Rachilde

Liz Constable

Melanie Hawthorne

Madeleine Elise Reynier Boyd

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.

A Materialist Novel

Monsieur Vénus

Gisèle d’Estoc was the pseudonym of a nineteenth-century French woman writer and, it turns out, artist who, among other things, was accused of being a bomb-planting anarchist, the cross-dressing lover of writer Guy de Maupassant, and the fighter of at least one duel with another woman, inspiring Bayard’s famous painting on the subject. The true identity of this enigmatic woman remained unknown and was even considered fictional until recently, when Melanie C. Hawthorne resurrected d’Estoc’s discarded story from the annals of forgotten history. Finding the Woman Who Didn’t Exist begins with the claim by expert literary historians of France on the eve of World War II that the woman then known only as Gisèle d’Estoc was merely a hoax. More than fifty years later, Hawthorne not only proves that she did exist but also uncovers details about her fascinating life and career, along the way adding to our understanding of nineteenth-century France, literary culture, and gender identity. Hawthorne explores the intriguing life of the real d’Estoc, explaining why others came to doubt the “experts” and following the threads of evidence that the latter overlooked. In focusing on how narratives are shaped for particular audiences at particular times, Hawthorne also tells “the story of the story,” which reveals how the habits of thought fostered by the humanities continue to matter beyond the halls of academe.

The Curious Life of Gisèle D'Estoc

Finding the Woman Who Didn't Exist

Under the assumed name Rachilde, Marguerite Eymery (1860?1953) wrote over sixty works of fiction, drama, poetry, memoir, and criticism, including Monsieur Vänus, one of the most famous examples of decadent fiction. She was closely associated with the literary journal Mercure de France, inspired parts of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and mingled with all the literary lights of the day. Yet for all that, very little has been written about her. Melanie C. Hawthorne corrects this oversight and counters the traditional approach to Rachilde by persuasively portraying this "eccentric" as patently representative of the French women writers of her time and of the social and literary issues they faced. Seen in this light, Rachilde's writing clearly illustrates important questions in feminist literary theory as well as significant features of turn-of-the-century French society. ø Hawthorne arranges her approach to Rachilde around several defining events in the author's life, including the controversial publication of Monsieur Vänus, with its presentation of sex reversals. Weaving back and forth in time, she is able to depict these moments in relation to Rachilde's life, work, and times and to illuminate nineteenth-century publishing practices and rivalries, including authorial manipulations of the market for sexually suggestive literature. The most complete and accurate account yet written of this emblematic author, Hawthorne's work is also the first to situate Rachilde in the broader social contexts and literary currents of her time and of our own.

From Decadence to Modernism

Rachilde and French Women's Authorship

As the existentialist philosophers of mid-twentieth-century Paris famously asserted, a life can only be assessed fully after it has ended. Fitting, then, that since her death in 1986, the philosopher and novelist Simone de Beauvoir has been the subject of numerous attempts to evaluate her contributions to intellectual thought. With the uncovering of her early diaries and the recent publication of her passionate letters to Nelson Algren, she has become more than a towering figure of twentieth-century feminism. She is at once an intensely human figure and a fertile field for application of various sexual constructs and for argument over feminist principles. Edited by Melanie C. Hawthorne, this volume brings into play a variety of fresh voices, from a Swedish novelist and advice columnist to an interdisciplinary theorist of decadence. The essays address the multitude of issues arising from the affective, personal, political, and sexual dimensions of Beauvoir's life and work. Fifty years after the publication of The Second Sex, Contingent Loves offers a wide-ranging discussion of the immeasurable impact Simone de Beauvoir has had on feminist discourse. Contents: · "Translation Effects: How Beauvoir Talks Sex in English," Luise Von Flotow, University of Ottawa · "Variations on Triangular Relationships," Serge Julienne-Caffié, Philadelphia, Pa. · "Leçon de Philo/Lesson in Love: Simone de Beauvoir's Intellectual Passion and the Mobilization of Desire," Melanie C. Hawthorne, Texas A&M University · "Sensuality and Brutality: Contradictions in Simone de Beauvoir's Writings about Sexuality," Åsa Moberg, Sweden · "Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren: Self-Creation, Self-Contradiction, and the Exotic, Erotic Feminist Other", Barbara Klaw, Northern Kentucky University · "Simone de Beauvoir on Henry de Montherlant: A Map of Misreading?" Richard J. Golsan, Texas A&M University · "'Le Prototype de la Fade Répétition': Beauvoir and Butler on the Work of Abjection in Repetitions and Reconfigurations of Gender," Liz Constable, University of California, Davis

Melanie Hawthorne

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