Rachilde

French author.

Dubbed “Mademoiselle Baudelaire” by Maurice Barres and called a distinguished pornographer by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Rachilde is one of the most complex literary figures to emerge at the tipping point between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her most famous work includes the fictional novels Monsieur Vénus/Monsieur Venus (1884) and La Jongleuse/The Juggler (1900, rev. 1925), and a nonfictional work called Pourquoi je ne suis pas féministe/ Why I am not a feminist (1928) in which she famously claims, “I have never had any confidence in women since the eternal feminine first betrayed me in maternal guise.” Scandalous in her youth, reviled by moralists as well as early feminists, her work ignored or forgotten in the years after her death, Rachilde balances between decadence and literary modernism, and between a virulent misogyny and deeply held belief in her own feminine worth.

She died 4 April 1953.