Women in charge Gauguin as a reader of Barbey d’Aurevilly

The influence of the short story Le Bonheur dans le crime on the work of the artist Paul Gauguin becomes apparent from an autobiographical episode that is not often discussed. It is reflected in the various reuses of the headdress, worn by the heroine of Les Diaboliques and common in Gauguin’s works, which contain several characters in hoods or veils. However, headdresses and hoods reflect the moralizing pressure, both Christian and bourgeois, that oppressed female sexuality in the nineteenth century.