Monsieur venus

by Rachilde

Book Overview

When the rich and well-connected Raoule de V n rande becomes enamored of Jacques Silvert, a poor young man who makes artificial flowers for a living, she turns him into her mistress and eventually... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• ISBN: 8476692102
• Release Date: January 1977

Customer Reviews

The Queen of Decadence

Rachilde's masterpiece, Monsieur Venus (1884), is the ultimate decadent novel. It has something for every sexual nonconformist: transvestism (both male and female), sadism, masochism, fetishism, homoeroticism, and even symbolic necrophilia. Rachilde's genius lies in her poetic ability to express the protean possibilities of gender. More than a mere reversal of stereotypical gender roles, her story destroys the boundaries of those limiting roles. The beautiful Raoule, dressed in masculine attire, seduces, violates, and keeps the feminine Jacques as her "mistress." Jacques takes quite naturally to feminine attire, as well as to the drugs and luxurious apartment provided by his lover. Raittolbe, Raoule's suitor--a virile military man--and Marie, Jacques' prostitute sister complicate the plot with their ruthless, yet stereotypically "normal" sexuality. However, it is Raoule's sexual ambiguity which threatens to undermine everyone else's gender identity--with the exception of the prostitute Marie, who is the only character with a strong gender identity. Problems begin to occur in the romantic lives of Raoule and Jacques when their mutual transvestism causes Jacques to question both his gender and his sexuality. Read symbolically, this text provides a wealth of meanings and any one of the themes enumerated above, from transvestism to necrophilia, can be explored with fascinating results. However, this is more than a symbolic text; this is a great story, a saturnalia of decadent eroticism. In my opinion, Monsieur Venus has lost none of its power to shock, provoke, and most of all entertain in the more than one hundred years since Rachilde wrote it. Thus I can think of no higher praise for Rachilde than to call her the Queen of Decadence unless, taking her own transvestism into account, I should call her the King of Decadence.