ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns with the ways in which two female authors, George Sand and Rachilde, use language to trigger their readers' imagination in ways similar to those suggested by Nicholas Harrison and Steven Marcus. Unlike the writers discussed by Marcus, neither Sand nor Rachilde are primarily concerned with the erotic or the pornographic. Both writers, though, are interested in sharing the secret desires of their sexually active heroines with their readers and the chapter explores how these taboo experiences are first encoded in the texts and then communicated to the reader. It discusses how the taboo becomes a barrier to be overcome, as well as an impediment to be negotiated. The chapter illustrates the use of invalidism as an all-encompassing metaphor for unspeakable female ailments. It explains how unexplained female illness is frequently used in nineteenth-century literature to represent a range of less easily broachable topics.
