The Underbelly

Amid the rose gardens of her father’s farm, beautiful Marguerite Davenel is weary of her supposedly charmed life. When she encounters charismatic Fulbert, an anarchist who despises the bourgeois world that she represents, he upends the very foundations of her existence. As their complicated attraction deepens, the appearance of a woman from Fulbert’s past blurs the boundaries between good and evil, forcing Marguerite to decide where she stands. First published in 1904 by Rachilde, a fiercely independent author who explores provocative sexuality and characters, the novel is translated here into English for the first time.

The Underbelly illustrates Rachilde’s enduring relevance—a decadent tale in which the propriety of the countryside hides a dark underside.

Rachilde (1860-1953), born Marguerite Eymery, was a French novelist, journalist, and playwright who was a prominent figure of the Decadent movement. She wrote Monsieur Vénus (1884), a succès de scandale that launched her career at twenty-four. An influence in her day, she was a creative advisor at the Mercure de France, and ran a weekly literary salon for more than fifty years.

Melanie C. Hawthorne is a professor of French at Texas A&M University in the United States. She is best known for her work on Rachilde, in particular the critical biography Rachilde and French Women's Authorship: From Decadence to Modernism (Nebraska, 2001) and the MLA edition of Monsieur Vénus. Hawthorne specializes in the Decadent period and women writers. In 2013 she published The Woman Who Didn't Exist: The Curious Life of Gisèle d'Estoc, a biographical project that attempts to demystify and defend humanities research, in addition to recovering a lost figure of the Decadent period. Hawthorne's current writing projects focus on the fin-de-siècle writer Renée Vivien (Pauline Tarn, 1877-1909).

Karen Vergne was born and raised in Belfast in the United Kingdom. She graduated from Oxford University with a master's degree in Modern Languages and Literature. She now devotes herself to full-time translation and interpretation. She lives in Le Mans in France with her husband and three children.