57 Facts About Rachilde

Rachilde wrote a 1928 monograph on gender identity, Pourquoi je ne suis pas feministe.

Rachilde grew up on the estate of le Cros as an only child.

Rachilde was unwanted by her parents and received less affection from them than did the family's pet monkey, who was even granted such social graces as a seat at the table.

Rachilde received some affection from her maternal grandmother, but Gabrielle taught the child to dismiss her grandmother as frivolous and simple.

Rachilde then asked her father to read to her, an indication of her split relationship with herself that would be the hallmark of her life.

Rachilde began to write on a commission at fifteen, taking on the name Rachilde for the first time and creating a new persona for herself.

Rachilde's father did not understand that, and it appears that in the mid-1870s he tried to set up an engagement for her as an alternative to literary pursuits.

Rachilde shed "Marguerite" and asserted "Rachilde" in every way she could.

Rachilde began to hold a salon in her apartment each Tuesday and it quickly became gathering place for young nonconformist writers and their allies, placing her at the center of activity for the Symbolist and Decadent movements.

Rachilde was sentenced to two years of prison, essentially ensuring that she remain in France after that.

Rachilde met Alfred Vallette in 1885 and they married in 1889, despite his disapproval of her writing and her sometimes shocking public behavior.

Rachilde named their daughter Gabrielle after her own estranged mother.

Rachilde served as the journal's literary critic, and as a "creative advisor to her husband".

Rachilde began to hold her Tuesday salon in the Mercure offices.

Rachilde took great pride in the luminaries who attended, a group which included not only the established inner circle of Symbolist writers, but other notable countercultural figures such as Alfred Jarry, Oscar Wilde, painters Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin, composer Maurice Ravel, and many others.

Rachilde was especially involved in working with Paul Fort and his Theatre d'Art.

Rachilde befriended Leonide Leblanc and publicly supported the one-time courtesan's efforts to enter legitimate theater.

Rachilde was an early friend and supporter of fellow writer Colette and American expatriate Natalie Clifford Barney.

Rachilde remained socially active for much of her life, appearing around town with young men even into her sixties and seventies.

In 1935 when Rachilde was 75 years old, her husband Alfred Vallette died at his desk.

Rachilde referred to women as the inferior brothers of men.

Rachilde was known to dress in men's clothes, even though doing so was in direct violation of French law.

Rachilde's reasons are not entirely clear, as there is both boldness and polite reserve in a request she filed for a permit to do so:.

Rachilde did refer to herself as androgynous, but her definition was functional and pragmatic.

Apart from her marriage and her often flirtatious friendships, Rachilde did engage in love affairs.

Rachilde had an early affair with a man named Leo d'Orfer, to whom she dedicated Monsieur Venus.

Rachilde counted among her friends openly lesbian writer Natalie Clifford Barney, who found her an enchanting enigma and a tender friend.

Rachilde was well known at the time for her close friendships with gay men, including such prominent and notorious dandies as Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jean Lorrain, and Oscar Wilde, who brought his lover Lord Alfred Douglas to her salons.

Rachilde is known to have appeared at events with Lorrain while he was wearing female disguise.

Rachilde offered shelter and support to tormented poet Paul Verlaine.

The pseudonym Rachilde gave young Marguerite some initial anonymity and a measure of gender ambiguity, but it was more than that.

When her identity was discovered, she explained that Rachilde was the name of a long-dead Swedish lord who had come to her in a seance.

In 1878 Rachilde began to be published by Parisian newspapers, and in 1879 she published her first novel.

Stylistically, Rachilde occupies an interesting place in French literature, most closely associated with the Decadent movement but linked to French Symbolism.

Rachilde was published in the pages of La Decadence, which was formed as a Symbolist-leaning rival to Anatole Baju's Le Decadent, but then she was published in Le Decadent.

The core dynamic of Rachilde's fiction is frequently gender reversal.

Rachilde makes clear a preference for the ideal and suggests that even in erotic matters there can be power in artifice and illusion.

Rachilde called it a "sensual and mystical frenzy", and the shocking and mysterious "dream of a virgin".

Rachilde was the only woman at the time to play a prominent role in avant-garde theater of any sort.

Rachilde herself wrote and directed Symbolist plays, stretching the ability of the theater and of audiences to accommodate rich and complex supernatural symbols.

Rachilde wrote short stories that were published in Mercure de France and other literary reviews.

Rachilde released collections of the stories along with other material, including Le Demon de l'absurde, Contes et Nouvelles, and The Theater of Animals.

Rachilde published two poorly received volumes of poetry: Les Accords perdus and Survie.

Rachilde wrote countless reviews and essays for the various magazines and newspapers that thrived in Paris during this time.

Rachilde wanted to amplify the work of those she admired or supported, and she knew well how much of a role just being talked about could play.

In typical Rachilde recursive behavior, non-fiction was a vehicle for fiction.

Rachilde relayed the story of her mother's ancestral sins and the curse that was placed on her family because of them.

Rachilde wrote the most famous of these amidst the 1942 German occupation of France.

Rachilde was outside of all these things, because she was none of them.

Rachilde embraced the animal side as preferable to being the human product of her parents, perhaps recalling the status of another animal, the pet monkey who usurped her place in the family affections.

The most important impact that Rachilde had was upon the literary world in which she lived.

Rachilde had a noteworthy impact on the career and legacy of British decadent Oscar Wilde.

Rachilde hosted him and his lover at her salon and supported him during his lifetime.

Rachilde translated and wrote about many of his works after his death, helping pave the way for his long-lasting legacy in France.

Rachilde was unafraid to speak openly with the sincerity of her feelings.

Rachilde had no shame in marketing herself, but was known as a tender and caring friend.

Intimate in friendship and dedicated to supporting the careers of others, Rachilde was nevertheless always an outsider, forced to explain her thoughts and beliefs in terms of possession, because what was natural to her seemed to be so unnatural to everyone around her, including to herself as she tried to sort out what was in her and what was in the reflection.