Monsieur Vénus
1884
Rachilde
Bruxelles : August Brancart
French
Novel
238pp
Gay Men, Transgender, Sex Workers, Erotica, Decadence
He is indifferent, I shudder. He is despicable, I admire him! [...] I will make him my master and he will twist my soul under his body. I bought him, I belong to him. It is I who am sold. Meaning, you give me back a heart! Ah! demon of love, you made me prisoner, stealing my chains and leaving me freer than my jailer is. I thought I took him, he takes hold of me. (tr. Google)
Summary
A novel of a woman bored of her life and who pays a poor florist to enter a relationship with her. She taunts and abuses him from an androgynous figure into a feminine one, but when he tries to seduce her rejected male suitor, she organizes a duel which leaves the florist dead. By the end, in interchanging male and female clothes, she embraces a wax doll created to mimic the dead man.
More Info
Also see:
"Monsieur Vénus: A Critique of Gender Roles" (1897) by Melanie C. Hawthorne in Nineteenth-Century French Studies (1988), Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 162-179.
Ventriloquized Bodies: Narratives of Hysteria in Nineteenth-century France (1994) by Janet L. Beizer (ISBN: 9780801481420)
Rachilde and French Women's Authorship: From Decadence to Modernism (2001) by Melanie Hawthorne (ISBN: 978-0803224025)
Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth-Century France (2020) by Rachel Mesch (ISBN: 978-1503612358)
Content & Trigger Warnings
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Editions
Bruxelles : August Brancart (1884) first edition contains the full text. A fictitious co-author named "F. T." is also credited.
Bruxelles : August Brancart (1884) second edition contains a few deleted words in the final chapter. Seen at Livres-émoi on Abebooks.
Bruxelles : August Brancart (1884) third edition contains further excisions, cutting erotic details in the final chapter and the protagonist's orgasm from a daydream in Chapter 2.
Paris : Felix Brossier (1889) first edition published in France. Contains all excisions from previous publications plus further cuts, including Chapter 7, where the protagonist asserts that women could destroy men by robbing them of their masculinity through sex. F. T.'s name as collaborator is also removed. Contains a preface by Maurice Barrès.
New York : Covici, Friede (1929) first English Edition in 1,200 copies. Translated by Madeleine Boyd from the French edition. Illustrated by Majeska. Contains a preface by Maurice Barrès. Seen on Worthpoint by Double Eagle Books.
New York: Modern Language Association of America (2004) reissue of the original 1884 French text under the title Monsieur Vénus: Roman Matérialiste (2004). Edited and introduced (in English) by Melanie Hawthorne and Liz Constable. ISBN: 9780873529297
New York : Modern Language Association of America (2004) as Monsieur Vénus: A Materialist Novel. Translated to English by Melanie Hawthorne after the 1929 translation by Madeleine Boyd. Introduced and annotated by Melanie Hawthorne and Liz Constable.