As a woman, Rachilde was a rarity among Decadent authors, and in Raoule de Venerande she created a Decadent heroine of singularly monstrous proportions. For the imperious Raoule, Amazon and expert fencer, scion of an aristocratic line that has engendered Sadean libertines and pious spinsters, lesbianism is merely a banal vice. She seeks to transcend the limits of sensual experience in a liaison involving the sado-masochistic swapping of genders, and in which necrophilia can be relished in advance of death. The object of her desires is the girlish Jacques Silvert, whom she plucks from his insalubrious slum and installs as her mistress in a lavish boudoir. Raoule systematically enslaves Jacques by forcing him to surrender his maleness, while she embraces the role of virile lover and ultimately that of the husband about to be betrayed.
