Une Femme mapparut: Lesbian Desire and French Identity
Sarah Parker focuses on the love affair between the Decadent poets Olive Custance and Ren\xe9e Vivien and the American writer Natalie Barney, arguing that affecting \u2018Frenchness\u2019 and writing in French allowed them to articulate their desire for one another. This paper focuses on the literary productions inspired by the love affair between the Decadent poets Olive Custance, Ren\xe9e Vivien (n\xe9e Pauline Tarn), and the American writer Natalie Barney. It draws primarily on Vivien\u2019s roman \xe0 clef 'Une Femme m\u2019apparut' (A Woman Appeared to Me, 1904) along with Custance and Barney\u2019s poetry. In analysing these texts, it is concerned primarily with the question: how does Vivien, Barney and Custance\u2019s literary cosmopolitanism (in this case, their writing in \u2013 or affection of \u2013 \u2018Frenchness\u2019) reflect and interact with their expressions of lesbian desire? It also considers to what extent adopting a different language and national identity enabled these women to express a lesbian desire and to envision the possibility of a homoerotic cosmopolitan female community.