Do You like book Monsieur Venus: A Materialist Novel (2004)?
I've listed this with Victorians because it's 19th century, but it's a clear example of why the French were so very *not* Victorian. The story of Raoule de Venerande, an wealthy aristocratic woman who makes Jacques Silvert, a poor young maker of artificial flowers into her "mistress," the novel is full of fascinating gender play and performativity, with the two characters slipping fluidly between gender roles. It features one of the most disturbing endings I've ever read. I rather regret buying the English translation rather than the French, but the MLA Texts & Translations edition has useful footnotes pointing out the tu/vous distinctions as well as gendered language that reads differently in translation.
—Catherine Siemann
Raoule de Venerande, a young woman from an ancient noble family, has a taste for cross-dressing as well as fairly exotic sexual appetites. Her meeting with a poverty-stricken florist and would-be painter gives her the opportunity to indulge her tastes to the full. Jacques Silvert is a passive young man to begin with and is therefore ideal for Raoule’s purposes. She sets him up in a studio and begins an affair with him, but she is to be the man in the relationship while he is to be the woman. But there’s more than just gender reversal going on here as Raoule is also playing games of dominance and submission with Jacques.
—Dfordoom
I have now finished reading Monsieur Venus, which I really enjoyed. I thought it was superbly written: the French just flows, the imagery and play on words (especially, you will have guessed, on masculine and feminine articles and pronouns) are just astounding.I thought the story was well constructed, and could see a clear progression in the events and plot. You start off with this young woman who can get whatever she wants. She has no boundaries. Her aunt is an almost comic character: she is out of touch and out of reach because the only thing on her mind is religion.Little by little, Raoule's freedom turns against her, a bit like Dorian Gray.. I thought the novel was mainly about her fall into decadence.What really struck me was that this novel was written pre-Freud, and yet explored the unconscious by dealing with deviant sexual behaviour and by violating deeply felt taboos.Some of it was pretty ghoulish and perverse, and I can see how it can be perceived as being in bad taste.But, maybe because it said in the blurb that the book had been condemned as pornographic, I thought it would be much more graphic than it was, I guess I was expecting something much more shocking than that.I liked it so much that I am hoping to get hold of more books by Rachilde, like La Marquise de Sade, and Mon Etrange Plaisir.
—Anna
