Monsieur Venus (Texts and Translations) (French Edition) [Paperback]

Rachilde (Author), Liz Constable (Editor), Melanie Hawthorne (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Modern Language Association of America (October 2004)
• Language: French
• ISBN-10: 0873529294
• ISBN-13: 978-0873529297
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #883,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #65 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > French
  • #73 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Foreign Language Fiction > French

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Customer Reviews

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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Queen of Decadence, February 19, 2001

By 

a reader (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Monsieur Venus (Decadence from Dedalus) (Paperback)

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.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Paint-by-numbers Decadence, April 3, 2000

By 

Sarah Skowronski (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Monsieur Venus (Decadence from Dedalus) (Paperback)

Gender inversion, sadism, masochism, exoticism, hallucinations, exploitation, the artificial creation of a perfect lover, sensuality--all of these are commonplaces of works of the Decadent movement, and, I'm sorry to say, Rachilde rarely lends any vitality or insight to these cliched devices. Add some extraneous characters, overblown melodramatic situations, and poor attention to detail, and this perfectly describes "Monsieur Venus". Unless you are a scholar of Decadence or a serious fetishist, I wouldn't read this particular work. I'd recommend Huysmans, Gautier, Wilde, Villiers, or even Sacher-Masoch in its stead.

4.0 out of 5 stars "Monsieur" Venus, an intriguing depraved narrative, March 26, 2011

By 

Kiwifunlad (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Monsieur Venus (Decadence from Dedalus) (Kindle Edition)

Rachilde wrote this novella when only 20. First published in 1884, it naturally caused an outrage at the time and even read in the 21st Century it is easy to see why. Raoule de Venerande is a wealthy aristocratic Parisian, both a cross dresser and domineering woman, who falls for Jacques Silvert, an androgynously beautiful young impoverished artist. The swapped gender roles of Rauole and Jacques forms the focus of the narrative. Baron Raitolbe, whose unrequited love for Raoule, is also under her bewitching powers. With the homo-erotic ending and the necrophyllic imagery, it is easy to understand this book's classification as Decadent.