Early life Marguerite Eymery was born in February 1860 to Joseph and Gabrielle (Feytaud) Eymery. Marguerite was born with one leg shorter than the other, giving her a lifelong limp that set her apart from others from the very start. She grew up on the estate of le Cros as an only child. She was unwanted by her parents and received less affection from them than did the family's pet monkey, who was even granted such social graces as a seat at the table. She received some affection from her maternal grandmother, but Gabrielle taught the child to dismiss her grandmother as frivolous and simple. Nevertheless, it was her grandmother and her grandfather who encouraged Marguerite's imagination through play and reading, and offered her glimpses of fantastical escape. Joseph Eymery was a soldier, and that had a distinct impact on his wife and daughter, through various absences and stresses. At the extreme end, Joseph was imprisoned for dueling for four months in 1867 and then was imprisoned as an enemy soldier by the Prussians from 1870 to 1871 after surrendering his unit to them. During this separation, at least in Marguerite's mind, the distance between uninterested wife and unfaithful husband became wider and more permanent. Both offered her abuse, but her father's abuse had a perverse hope at the end of it. As a bold young woman with a passion for writing, she wrote to idol
Victor Hugo and received encouraging words in reply. This fueled in her a desire to move to Paris and become part of the literary culture there. Her father did not understand that, and it appears that in the mid-1870s he tried to set up an engagement for her as an alternative to literary pursuits. She rejected that engagement. Perhaps linked to this, she later claimed to have attempted suicide around this time. Rachilde began to hold a salon in her apartment each Tuesday and it quickly became
gathering place for young nonconformist writers and their allies, placing her at the center of activity for the Symbolist and Decadent movements. In 1884 she published her first successful novel,
Monsieur Vénus. It was so scandalous that she was tried for pornography and convicted
in absentia in Belgium, where the initial editions had been published. She was sentenced to two years of prison, essentially ensuring that she remain in France after that. In 1890, Vallette launched the avant-garde magazine
Mercure de France, "the most influential avant-garde journal of arts and literature of the era".:95 Rachilde served as the journal's literary critic, and as a "creative advisor to her husband". Beyond poetry and prose, one stated goal of
Mercure de France was to encourage the development of Symbolist theater. Rachilde was especially involved in working with
Paul Fort and his Théâtre d'Art. Good friend Jean Lorrain referred to her and his other female friends as high-strung, sex-addicted pervert, to which she said that he and her other male friends were also neurotic, just in a more balanced way. Even so, she often went out of her way for them, as when using her connections to arrange hospital care for
Paul Verlaine. In her Parisian apartment adjoining the
Mercure de France, on Saturday, 4 April 1953, Rachilde died at the age of ninety-three. Rachilde was known to dress in men's clothes, even though doing so was in direct violation of French law. Her reasons are not entirely clear, as there is both boldness and polite reserve in a request she filed for a permit to do so:Dear Sir, please authorize me to wear men's clothing. Please read the following attestation, I beg you and do not confuse my inquiry with other classless women who seek scandal under the above costume. She did refer to herself as androgynous, but her definition was functional and pragmatic. There was such a thing as a man of letters, not a woman of letters. Hence, she was both a woman and man. Nor was she shy about that, identifying herself on her cards as "Rachilde,
homme de lettres", a man of letters. Her views on gender were strongly influenced by her distrust of her mother and her envy of the privileged freedom she saw in men like her philandering father. It is unclear just what her thoughts were about sexual pleasure and sensual attraction. Her friend and admirer
Maurice Barrès quotes her as suggesting that God erred in combining love and sensuality, that sensual pleasure is a beast which should be sacrificed: "''Dieu aurait dû créer l'amour d'un côté et les sens de l'autre. L'amour véritable ne se devrait composer que d'amitié chaude. Sacrifions les sens, la bête.''" Her own sexuality and gender may have been conflicted, but she was not confused in her support of others. In the
public sphere, she wrote articles in defense of homosexual love, albeit sometimes with mixed results. She counted among her friends openly lesbian writer Natalie Clifford Barney, who found her an enchanting enigma and a tender friend. She is known to have appeared at events with Lorrain while he was wearing female disguise. She offered shelter and support to tormented poet Paul Verlaine. She may not have been settled with herself, but she did not let it make her unsettled with those she cared about. ==Writing==