Madame La Mort and Other Plays

Rachilde was the pseudonym of Marguerite Eymery Vallette (1860-1953), a woman of powerful personality who made her place at the very center of the Symbolist movement in fin-de-siecle France. Though relatively unknown in America, Rachilde had a significant influence on the course of French and Western literature and theater. She was a pioneer of antirealistic drama and the first to use the term absurd to characterize the new kind of theater that would be "a pretext for a dream." Rachilde's sexual politics and sardonic humor make her plays more interesting - and more performable - today than many of those of her more famous contemporaries. Where male Symbolists were obsessed with death, Rachilde explores the fearful thrill of sexuality. Topical, challenging, and all but lost to contemporary audiences, her extraordinary work offers the shock of relevance and freshness of discovery.