SOURCE: "Paroles Hermaphrodites: Gautier's Dandy," in Gender on the Divide: The Dandy in Modernist Literature, Cornell, 1993, pp. 25-53.

In the excerpt that follows, Feldman discusses Gautier's exploration of dandyism and gender in his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin.

Celle-ci Et Celle-lÀ: Gautier Considers Category

Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) came of age as a Romantic artist not when he fought the battle of Hernani in 1830 but when he realized that, by its principles of energy and change, Romanticism required its own transformation. As a member of le petit cénacle, a second-generation circle of Romantic artists, Gautier seized on satire as a transforming device. In 1833 he published Les Jeunes-France: Romans goguenards, a collection of stories that mock la vie bohème, from its fanciful costumes and erotic practices to its artistic productions and pretensions.¹ Among his targets was dandyism, for the phenomenon that had been imported from London some fifteen...