts and go, diversity win! This socially sanctioned sexual predator of underage boys is gay! This is why I'm kind of glad that, despite the trend of 'malewife' that pops up on my periphery every once in a while, the chance of any of those 'hip' types who are the loudest about that kind of content coming across this work and actually giving it the kind of go that they're capable of is borderline nonexistent. True, Vallette-Eymery's tale is a dizzying exploration of sociocultural gender/sexuality norms by the kind of author (hint: not a dude) writing during the kind of time (hint: not post-WWII) that the typical Wikipedia article and its dudebro editor would simply declare to never have existed, but it takes the horrendously transphobic stereotypes specifically regarding trans men and the 'gay panic defense' law of today and pushes both to extremes that, judging by what the author churned out in her later days, were in part done for the edgy lulz. I've no doubt about the overall value of the text, and there's a great deal of amazing analysis that can be drawn from it and potentially expanded upon in the work of enterprising queer authors of today. However, do I trust the white cis gays with their 'q-slurs' and their 'cops need to be at Pride to keep the kinky degenerate freaks out' to do the necessary work? Fuck no.

I read the aforementioned Huysmans work a good eight or so years ago back when I was more willing to stay well trained for the sake of popular reception, so my review's probably little more than a mix of fawning adulation and peer pressured trash more than anything else. Still, it's good to have some residual memory from the read, however faint and warped, as I've done quite a bit to build on my queer sensibilities since then, moving from intrepid outsider to confident community member and doing my part to destabilize and disturb the respectability politics that plague the heart of even the more vocal (or is it especially the more vocal) members of the queer community. As such, if you're looking for a review written by someone who found the erotic metaphors and veiled yet provoking descriptions of sexual encounters to be anything other than interesting but rather tame compared to what's been put out since then, you're going to have to go elsewhere for your cishet status quo. As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed this 'how the turns have tabled' scenario when it detailed deep and abiding levels of self-introspection and mutually aided and abetted revolts against 'common sense' amongst a select group of partners, with the scene where a flock of well-fed white men, young and old, find themselves excitedly and thoroughly perturbed by the scintillating Adonis mincing through their midst being the cream of the crop. Still, outside of that, the narrative was a bit boring in the way that self-obsessed extraordinaires of society tend to be, and the whole 'man commits murder in defense of his masculinity and feels manpain over it afterwards' was probably old even when Vallette-Eymery first used it as trope. As for the final scene that the cover of my particular edition hints at, it's not so shocking when one's aware of how corpses have figured in the history of white people, from the edible saints of Catholicism to the inverse relationship between worldwide population of mummies and the variety of cure-alls available to the highest Euro bidder. So, overall, I liked this when it was being actively queer, but found it rather stale otherwise.

This is the kind of work that the folks capable of shelling out for the kind of education that'll make reading this anything but a chore are going to, for the most part, flat out ignore as their ivory tower forefathers did before them. Nor is it going to attract most of the folks who have an actual stake in the whole queer sense of the matter, cause honestly, the vast majority of them have bigger things to worry about and far more relevant material to consume. This means, if someone picks up this work cause their Fave Reviewer Evar gave it a soulless five stars cause that's what a lot of reviewers seem to do these days, they will probably negatively affect the average rating as I technically did, but there probably won't be any real critical thought behind their doing so. Indeed, I'm not expecting NYRB Classics or New Directions or Dalkey Archives or any other of that ilk to roll out the reprinting red carpet for the first Anglo translations of many of Vallette-Eymery's bibliography, cause honestly, what's in it for them (and their average subscriber)? As such, much as I would like to hold out hope for my encounters with Vallette-Eymery in English to not be at a one-and-done end, my hopes probably lie more with grants awarded to various academic departments more than anything else, and we all know how much my homeland would love to see that all torn down and replaced with charter schools and Amazon bookstores. All in all, read this if you're truly engaged with encountering a read that may make you question a great deal of things that you take for granted, especially if they're on the level of whatever assumptions you've made about your own identity for the past twenty, thirty, sixty years. It's never too late to figure things out, and if Vallette-Eymery can achieve such through her writing (even if, perhaps, despite her best efforts), she's well worth preserving for the future.

But suddenly Jacques's arrival, carelessly disturbing them in their disdainful reflections, reduced them to silence. They were about to move off en masse to show their contempt for this obscure dauber of forget-me-nots when they all felt at the same time a bizarre commotion that riveted them to the spot. Jacques, his head thrown back, still had his smile of a young girl in love; his open lips showed off his pearly teeth; his eyes, enhanced by bluish circles, maintained a glistening radiance; and under his thick air, his delicate ears, opening like some purple flower, made all of them shiver inexplicably at once. Jacques passed them without noticing them; his hips, well defined under his evening clothes, brushed them lightly for a second...and with one movement they clenched their hands, suddenly grown moist.
When he had moved far off, the marquis let fall this banal phrase:
"It's very hot in here, gentlemen; 'pon my honor, it's unbearable!..."
They all repeated in chorus:
"It's unbearable!...'Pon our honor, it's too hot!..."

[Mia Xiao · Rating 4 out of 5]

gender as performance. monstrosity of desire and decadence. class in 19th century. bdsm. crazy crazy novel

[☆ hyacinthe ☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird and perverse… couldn’t put it down despite the difficult translation and the fact that I was reading it on my laptop through Internet Archive

[nethescurial · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Man! That is man! Not Socrates and the grandeur of wisdom, not Christ and the majesty of martyrdom, not Raphael and the glow of genius, but a poor creature stripped of his rags..."

The most insane erotic genderfuck funhouse to ever be written. Maybe too Le Problematique and unequivocally loathsome of sexuality to be an absolute fav or whatever but like what did you expect sjsjjsjsjs, even so it is insanely forward thinking and fascinating in its context even now, maybe especially now considering how viscerally awed I was by some of the depicted derangements here, and Rachilde's audacity and just full throttle Going There whenever she's compelled to is remarkable [can't imagine how Dangerous something like this would be to publish esp as a woman in 1884]. Can already tell Rachilde is an incredibly gifted and overlooked prose stylist and aesthetician and political writer to boot, completely merciless on all fronts and fires on all cylinders from front page to last. Psychologically stirring and revealing to the character of the author and the infinitely complex axes of gender oppression that have only made this even more fascinating since Rachilde's time, somehow darkly tender in its brutal machinations and full of doomed pathos for its characters whose direct Artificiality [a lot of this feels so much like theater even down to recurring formal choices] only serves to profoundly enhance their impact. And just a masterwork of delicious macabre aesthetic heaven, there are some insanely ahead of their time and nightmarish setpieces throughout this thing and kept me engaged every step of the way through this mirror maze of debauchery and endlessly reconfiguring gender roles and the disturbed power play lying therein, especially when manifesting across class lines. Would be very interested to see what more people think of this from a more contemporary gender philosophy perspective*, definitely needs way more readers. I guess TIL I really gotta get more into Decadence.

*[Not a philosopher on this matter (or any matter lmao) but I love me some waxing abt Gender so I'll bite - obvs a total genderfucky rotation and Relinquishing of roles to one another is the main thrust of the plot here but I couldn't help but pick up on so much transmasculinity here too. But I think the scope here is too broad and Rachilde's personal life (like anyone else's) too complex to make any hard and fast speculations about or pin to any one Modern definition of gender and role-play, but I will say it at least seems partially evidential that this may be a kind of Displacement of Rachilde's own internalized misogyny and feelings about her own oppression and desire to achieve a kind of Masculine Ideal to take to task the roles she despised but felt were indomitable, which is a familiar feelings across the lines of countless individuals of marginalized genders. I'll try not to overstep and speculate more on an author's personal life than that, but in any case this is an extremely interesting book to read as a trans person and is much worthy of further reads and study.]

[Ana]

If you don’t want spoilers, this isn’t for you. But if you want me to spoil you with Rachilde’s subversive ideas, I will and you are welcome.

Okay, so first of all, you don’t have to be a perv (though it helps if you are) to see that anatomical Venuses have tremendous potential for fetishism. Rachilde was inspired by the fascinating (or disturbing, depending on your perv status) Enlightenment experiment of creating life-sized female wax figures that looked like they were only moments post-orgasm, with their abdomens spread open and their inner organs on full display for educational purposes, ofc. One of the masterminds behind these medical toys, Felice Fontana, was super optimistic that in the future no student, physician, or surgeon would ever want (I mean, need) to dissect cadavers again, because they “would be able to find their desired models in a permanent, odor-free, and incorruptible state.”

Second of all, that hasn’t happened.

But Rachilde did succeed in flipping the ideal of the Venus anatomique: from the beautiful, passive female body dissected and laid open for the male (medical) gaze, to the alluring, passive male cadaver (with some wax involved), used solely for female pleasure.

Rachilde’s heroine, a dominant woman with a traditionally masculine sexuality, was less interested in science and far more interested in sin. Raoule dissected common sex and gender norms; Jacques became the wax toy. The woman performed a similar act of possession that the anatomical sculptors did before her, but she did it with erotic intent. It’s true that she held some problematic ideas about gender hierarchies, but at least she didn’t aestheticize the horror like Fontana did with his supine Venuses. She meant her Monsieur Venus to be grotesque.

[as_library · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5⭐️
c'était CHE-LOU de ouf presque flippant et même parfois dégoûtant mais étrangement ça se lisait bien et j'étais quand même accrochée

par contre c'est la première fois que j'arrive pas à rester poker face en public tellement c'était bizarre 🫥

[Aurore Persy · Rating 4 out of 5]

« Elle avait acheté un être qu’elle méprisait comme homme et adorait comme beauté. (Elle disait : beauté, ne pouvant pas dire : femme.) »

3.5

[Billy Degge]

A novel that would fully kill the average victorian man if he read it.

[roberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quanto è anomalo, questo romanzo. Pubblicato nell'Ottocento, scritto da una Rachilde appena ventenne e destinato a fare scandalo, Monsieur Vénus racconta dell'amore di Raoule de Venerande, una donna ricca e benestante, cresciuta a pane e religione, per Jacques, un ragazzo umile, che vive in condizione di povertà. Ciò che è "anomalo" (e, facile intuirlo, inaccettabile per l'epoca) è che lei si innamora di lui perché lui le sembra una lei: nei tratti del corpo, nei denti e negli occhi, nella sua forma tutta, nel carattere, nel desiderio. E ancora, lei si innamora di lui sentendosi un lui, volendo dominarlo in quanto lui.
Il testo è molto sporco, pieno di degrado, ogni tanto anche di sadomaso; spesso è enigmatico e imprendibile, e proprio per questo affascinante. Gioca molto, inoltre, sui cambi repentini di genere a livello morfologico-linguistico, a cui la lingua francese si presta molto bene (anche, a volte, nella sua ambiguità, come nel caso del pronome indiretto "lui").

[camillon · Rating 4 out of 5]

mais elle est tellement freaky comment ne pas être fan …..
pas ma lecture la plus attentive car je lisais pour #marie jai lu en diagonale quoi … mais très fun ?? malgré tout #bizarre

[sheryne!! · Rating 4 out of 5]

rp ou transidentité….

[Ygraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

had a Time w this one -- it's incredibly boring to call a book interesting & leave it there, but also it's ! v interesting ! it does really interesting things w gender as ? a relational dynamic ? obviously within the fetish-fantasy of the narrative, but also sort of resonating w some thoughts bouncing around in my skull abt reconstituting wife-husband as identities & as a polarity. it does really interesting things w the idea of invention, not just in terms of the central conceit, re-inventing a man as mistress & wife, but also the idea of re-inventing the concept & practice of love, raoule's occupation w innovation, being the first to sin in an entirely new way ? also just v interesting as an altered & translated text -- big fan of liz heron's translation, it's lush & morbid & has some v strikingly beautiful moments but am a little Disappointed that it has the revised version of the final scene, when according to wikipedia, the original, "after describing how raoule would kiss the mannequin and its mechanisms would allow it to kiss her back, [...] continued by saying it also opened its thighs ("en meme temps quil fait s'ecarter les cuisses"). that's wild ! that's fun !

anyway, will leave this review with some absolutely Delightful scraps from maurice barre's essay, the complications of love, that introduces the story in my edition: all this tender, wicked frenzy ! a somewhat squalid cast of mind, squalid and coquettish ! madcap, generous and full of strange enthusiasms ! we have the impression that young girls are very complicated, because we cannot grasp the fact that they are governed solely by instinct, being sly, self-centred and passionate little beasts ! the lachrymose fantasy of an isolated mind, a piece of cerebral eccentricity !

[Tai · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is so fucked up lol kind of like reading a BL doujinshi w/ a horrifically written seme/uke relationship except it’s 19th cent translated French lit w/ themes of transsexuality & possible commentary on class & gender performance

[Comte]

C'est quelque chose quand même les romans fin de siècle. Grosse dinguerie. Hyper intéressant et hyper riche. Un roman marquant et original, dont je garderai des souvenirs nets, mais plus lu par curiosité que par plaisir.

[Alexandra Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange and beautiful. Must read if you're interested in decadent literature.

[Victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to give this book a higher rating for the potential it had, but I felt like after a compelling beginning and a fun concept, it just slogged until we reached an admittedly perfect ending. Raoule was a character I wanted to enjoy — I love the idea of her — but she has so little genuine interiority and characterization outside of the affair she's having that I find it impossible to enjoy her or care about anything she does. She's a one-dimensional power fantasy, and one I can understand and respect, but is not very interesting to read about. The book has this cold, detached feeling that I think I blame the sparse prose for, which I found boring to read but also strangely cryptic (this might be the result of my translation however). There are interesting ideas with Raoule, Jacques, and Raittolbe (there are none at all with Marie) that the book gets so close to exploring but ultimately fails to, or more doesn't try to.

As far as the relationship goes, because you're at a distance from both the characters emotionally, it's hard to care about either of them or what they do together. There's also this strange balance of darkness and lightness in their relationship: I think Rachilde should have leaned into the dark, which the beginning and the ending do superbly, but she spends the middle teetering between them having nauseating "cute moments" (that seem ill-fitting considering after the dark start) and abusive moments that would be more interesting to read if the book was willing to indulge in them. The impact of both types of scenes are diminished by the existence of the other. I'm not saying their relationship can't be nuanced, but there's not enough nuances actually explored in their relationship or characters for this to work.

If it's meant to be a drama, the plot is the weakest part (don't get me started on Marie). If it's meant to be a study in desire and gender roles, then it fails for its lack of character development or real interest in the society that exists around the characters. If it's meant to be erotica, I think the tonal whiplash kills the book’s erotic potential. Raoule's complete worship of Jacques made me experience this contrarian hatred for him; the prose isn’t lush enough and the imagery is too weak to make his supposedly goddess-like beauty feel real or compelling. He has no personality at all, which I understand could be the point (the sexual object has no personality besides to be desired, just like the “ideal woman”), but then that should be explored, especially since he experiences such a metamorphosis (or just shut him up and bend him over!). But Rachilde is uninterested in a character study, uninterested in societal critique, and seemingly, uninterested in porn. His lack of satisfaction in their relationship despite his worship of Raoule becomes so essential to the ending and is the most interesting part of his character, yet it seems to only ever be danced around and hinted at. It culminates in key moments like his attempt to cheat on her with Raittolbe that Rachilde seems to actively refuse to extrapolate on; instead, we're treated to repetitive scenes of him stating his need for Raoule that are, by the hundredth time, both uninteresting and unerotic. For both Raoule and Jacques, this is a book that seems to actively avoid characterization. Jacques is replaced by a mannequin at the end — all Raoule really needed — and that's all he feels like in the narrative.

The reviewer who called this a virgin's fantasy I thought put it perfectly, and that embodies the parts of the book I enjoy; Raoule calls herself a priestess for a new kind of perversion, and Rachilde really is. I love the sterile depravity of the book and wish it felt like that more often. What was best about it, I feel, were the thoughts I had about it as I read and after I had finished it. Like Raoule and Jacques in their marriage-bed, I was enthralled by this book but, ultimately, unsatisfied.

My final thought: they should make men read this and nothing else for a year just to see what happens.