La posición de Rachilde (1860-1953) frente al feminismo de principios del siglo xx a través de su panfleto Pourquoi je ne suis pas féministe (1928)

Resum

Rachilde, pseudonym of Marguerite Eymery, was a French writer who belonged to the decadent movement in the late nineteenth century. Mainly due to her constant exploitation of the character of the femme fatale in her literary production, the writer has occasionally been considered as a misogynist. In contraposition, Rachilde proved to French society of her time that women could also devoted their professional lives to writing. The immoral and provocative content of her work makes life itself to be considered dissociated from the traditional view of female-writer literature, which was normally linked to morality. As a consequence of this act of male appropriation, Rachilde has also been classified as a feminist or pre-feminist by critics. In this sense, the position of Rachilde in relation with the feminist movement is manifestly complex and even ambiguous. In 1928, the writer published a pamphlet entitled Pourquoi je ne suis pas féministe, where her arguments were presented against this social movement. The objective of the present project will therefore be to analyse this pamphlet in order to construct a solid knowledge about the writer’s thoughts on the social evolution of women.