SOURCE: "'La Marquise de Sade': Rachilde (Marguerite Eymery) 1860-1953," in The Sins of the Fathers: Decadence in France 1870-1914, Quartet Books, 1986, pp. 159-89.

In the following essay, Birkett provides a psychological interpretation of Rachilde's works.

Woman's place, for the writers and artists of the decadence, was inside the work of art, as an image to fix the male imagination. If Rachilde, almost alone of women writers of her period, was accepted into the Club des Hydropathes and Le Chat Noir, patronized by Victor Hugo and Barbey d'Aurevilly, approved by the misogynists Huysmans and Léon Bloy, and befriended by Verlaine, Jean Lorrain, Catulle Mendès, Laurent Tailhade and Camille Lemonnier, this had much to do with her willingness to play and play up to the decadent stereotypes. Squeezing every possible thrill from her autocratic, sadistic heroines, casually dismissing effeminate and inept anti-heroes to madness and death, she nevertheless...