Rachilde Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Renee A. Kingcaid

Critical Essay by Renee A. Kingcaid

SOURCE: "The Epithalamic Horror: Displacement in Rachilde," in Neurosis and Narrative: The Decadent Short Fiction of Proust, Lorrain, and Rachilde, Southern Illinois University Press, 1992, pp. 111-44.

In the following essay, Kingcaid argues that the world of Rachilde's literary works is symbolic of the functions of women's bodies, especially the female reproductive system.

To be a woman writer at the turn of the century, Rachilde maintained, was to assume an unenviable personality. Rachilde's preface to her 1888 Madame Adonis assures that the "woman of letters" commits herself to "a god-awful career, the most god-awful career possible." Engaged in by women, this career "is immoral, meaning that it ruins one good marriage in twenty, produces illegitimate children under the specious pretext of excess cerebral activity, leads to unnatural vices for the same reason … disrupts the harmony of the household, stains the fingers, and bugs the hell out of magazine publishers."