Rachilde () was the pen name and preferred identity of novelist and playwright Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (11 February 1860 – 4 April 1953). Born near Périgueux, Dordogne, Aquitaine, France during the Second French Empire, Rachilde went on to become a Symbolist author and one of the most prominent women in literature associated with the Decadent movement of fin de siècle France.
A diverse and challenging author, Rachilde's most famous work includes the darkly erotic novels Monsieur Vénus (1884), La Marquise de Sade (1887), and La Jongleuse (1900). She also wrote a 1928 monograph on gender identity, Pourquoi je ne suis pas féministe ("Why I am not a Feminist"). Her work was noted for being frank, fantastical, and always with a suggestion of autobiography underlying questions of gender, sexuality, and identity.
She said of herself, "I always acted as an individual, not thinking to found a society or to upset the present one."
Biography
Early life
Marguerite Eymery was born in February 1860 to Joseph and Gabrielle (Feytaud) Eymery. Marguerite was born with one leg shorter than the other, giving her a lifelong limp that set her apart from others from the very start. She grew up on the estate of le Cros as an only child. She was unwanted by her parents and received less affection from them than did the family's pet monkey, who was even granted such social graces as a seat at the table. She received some affection from her maternal grandmother, but Gabrielle taught the child to dismiss her grandmother as frivolous and simple. Nevertheless, it was her grandmother and her grandfather who encouraged Marguerite's imagination through play and reading, and offered her glimpses of fantastical escape.
Joseph Eymery was a soldier, and that had a distinct impact on his wife and daughter, through various absences and stresses. At the extreme end, Joseph was imprisoned for dueling for four months in 1867 and then was imprisoned as an enemy soldier by the Prussians from 1870 to 1871 after surrendering his unit to them. During this separation, at least in Marguerite's mind, the distance between uninterested wife and unfaithful husband became wider and more permanent. Both offered her abuse, but her father's abuse had a perverse hope at the end of it.
As a bold young woman with a passion for writing, she wrote to idol Victor Hugo and received encouraging words in reply. This fueled in her a desire to move to Paris and become part of the literary culture there. Her father did not understand that, and it appears that in the mid-1870s he tried to set up an engagement for her as an alternative to literary pursuits. She rejected that engagement. Perhaps linked to this, she later claimed to have attempted suicide around this time.
Rachilde began to hold a salon in her apartment each Tuesday and it quickly became gathering place for young nonconformist writers and their allies, placing her at the center of activity for the Symbolist and Decadent movements.
In 1884 she published her first successful novel, Monsieur Vénus. It was so scandalous that she was tried for pornography and convicted in absentia in Belgium, where the initial editions had been published. She was sentenced to two years of prison, essentially ensuring that she remain in France after that.
In 1890, Vallette launched the avant-garde magazine Mercure de France, "the most influential avant-garde journal of arts and literature of the era".<sup>:95</sup> Rachilde served as the journal's literary critic, and as a "creative advisor to her husband".
Beyond poetry and prose, one stated goal of Mercure de France was to encourage the development of Symbolist theater. Rachilde was especially involved in working with Paul Fort and his Théâtre d'Art. Good friend Jean Lorrain referred to her and his other female friends as high-strung, sex-addicted pervert, to which she said that he and her other male friends were also neurotic, just in a more balanced way. Even so, she often went out of her way for them, as when using her connections to arrange hospital care for Paul Verlaine.
In her Parisian apartment adjoining the Mercure de France, on Saturday, 4 April 1953, Rachilde died at the age of ninety-three. Rachilde was known to dress in men's clothes, even though doing so was in direct violation of French law. Her reasons are not entirely clear, as there is both boldness and polite reserve in a request she filed for a permit to do so:<blockquote>Dear Sir, please authorize me to wear men's clothing. Please read the following attestation, I beg you and do not confuse my inquiry with other classless women who seek scandal under the above costume.</blockquote> She did refer to herself as androgynous, but her definition was functional and pragmatic. There was such a thing as a man of letters, not a woman of letters. Hence, she was both a woman and man. Nor was she shy about that, identifying herself on her cards as "Rachilde, homme de lettres", a man of letters.
Her views on gender were strongly influenced by her distrust of her mother and her envy of the privileged freedom she saw in men like her philandering father.
It is unclear just what her thoughts were about sexual pleasure and sensual attraction. Her friend and admirer Maurice Barrès quotes her as suggesting that God erred in combining love and sensuality, that sensual pleasure is a beast which should be sacrificed: "Dieu aurait dû créer l'amour d'un côté et les sens de l'autre. L'amour véritable ne se devrait composer que d'amitié chaude. Sacrifions les sens, la bête."
Her own sexuality and gender may have been conflicted, but she was not confused in her support of others. In the public sphere, she wrote articles in defense of homosexual love, albeit sometimes with mixed results. She counted among her friends openly lesbian writer Natalie Clifford Barney, who found her an enchanting enigma and a tender friend. She is known to have appeared at events with Lorrain while he was wearing female disguise. Unafraid to interact with an artificial identity, Rachilde herself wrote a lengthy and personal review of the de Chilra novel L'Heure sexuelle. Neither novel was a publishing success, and by 1899 she was publishing exclusively as Rachilde once again.
Stylistically, Rachilde occupies an interesting place in French literature, most closely associated with the Decadent movement but also linked to French Symbolism. She was published in the pages of La Décadence, which was formed as a Symbolist-leaning rival to Anatole Baju's Le Décadent, but then she was also published in Le Décadent. In fact, despite the Symbolist qualities of much of her work and her close association with that group, Rachilde actively opposed an attempt by the Symbolists to take over the more explicitly Decadent publication.
Later in life, as she became less prolific, her writing took on a much more reflective and autobiographical quality. This trend began around the time of World War I and became especially notable after the 1935 death of her husband Alfred Vallette. In his preface to the 1889 edition, Maurice Barrès referred to this novel as depraved, perverse, and nasty. He called it a "sensual and mystical frenzy", and the shocking and mysterious "dream of a virgin".
The two novels published as Jean de Chilra provide an interesting interlude, different in some key ways from the Rachilde-credited novels, despite sharing the themes of aggressive sexual deviance, obsession, and confusion between reality and illusion. The main character of La Princesse des ténèbres (1895) is a weak and victimized woman. The main character of L'Heure sexuelle (1898) is a man who may be conflicted, but is not typically effeminate.
She also published two poorly received volumes of poetry: Les Accords perdus (1937 – "Lost Deals") and Survie (1945 – "Survival"). She embraced the animal side as preferable to being the human product of her parents, perhaps also recalling the status of another animal, the pet monkey who usurped her place in the family affections. In his preface to the 1889 Monsieur Vénus, he lavished her with praise for both her writing and her personal life, and compared her again to Charles Baudelaire and also to the Marquis de Custine for the quality of her writing and for her veiled approach to exploring the complications of love in her time. a defense of her in polite company, or a remark upon first meeting her.
She also had a noteworthy impact on the career and legacy of British decadent Oscar Wilde. She hosted him and his lover at her salon and supported him during his lifetime. More directly than that, Wilde admired Monsieur Vénus and drew inspiration from it. Many scholars believe that Le Secret de Raoul, the novel that has its poisonous effect on Dorian Gray, is named in honor of the main character of Monsieur Vénus, Raoule de Vénérande. Rachilde also translated and wrote about many of his works after his death, helping pave the way for his long-lasting legacy in France. in two "first" editions; Paris: Flammarion, 1977)
- 1885 Queue de poisson (Brussels: Auguste Brancart, 1885