Mothers of Invention: Fictional Alternatives to Procreation

French feminists are sometimes perceived as making slower progress than their European sisters because suffrage was not achieved until well into the twentieth century, but this perception fails to take into account that for French women themselves, the vote was secondary to other, more pressing feminist issues. The right to force men to take responsibility for paternity, for example, was of far more interest in the fin-de-siècle and Belle Epoque periods. Until (and even after) this right was won in the first decade of the twentieth century, women often bore total responsibility for children, which meant that in an era of limited contraception, women ran far greater risks than men if they engaged in sexual activity that could result in conception. This article considers some of the ways women explored alternative forms of sexual expression in the Belle Epoque period, making perhaps a virtue out of necessity, and illustrates the emphasis on non-procreative sexuality through the work of novelist Rachilde (1860-1953), whose fiction enthusiastically offers a veritable catalogue of alternative sexualities.