The juggler Page 2

  Eliante finally escapes from this circle of speculation in a manner readers often find at best ambiguous, at worst unequivocally defeatist. 15 But as Nancy K. Miller has noted, 16 the economy of female desire is often misread, and if Miller cites the example of the Princesse de Cleves, who refuses to marry the man she loves in an act of self-affirmation tradi-

  tionally misinterpreted as self-sacrifice, the resemblance of Eliante to this paradigmatic character has not gone unnoticed. 17 Like the Princesse de Cleves, Eliante realizes that the only way to preserve her ideal is to refrain from implementing it, and thus her last act is committed "with a supernatural joy" (chapter 12).

  This interpretation opens the way for a fuller appreciation of the social analysis set forth in The Juggler, an analysis which marks Rachilde's departure from Decadence and her links to other modern writers. She had experimented with themes of perversion in previous novels, but in The Juggler the experiment is accompanied by a hypothesis. Rachilde had been groping toward insights about love and sexual desire, but in fragmented fashion; The Juggler presents them for the first time integrated into one unified theory. As in earlier novels, she imagines a rather eccentric perversion with which to endow her heroine, a perversion intended to shock the bourgeois, but also a further variable in a series of experiments concerning the nature of love. Eliante Donalger is in love with a Greek amphora. The choice of an inanimate entity as love object marks an important breakthrough in this series. The vase can be sufficiently anthropomorphized that it escapes simple categorization as a form of fetishism, but remains sufficiently inhuman that it avoids preconceived notions about perversions such as necrophilia. The vase further remains gender unspecific, so that the nature of the anthropomorphism escapes definition as either heterosexual or homosexual. Thanks to the grammatical gendering of nouns in French, the vase remains both "une urne" and "un vase"; as Eliante notes (chapter 4), it can be referred to as both "he" and "she," depending on the antecedent noun. This ambiguity is deliberately preserved and exploited by Eliante to illustrate not an androgyny predicated upon the recombination of two opposite sexes as in traditional

  definitions, but an inclusive bisexuality based on, in the words of Helene Cixous, "the nonexclusion of difference." 18

  In the amphora, Rachilde furthermore finds the perfect foil to illustrate the protean possibilities of human sexual expression, a theory for which Eliante becomes the spokesperson. Not only does she not need to look for a sex organ in the object of her desire, but she does not need human contact at all to obtain satisfaction (chapter i). The "bisexuality" of Eliante's desire comprises not only gender difference; it defends the love of nonhuman objects as a natural extension of the insight that beauty is in the brain of the beholder, as maintained by her namesake. By laying bare the role of thought and imagination in human desire, Rachilde anticipates radically different theories of human sexuality, going against the grain of her contemporaries in the then burgeoning field of psychology.

  Her insight goes one step further than this important recognition, however, for Rachilde further entrusts the policing of ideologically determined sex roles to the embryonic medical profession in the person of the medical student Leon Reille. Rachilde's dislike of doctors is a recurrent theme in her work (and a further link to the theatre of Moliere), 19 but in The Juggler the problem becomes specific. Leon not only invokes the threats used to maintain traditional sexual behavior (for example, he claims in chapter 6 that Eliante will be afflicted with St. Vitus's dance and general paralysis), he believes her cure lies in acceptance of "normal" sexual relations. He interprets her resistance to his sexual advances not as legitimate expression of autonomy, but as a desire to be raped (chapter 5), just as Freud would interpret his patients' accounts of resistance to incest as a fantasized desire to seduce and be seduced. Where outright threats fail, more subtle social control mechanisms can be deployed, as Eliante recognizes. The labelling of an expression of ecstasy, of puissance, which exceeds the

  bounds of discourse, as a "pathological case" (chapter 8) turns female desire into a form of deviance, a problem which appears to require a cure.

  Studies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, in particular of the role of the medical profession in denning sexuality, confirm Rachilde's vision in less humorous and more sinister detail. Eliante's perception of the role of the mental health profession in demarcating the boundaries of deviance is also prophetic in anticipating the central role of female desire in subsequent theory, particularly in her answer to the as-yet-unasked question, "what do women want?" They do not know, suggests Eliante (chapter 8), perhaps failing only to add, as Lacan later would, "and they cannot know." 20

  The Juggler also demonstrates the degree to which Ra-childe is aware of the role of sexual difference in the construction of meaning. For Eliante, and perhaps for Rachilde, men and women speak different languages (chapter 10). The voice—and name—of the father are internalized here, but it is precisely from this paternal prohibition that Eliante escapes in her role of hysterical juggling witch in order to speak from a different source: women write, without knowing why, just as they cry (chapter 10). Cixous suggests that women write from the body using milk and blood; 21 she might well have added tears, the invisible fluid of women's marginal status with which women write in The Juggler. Not "the madwoman in the attic" (chapter 8)—though a Creole nevertheless—Eliante's response to the masculine appropriation of the pen is not anxiety, but an escape to a different way of signifying, one which remains invisible to those who cannot read the body. Although Eliante does not know how to write, she knows how to sign (chapter 4), and thus she is a juggler not only in the literal sense, but also in the older and more general sense of jongleur, "a troubadour," not just one who entertains with dancing

  and acrobatics, but one who tells stories, who "finds"—and signs—them.

  The implicit attack on phallogocentrism includes more than just a critique of the inscription of the feminine in discourse; it also illustrates the absence of fixed meaning in language through the tteatment of origins. Not only do Eliante's origins remain obscure, the origins of communication itself are irretrievable in The Juggler. The structure of the novel relies partly on an exchange of letters, but the model for this exchange, while not denied, is no longer available. The parable of the lost letter in chapter 8 (and described as her obsession in chapter 10) tells the story of Eliante's first love letter. Like all discourse viewed through the prism of postmodernism, including the confessions Eliante prepared with her classmates in the convent, the letter never fails to recall what one does not mean to say (chapter 8). Between sender and receiver, however, the letter fell into the sea and therefore never reached its destination. Perhaps, though, this was for the best, since the words were not hers to begin with, but literally a translation from those of her black other, and thus a collaborative inscription in black and white that would nevertheless remain unreadable. This reintegration of binary opposites is a mitigating factor to be set against the overt racism of the text. There can be no doubt that Rachilde was as racist as she was misogynist and misanthropic, and she does not hesitate to invoke the negative sterotypes that were all too acceptable in her own time. But the personal relationship between Eliante and Ni-naude, as well as their literary collaboration, enacts a reconciliation between black and white by presenting difference as a generative force.

  These themes have only become readable in Rachilde's work since the development of postmodernism has challenged the place of a unified subject at the center of discourse. Al-

  though The Juggler went through several editions, Rachilde's contemporaries saw little of this vision in her work, and dismissed her literary contributions prematurely. While she continued to write and publish widely after World War I, she became increasingly viewed as an eccentric has-been. She maintained contact with other writers, but these were mostly young proteges with whom she collaborated, not those perceived as expanding the horizons of literature. In her later life she
became isolated, lonely and poor, most unlike the independently wealthy and aristocratic widows of her fiction. Her writing turned toward memoirs, and she ventured into (for her) previously unexplored genres such as poetry. She died in her apartment at the Mercure de France on 4 April 1953. Her passing was noted in the major newspapers, such as he Monde, but caused barely a ripple in the literary world. Rachilde's life was both too long and too short: she lived long enough to experience a decline in her popularity and a neglect of her work. She did not live long enough, however, to witness the revival of interest and the appreciation of a new generation of readers that is her due.

  Press, 1989), which analyze both the subversive potential and the limitations of this work.

  4. From the preface to A Mort (Paris: Monnier, 1886). Translated by Ernest Boyd in his introduction to Monsieur Venus, translated by Madeleine Boyd (New York: Covici, 1929), 6-7.

  5. Information about Rachilde's early childhood may be culled from several sources. Two works which appeared during her lifetime were based on personal communication with Rachilde: Ernest Gaubert's Rachilde (Paris: Sansot, 1907) and Andre David's Rachilde. Rachilde herself published a collection of memoirs, Quand j'etais jeune (Paris: Mercure de France, 1947), and although her novels are seldom explicitly autobiographical, much may be inferred from them. The most recent resource, a synthesis of the above materials, is Claude Dauphine's Rachilde: Femme de lettres, 1900.

  6. These events occupy several chapters of Quand j'etais jeune.

  7. As recounted in the first chapter of Quand j'etais jeune.

  8. See "Chez Dentu Le Grand Editeur" in Quand j'etais jeune. At the beginning of one of the chapters devoted to her father ("Un Heros de Roman"), Rachilde remarks: "One only knows one's parents when, having lost them, one reaches their age, and they come back into your mind like remorse, regrets for having misjudged them, or like the signs of a former life one was unable to understand, because one had absolutely no experience of the value of a soul always closed to another soul" (66). The explicit reference is to her failure to understand her father, but perhaps Rachilde was more inclined to be charitable in her judgement of her mother, too, in retrospect.

  9. At length, for example, in Pourquoi je ne suispas feministe (Paris: Les Editions de France, 1928).

  10. Maurice Barres pointed out, though in what may be taken as unflattering terms, the frequent association of Rachilde's work with that of eighteenth-century libertines in his preface to the revised, 1889 edition of Monsieur Venus. This preface is included in the 1977 edition of the work by Flammarion (see p. 5).

  11. See Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 205.

  12. Stage right (cote jardin) was formerly known as the "cote du roi," while stage left (cote cour) was the "cote de la reine," reflecting the position of the boxes of the king and queen. After the Revolution,

  the wings were renamed to eliminate any reminder of royalty. See chapter 2 of Jean-Pierre Moynet's French Theatrical Production in the Nineteenth Century, translated and augmented by Allan S. Jackson with M. Glen Wilson (Rare Books of the Theatre Series, American Theater Association no. 10, 1976, published by the Max Reinhardt Foundation with the Center for Modern Theater Research).

  13. She habitually completed a novel in a month of frenzied writing, lying on her stomach on the floor (see Dauphine, Rachilde: Femme de lettres, /900, 48).

  14. In The Newly Born Woman, translated by Betsy Wing, with an introduction by Sandra M. Gilbert (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1986).

  15. For Jennifer Birkett, for example, Eliante's death is a "poor kind of triumph" ( The Sins of the Fathers, 181), an example of Rachilde's pattern of "the temporary triumph of the vengeful female and the humiliating overthrow of the male—subject to the reinstatement of paternal power in the last act" (161).

  16. In "Emphasis Added: Plots and Plausibilities in Women's Fiction," PMLA 96(1981): 36-84.

  17. For example in Jean-Paul de Nola's review in Studi Francesi 28(1984): 596.

  18. In "Sorties" in The Newly Born Woman, 85.

  19. A dislike she shared with Jarry, who referred to them as "merdecins." See his letter to Rachilde published in the Organographes du Cymbalum Pataphysicum 18 (1982): 35.

  20. See Luce Irigaray's meditation on the question of "che vuoi" (as she calls it) entitled "The Mechanics* of Fluids" in This Sex Which Is Not One, translated by Catherine Porter (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1985), 106-118. Irigaray suggests that interpreting women's silence means "subjecting them to a language that exiles them at an ever increasing distance from what perhaps they would have said to you, were already whispering to you" (112 - 113).

  21. For example in "The Laugh of the Medusa," translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, in New French Feminisms, edited and with introductions by Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (New York: Schocken, 1981), 245-264.

  Selected Bibliography

  Barres, Maurice. "Mademoiselle Baudelaire." Les Chroniques, February

  1887, 77-79-Birkett, Jennifer. The Sins of the Fathers: Decadence in France, i8yo-

  1914. London: Quartet, 1986. Coulon, Marcel. "L'Imagination de Rachilde." Mercure de France 142

  (15 Aug.-15 Sept. 1920): 545-569-Dauphine, Claude. Introduction to Lajongleuse, by Rachilde. Paris: Des

  Femmes, 1982. . Rachilde: femme de lettres, 7900. Perigueux: Pierre Fanlac,

  1985. David, Andre. Rachilde, homme de lettres: son oeuvre. Paris: Editions de la

  Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1924. Gaubert, Ernest. Rachilde. Paris: Sansot, 1907. Hawthorne, Melanie. "Monsieur Venus: A Critique of Gender Roles."

  Nineteenth-Century French Studies 16 (Fall/Winter 1987-88):

  162-179. . "The Social Construction of Sexuality in Three Novels by

  Rachilde." Michigan Romance Studies 9 (1989): 49-59.

  Jarry, Alfred. "Ce que c'est que les tenebres." Oeuvres completes, vol. 2:432-435. Paris: Gallimard, Pleiade, 1987.

  Kelly, Dorothy. Fictional Genders: Role and Representation in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

  Lorrain, Jean. "Mademoiselle Salamandre." In Dans I'oratoire. Paris: C. Dalou, 1888.

  Mauclair, Camille. "Eloge de la luxure." Mercure de France 8 (May 1893): 43-50-

  Miomandre, Francis de. "Rachilde, Princesse des Tenebres." Art Mo-derne 13 & 14 (29 March & 5 April, 1903): 117-119, 125-127.

  Organographes du Cymbal urn Pataphysicum, no. 19 —20 (4 April, 1983).

  Quillard, Pierre. "Rachilde." Mercure de France 9 (Dec 1893): 323-

  328.

  San ton, Noel. La Poesie de Rachilde. Paris: Le Rouge et le Noir, 1928.

  Translator's Note

  JL HIS translation is based on the 1982 Des Femmes reprint of the 1925 edition of the work, the first to appear with woodcut illustrations by Gustave Alaux. The 1982 edition contains a number of typographical errors, however, and in these instances I have used the earlier printing. I have also consulted the fourth printing of the 1900 edition.

  Rachilde's prose is difficult to translate because of its style. Not only does she use frequent wordplay, deforming a common expression by one letter or syllable to produce new, yet uncannily familiar locutions, but her fluid style leaves much ambiguous in French. A typical descriptive passage is built up through an accumulation of phrases in which the relation of the parts to the whole remains vague. While grammatical gender in French is sometimes of assistance in determining which phrases of a description apply to which object,

  in many instances, Rachilde leaves a deliberate ambiguity. I have attempted to retain something of this ftee play in English by following her equally idiosynctatic punctuation. This calls for punctuation marks (commas, question marks) to be added where one would not normally expect them, and frequently to be omitted where one would expect them. This style reflects Rachilde's attempts to model prose after theatre: the odd punctuation and frequent use of italics suggest to the reader w
hat intonations a line should carry, mimicking the way an actor might stress or inflect a certain word in delivering dialogue to convey irony or humor. Similarly, the use of "points de suspension" (three dots), one of Rachilde's favorite devices, is also a technique to draw the reader into the text and make him or her participate in the construction of its meaning.

  Footnotes have been added when necessary to comment on a specific aspect of the text, and to draw comparisons with other areas of Rachilde's life and work.

  The Juggler

  r„

  His woman let her dress trail behind her like a queen trailing her life. She left the brightly lit hall, taking with her its darkness, draped by a thick shadow, by an air of impenetrable mystery that came right up to her neck and clasped it as though to strangle her. She took small steps, and the tail of black, full, supple material fanned out, rolled a wave around her, undulated, forming the same moire circles that are seen in deep water in the evening, after a body has fallen. She walked with her head held high, her eyes lowered, her arms hanging by her side, not young in appearance, for she remained serious, and what showed above her funereal envelope seemed very artificial: a painted doll's face, decorated with a bonnet of smooth, shining hair with steely glints, hair that stuck to the temples, too twisted, too fine, so fine it seemed like imitation silk, a shred of her black dress, that satiny, almost metallic, sheath. With such a tight hairstyle set above thin red ears that seemed literally to bleed under the weight of a sharp-edged helmet, she was whiter with her makeup than any other made-up woman.