Rachilde and French Women's Authorship: From Decadence to Modernism by Melanie Hawthorne (review)

Book Reviews1 29 aux fables et qu'elle propose comme faisant également partie de l'originalité du roman contemporain. S'il y a un point faible dans ce livre, ce serait cette interprétation limitée de la personnification animale, ce qui serait à discuter sur le plan cognitif de la compréhension humaine sinon sur le plan littéraire. Les essais relèvent d'un travail minutieux et incisif sur des textes qui s'appuient sur le fond implicite et cognitif de l'animal chez l'homme et spécifiquement sur son absence de langage pour donner voix à l'expérience autrement, semble-t-il, inexprimable. Desblache montre comment les emplois novateurs des métaphores animalières par les auteur/e/s qu'elle discute sortent du cliché universaliste pour ainsi déstabiliser les attentes littéraires et sociales et enfin renouveler le roman moderne tout en rappelant au lecteur, à la lectrice, l'importance du rapport entre l'évolution et la conservation. Le livre est dédié au souvenir du dodo, exterminé par l'homme au XVIIIe siècle, ce qui semble communiquer la perte de contact chez l'homme avec son intérieur muet. Ce petit bestiaire, bon marché à l'époque du livre de prix surélevé et souvent produit seul en édition de bibliothèque, s'intègre facilement à la collection personnelle du/de la chercheur/e et spécialiste du roman contemporain. Les articles (chapitres) se lisent aussi bien indépendamment qu'en série. Un parcours fascinant et satisfaisant au zoo imaginaire et littéraire moderne. Margot MillerSAIS, Johns Hopkins University Melanie Hawthorne. Rachilde and French Women's Authorship: From Decadence to Modernism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press, 2001. ISBN: 0-8032-2402-8. Pp. 304. $65.00. Melanie Hawthorne, whose previous work on Rachilde (1860-1953) includes a number of articles as well as a translation of her novel 777e Juggler, offers readers this exceptionally well-written and insightful full-length study ofone ofthe most notorious women writers ofall time. In spite ofRachilde's extravagant reputation and prolific career, her work has not been widely studied . As a result, Hawthorne's work is an important contribution to the field. Hawthorne breaks new ground as she seeks to demystify some ofthe most oft-repeated elements of Rachilde's persona, namely her attempted suicide, her cross-dressing, her pornographic texts, her ambiguous sexuality and her reactionary politics. Hawthorne's goal is to situate Rachilde's life and work within a broader societal context and thus to figure her as emblematic of the women writers of her generation who participated in both the Decadent and Modernist movements. As Hawthorne puts it, ". . . Rachilde was not the exception that she has so often been described as. Rather, she used the claim ofexceptionality as a way to exist within the status quo. In using this strategy (and many others), she was very much the product of her time" (10). The straightforward acceptance of Rachilde's version of her life has obscured certain important facts according to Hawthorne. Most significantly it has blocked scholars' ability to see how Rachilde consciously manipulated and exploited particular images ofherself. Exhibiting careful research, Hawthorne offers an impressive biographical criticism which seeks to illuminate both the life and works of this enigmatic 1 30Women in French Studies author without reducing either to a simplistic interpretative grid for the other. In this way, her work recalls the work ofother accomplished biographers such as Deidre Bair. Hawthorne offers truly innovative readings as she demonstrates connections between Rachilde's life and her œuvre. Unlike the three previous biographers ofRachilde who she identifies, Hawthorne maintains an attitude of suspicion toward Rachilde's versions of events, always seeking to reveal the ways in which she might have fictionalized her own life for the sake of good publicity. As Hawthorne explains her project, "But whereas Gaubert, David, and Dauphiné tell Rachilde's life as if it were a novel, this biography is an attempt to read her life knowing that she has made a novel of it" ( 1 9). Hawthorne begins each chapter with the exposition ofa significant event in Rachilde's life. Then, she artfully undoes the standard version ofevents by reading...