Novel: Mademoiselle de Maupin

Overview

Theophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin, published in 1835, is a lush, provocative meditation on beauty, desire, and theatrical identity. Set against the performative world of 17th- and 18th-century salons and stages, it centers on a striking young woman who assumes male dress and manners to move freely in male society and to test the nature of love. The novel pairs a flamboyant narrative with philosophical digressions that champion aestheticism and challenge conventional moral judgments.

Plot

The narrative follows a cluster of romantic entanglements sparked by the arrival of the eponymous heroine, a woman so beautiful that she unsettles established distinctions between masculine and feminine. A sensitive young poet, consumed by an idealized notion of beauty and spiritual love, becomes infatuated with the idea of an unattainable perfection. At the same time, other men are drawn to the heroine's physical presence and daringly ambiguous persona. To probe both the sincerity and the limits of their passions, she adopts male guise, inserting herself into situations where she can observe and manipulate the behavior of those around her.
Her masquerade precipitates scenes of jealousy, duels, and staged performances that expose competing models of love: an aesthetic, Platonic worship of beauty versus a blunt, bodily appetite. By moving between sexes, roles, and theatrical spaces, she compels her admirers to reveal what truly drives them. The novel's narrative arc repeatedly lingers on moments of high drama and revelation rather than settling into a conventional moral resolution, leaving the reader to weigh whether idealized love or carnal desire proves more authentic.

Characters and Relationships

The central figure is Mademoiselle de Maupin herself, whose intelligence, boldness, and androgynous presentation make her a deliberately disruptive force. The young poet who worships beauty embodies the Romantic ideal: visionary, self-reflective, and inclined to spiritualize passion. Opposed to him are more physical suitors and a social world that measures worth by appearance and bravado. Interpersonal dynamics are less about steady development than about mirrorings and contrasts; each character registers and refracts the heroine's provocations, revealing personal pretenses and the era's anxieties about gender and honor.

Themes and Style

Gautier makes beauty both subject and argument, insisting that aesthetic experience can override moral categories. The novel explores dandyism as a cultivated stance toward life, treating elegance and surface as forms of truth rather than mere artifice. Questions of identity, theatricality, and the performative nature of gender recur throughout, and the heroine's cross-dressing dramatizes the instability of roles prescribed by society. Stylistically, the prose is ornate, sensuous, and richly descriptive, often pausing for aphoristic reflections on art, love, and the body's claims.

Reception and Legacy

At the time of publication, the book shocked many readers with its erotic frankness and its refusal to affirm conventional moral lessons, while attracting admirers for its sheer stylistic bravado and its bold defense of aestheticism. It helped cement Gautier's reputation as a leading advocate of "art for art's sake" and influenced later Symbolist and Decadent writers who foregrounded beauty, sensation, and the autonomy of art. Mademoiselle de Maupin remains notable both as a daring romance and as a cultural document that probes the uneasy seams between desire, identity, and artistic theory.