Horny Dudes: Guy de Maupassant and the Masculine Feuille de rose

Horny Dudes: Guy de Maupassant and the Masculine Feuille de rose Charles J. Stivale IN 1875 AND 1877, GUY DE MAUPASSANT participated in two private performances of the play that he composed, À la feuille de rose: maison turque, and in which he performed the role of a bisexual female prostitute .1 Following the performance that Flaubert attended (the second one), he is reported by Edmond de Goncourt to have said, appreciatively it would seem, "Oui, c'est très frais!"2 This nexus of performance, texts, and commentaries , all between men, recalls the homosocial bonds that typify the complexity of Maupassant's sexuality.3 On the one hand, this sexuality is problematized by a concept of the superperformative and mythified phallus, to paraphrase Emily Apter's description of the harem conceit in nineteenth-century fiction,4 and on the other hand, by his own temptations of cross-dressing and the fascination with female partners cross-dressed as males. This complementary impulse—between overt hyper-phallicity and only slightly less overt homosociality, as it were—constitutes the peculiar construction of Maupassantian masculinity that I will call "genital consciousness." With this term, I refer to a social and artistic awareness and practice focusing heavily, if not solely, on activities, narrative devices, and subjects that relate, explicitly or implicitly, to the effects and stimuli of female and male genitalia. Evidence of this "consciousness" abounds in Maupassant's fiction, "La Petite Roque" offering perhaps the most brutal example, yet one that is tempered and nuanced by the tale's recourse to the fantastic. In the case of À la feuille de rose, the particular homosocial practices also implicate a theatrical demonstration of barely disguised homosexual desire. I propose to employ this play in order to outline briefly three facets of this "consciousness"—Maupassant the pornographer, Maupassant the exhibitionist , and Maupassant the hedonist. By qualifying Maupassant with this trio of terms, I seek descriptors that correspond to specific examples of textual evidence of masculine construction derived either from Maupassant or from members of his entourage. Of Maupassant as pornographer, we have evidence not merely in the aforementioned play, but also in some rather graphic poetry included both in the Éditions Encre publication of À la feuille de rose and in Gisèle d'Estoc's Cahier d'amour, her memoirs and reflections that date from Vol. XLIII, No. 3 57 L'Esprit Créateur the early 188Os (at the start of her relationship with Maupassant) to the time of his death in 1893.5 Of Maupassant as exhibitionist, evidence from his own correspondence as well as from the Journal kept by the brothers Concourt suggests that Maupassant was quite eager to be observed in his sexual activity and even enjoyed on occasion displaying his formidable masturbatory prowess and staying power.6 These tastes and practices also provide insight concerning Maupassant the hedonist, as does some of the Goncourt material, and we can draw upon Maupassant's correspondence which reveals his taste for group sex and for combinations of men and women partners. One partner in particular, Gisèle d'Estoc, cross-dressed as a young man on occasion, and her correspondence and that of Maupassant suggest the challenge that she posed to his sexual tastes as she amply met him on his own terms, and possibly exceeded these. In order to illustrate the proposed typology succinctly, I wish to consider the text of À la feuille de rose and then compare it with de Goncourt's own evaluation of the play's representation that he attended on May 31, 1877. Suffice it to say, this play is by no means a chef d'œuvre. It consists of thirty-one scenes that depict a day in the activities of a brothel run by a maquereau named Miche, assisted by a garçon de bordel (a defrocked seminarian named Crête de Coq), and served by three prostitutes, Raphaële, Blondinette, and Fatma, all adorned in harem style, à la turque. As behooves a quasi-pornographic spectacle , the plot is minimal: interspersed between scenes of different, successive male visitors (a retired capitain, a young man, a sapper, a man from Marseille, an Englishman) are scenes of the visiting couple—Monsieur Beauflanquet...