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The Demi-Sexes and The Androgynes
Presented here in English for the first time, in a bravura translation by Brian Stableford, are two highly unusual novels from one of the fin-de-siEcle's most eccentric writers.
The Demi-Sexes, originally published in 1897, was the first of Jane de La VaudEre's novels seriously to explore the territory of the conventionally unmentionable, which it does forthrightly, in its first chapter, when its heroine, Camille, asks a doctor, in secret, for "an operation."
The Androgynes, first published in 1903, a tale of faithfulness and fickleness amidst the vicious rivalries of the literary and artistic worlds, presents a lush and decadent Paris, replete with cross-dressers, opium smoking, and a provocative miscellany of amour.
The Demi-Sexes, originally published in 1897, was the first of Jane de La VaudEre's novels seriously to explore the territory of the conventionally unmentionable, which it does forthrightly, in its first chapter, when its heroine, Camille, asks a doctor, in secret, for "an operation."
The Androgynes, first published in 1903, a tale of faithfulness and fickleness amidst the vicious rivalries of the literary and artistic worlds, presents a lush and decadent Paris, replete with cross-dressers, opium smoking, and a provocative miscellany of amour.
306 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1897
About the author
Jane de la Vaudère
44 books20 followersJane de la Vaudère was the pen name of Jeanne Scrive, a French novelist, poet and playwright who was born April 15, 1857, in Paris, and died on July 26, 1908. Her father was a famous doctor, Gaspard-Léonard Scrive, Surgeon-General of the French Army during the Crimean War. She is considered by contemporary critics a participant in the Decadent movement and Naturalism.
Her poetic works include Les Heures perdues, L'Eternelle chanson, Minuit, and Evocation. She is also remembered for a collection of decadent novels and short stories, such as Les Androgynes (1903), Les Demi-Sexes (1897), or Les Sataniques (1897) — probably her masterpiece. She wrote exotic novels as well, including Les Courtisanes de Brahma, La Porte de Félicité or La Gueisha amoureuse.
She collaborated with the Théâtre du Grand Guignol.
Her poetic works include Les Heures perdues, L'Eternelle chanson, Minuit, and Evocation. She is also remembered for a collection of decadent novels and short stories, such as Les Androgynes (1903), Les Demi-Sexes (1897), or Les Sataniques (1897) — probably her masterpiece. She wrote exotic novels as well, including Les Courtisanes de Brahma, La Porte de Félicité or La Gueisha amoureuse.
She collaborated with the Théâtre du Grand Guignol.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 10, 2024
Brian Stableford—prolific science fiction writer and translator of The Demi-Sexes and The Androgynes, along with, apparently, over 300 other French novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries—died at the end of February, age 75. Just as I discover him, he is gone. This is my second of his translations, after Rachilde’s magnificent The Princess of Darkness. I have two more on my bedside table, and three more picked out to order when I’ve finished those. So far as I can tell, Stableford came at his translation work first in search of the roots of science fiction and fantasy, translating hundreds of works of proto-science fiction and littérature fantastique, following those threads to symbolism, aestheticism, occult and decadent literature—and finding there, perhaps somewhat incidentally, a spectacular first flowering of queer literature.
The Demi-Sexes (1897) and The Androgynes (1903) are absorbing, strange, overwrought, disarmingly rich in their examination of gender, art, violence, love. Expect not liberation. The Androgynes, in particular, is a hateful novel (also by far the lesser of the two). The Demi-Sexes, though, is deeply conflicted on sexual desire, modernity, liberation, excess. The novel treats lesbianism as deviant and perverse—but conventional heterosexuality as dull, miserable, and dehumanizing. Women who bid for freedom are punished. Women who accept the bars on their windows are punished. Women, period, are punished. De La Vaudère is difficult to pin down; utterly moralistic, also deeply ambivalent.
This is not an empowering book. Its account of fin de siècle lesbian community is suspect, to say the least. The novel probes women's experiences of gender, sexuality, and passion at a moment of explosive change—a sexual revolution before the sexual revolution. But whereas Rachilde’s The Princess of Darkness is simply a lost classic—its accounting for sexual trauma through the blurring of fantasy and reality strikingly contemporary—Jane de la Vaudère represents something more slippery.
Socially and emotionally, the novel refuses to fully inhabit its own morality tale. When Mademoiselle de Luzac kisses Nina Saurel (“an exquisite, desirable kiss, given and returned ardently by both mouths”), de Luzac’s loathsome male lover Philippe shivers with jealousy: “Oh, he said to himself, bitterly, these women are no longer made for us” (96, emphasis in original). The Demi-Sexes make their bid for freedom. They are defeated, more by men than by themselves, but one cannot help but see that de La Vaudère would have seen them victorious could she imagine just a little further. Still, she imagined quite far indeed, for her time.
Observing that a decadent novel is excessive and overwritten is like observing that a sonnet rhymes—but some sonnets use rhyme to carry meaning and inspire feeling, and others rhyme because they are sonnets. The self-same style that brings ambiguity and richness to The Demi-Sexes makes The Androgynes tiresome. The Androgynes is The Demi-Sexes gender-reversed. Instead of a lesbian-seductress ruining a brilliant, sensitive young woman, alienating her from healthy, heterosexual desire—we have a gay man (an Androgyne, in the language of the novel) seducing a brilliant, sensitive young man. But there is little redeeming empathy or fascinating moral ambiguity this time around—homosexuality and cross-dressing are perverse and destructive, gay men pathetic and doomed. The novel is primarily of interest as a post-script and counterpoint to The Demi-Sexes.
The Demi-Sexes (1897) and The Androgynes (1903) are absorbing, strange, overwrought, disarmingly rich in their examination of gender, art, violence, love. Expect not liberation. The Androgynes, in particular, is a hateful novel (also by far the lesser of the two). The Demi-Sexes, though, is deeply conflicted on sexual desire, modernity, liberation, excess. The novel treats lesbianism as deviant and perverse—but conventional heterosexuality as dull, miserable, and dehumanizing. Women who bid for freedom are punished. Women who accept the bars on their windows are punished. Women, period, are punished. De La Vaudère is difficult to pin down; utterly moralistic, also deeply ambivalent.
This is not an empowering book. Its account of fin de siècle lesbian community is suspect, to say the least. The novel probes women's experiences of gender, sexuality, and passion at a moment of explosive change—a sexual revolution before the sexual revolution. But whereas Rachilde’s The Princess of Darkness is simply a lost classic—its accounting for sexual trauma through the blurring of fantasy and reality strikingly contemporary—Jane de la Vaudère represents something more slippery.
Socially and emotionally, the novel refuses to fully inhabit its own morality tale. When Mademoiselle de Luzac kisses Nina Saurel (“an exquisite, desirable kiss, given and returned ardently by both mouths”), de Luzac’s loathsome male lover Philippe shivers with jealousy: “Oh, he said to himself, bitterly, these women are no longer made for us” (96, emphasis in original). The Demi-Sexes make their bid for freedom. They are defeated, more by men than by themselves, but one cannot help but see that de La Vaudère would have seen them victorious could she imagine just a little further. Still, she imagined quite far indeed, for her time.
Observing that a decadent novel is excessive and overwritten is like observing that a sonnet rhymes—but some sonnets use rhyme to carry meaning and inspire feeling, and others rhyme because they are sonnets. The self-same style that brings ambiguity and richness to The Demi-Sexes makes The Androgynes tiresome. The Androgynes is The Demi-Sexes gender-reversed. Instead of a lesbian-seductress ruining a brilliant, sensitive young woman, alienating her from healthy, heterosexual desire—we have a gay man (an Androgyne, in the language of the novel) seducing a brilliant, sensitive young man. But there is little redeeming empathy or fascinating moral ambiguity this time around—homosexuality and cross-dressing are perverse and destructive, gay men pathetic and doomed. The novel is primarily of interest as a post-script and counterpoint to The Demi-Sexes.
April 16, 2024
To think I almost postponed or skipped the shorter second work -- The Androgynes -- because most reviews say it's steeply beneath the The Demi-Sexes. I was glued to the story of The Androgynes, found its scenes of artistic low life exquisitely painted and not sordid in the way the blurb or intro led me to expect. True, both novellas make monsters of the queer. I have read that Jane de la Vaudère ventures again to write of lesbians in one or two of her 'exotic' historicals, far away from Paris, and there has less need to demonise (and I own almost all her titles from Snuggly Books). It is confronting, if fascinating, to see how women who sought freedom in the enigmatic operation that turns them into the eponymous Demi-Sexes -- early sterilization -- become fodder for a crazed decadence of treatment quite as lurid as Baudelaire's poems of lesbians. Still, I like Decadence. I like Baudelaire's bestial women, and I like Jane de la Vaudère even better. The Androgynes was quite beautiful in its images and short shifting scenes, while The Demi-Sexes upturned astonishing material.
January 10, 2023
4 stars for the demi-sexes: decadent fin-de-siècle setting and relentless portrayal of the patriarchal expectations of motherhood. philippe the blackmailer was the obvious villain, but georges the picture-perfect husband came in a close second. yes I have a rant prepared on this.
the androgynes to purgatory. disappointed. read like bad 19th century wattpad smut.
the androgynes to purgatory. disappointed. read like bad 19th century wattpad smut.
May 31, 2019
Two short, rambling novels filled with extremely flowery language and metaphors that occasionally confused me a fair bit.
That said, it had occasional passages and even chapters that were pure brilliance.
The Demi-Sexes was a painful read for me as someone in a depressed state after bad luck in love. But also because of how dumb everyone in the story is. They all make bad decisions and hurt themselves and everyone else. Not until the second to last page did anyone do something sensible
But while The Demi-Sexes at least made me feel for the characters even if it was sadness, disgust and anger; The Androgynes mostly just bored me for the first two thirds. I never felt anything for any of the characters and they didn't treat each other as badly as the ones in the earlier story did so the stakes felt lower. But then in the last third of the book it becomes a hallucinatory fever dream of weird, sometimes disgusting descriptions of drugs and debauchery which I may venture as far as to claim is the best part of the whole collection.
For those that wonder since the back of the book doesn't say as much, the titles of the two stories refer to sterilized women (which play a huge role in the first story) and men in drag (which play a minor but important role in the second story.)
That said, it had occasional passages and even chapters that were pure brilliance.
The Demi-Sexes was a painful read for me as someone in a depressed state after bad luck in love. But also because of how dumb everyone in the story is. They all make bad decisions and hurt themselves and everyone else. Not until the second to last page did anyone do something sensible
But while The Demi-Sexes at least made me feel for the characters even if it was sadness, disgust and anger; The Androgynes mostly just bored me for the first two thirds. I never felt anything for any of the characters and they didn't treat each other as badly as the ones in the earlier story did so the stakes felt lower. But then in the last third of the book it becomes a hallucinatory fever dream of weird, sometimes disgusting descriptions of drugs and debauchery which I may venture as far as to claim is the best part of the whole collection.
For those that wonder since the back of the book doesn't say as much, the titles of the two stories refer to sterilized women (which play a huge role in the first story) and men in drag (which play a minor but important role in the second story.)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews