Perhaps the turning point occurs on their wedding night when Jacques cries “’Raoule, you just aren’t a man! You just can’t be a man!’” (183). Throughout the novel, he waits for Raoule, seemingly enjoying his position as a kept man.

His growing feminine characteristics render him submissive to Raoule’s more domineering personality. Jacques lack of fidelity proves most shocking in the novel. Raoule’s two possible romantic partners-Raittolbe and Jacques-betray their friendship and relationship, respectively, through a relationship with one another. In such a way, Marie betrays two fidelities: that to her lover and that to her brother. Marie, furthermore, has little loyalty to her brother, as evidenced by her use of him as a vehicle to take money from Raoule, then exhort her and her aunt following the wedding. He appears to have paid her for her services. Her dalliance with Raittolbe has no expectation of fidelity. Marie Silvert is established as a prostitute in the early chapters of a novel.

Raoule forms a mesalliance, but takes no lover other than Jacques, despite Raittolbe’s urging at the beginning of the novel.

Aunt Ermengarde maintains her purity and piety, devoted to God rather than men. Amongst the five major characters-Raoule, Jacques, Raittolbe, Marie, and Aunt Ermengarde-the two de Vénérade characters are the only faithful ones. Raoule serves as the transgressive catalyst in the novel in seducing Jacques and involving Raittolbe in her affair at the same time, she remains one of few faithful characters in the novel. As expected in a novel depicting transgressive liaisons, the concept of fidelity plays a major role in Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus.

Monsieur Vénus by Rachilde