[1][2] The novel tells the story of French noblewoman Raoule de Vénérande and her pursuit of sexual pleasure while creating a new and more satisfying identity for herself.
In order to escape the ennui and malaise of her tradition-bound upper-class existence, she must subvert and transcend social class, gender roles, and sexual morality.
[4][5] The first edition was attributed to Rachilde and a co-author credited as "F. T.", supposedly a young man named Francis Talman who appears to have written nothing else before or since.
Although not much was taken out in terms of overall word count, the effect of the changes was to soften some of the obscenity and may have represented an unsuccessful attempt at forestalling legal prosecution.
Editor Félix Brossier opened the book by asserting that Rachilde was the sole author of Monsieur Vénus, explaining that some material from an unnamed collaborator had been removed.
Raoule further flouts the rules of her social class by rejecting Raittolbe and marrying Silvert, sometimes referred to as her husband but positioned more as her wife.
Jealous and frustrated that her project to create a perfect lover has failed, Raoule provokes de Raittolbe into responding by challenging Silvert to a duel.
In the closing passage of the novel, Raoule puts the grisly mannequin in a shrine and gazes upon it nightly, dressed in mourning clothes, sometimes as a woman and sometimes as a man.
While "Venus" establishes its erotic tone, the combination of the masculine "Monsieur" with the name of the female goddess suggests the gender subversion that dominates the story.
The title also recalls the use in eighteenth-century anatomy classes of wax female dummies called anatomical Venuses, anticipating the novel's ending.
[5] It is no accident that bored and stifled Raoule de Vénérande is a member of the upper class, which represented the height of banal conformity for Decadent writers.
Beyond the act of cross-dressing, Raoule takes on traditionally masculine roles: she pursues the object of her desire and commands the obedience of her lover.
While there is little question that the book qualified as obscene under existing statutes, Brancart the publisher was already on their radar for a number of reasons, a situation that likely contributed to the speed and thoroughness of their response.
The revisions removed a description of Raoule experiencing an orgasm as she daydreamed about Silvert (Chapter 2) and abbreviated the moment of implied necrophilia.
The excised chapter describes Raoule as establishing the formula by which women could destroy men: using sexual pleasure to control them and rob them of their masculinity.
[5][10][12] It is worth noting that, contrary to some reports, that chapter was still present in the 1885 Brancart printing of the revised first edition and so was not subject to the original Belgian censorship of the novel.
The quotation is from Catulle Mendès's "Mademoiselle Zuleika", which describes a man's realization that the only way to resist a woman's natural authority through her sexual appeal was to become more feminine himself in his flirtations and his vanity.
He referred to it as a "sensual and mystical frenzy" and the appalling but exciting dream of a young virgin who suffered from the same hysteria as her main character.
Even a winking connection between Monsieur Vénus and the work of Charles Baudelaire was enough at the time to give Rachilde credibility within avant-garde circles.
Not only was he a fan, it is believed he drew inspiration from the novel for his own work, paying it tribute by naming the book that ensnares Dorian Gray Le Secret de Raoul.
[4][22] Monsieur Vénus is also credited with paving the way for other, less extreme, and ultimately more successful writers such as Colette to explore gender and the complexities of sexuality in their own work.