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This chapter describes the pantomime entitled Le Rêve d'Egypte (Egyptian dream), which starred Colette Willy and the mysteriously named “Yssim,” and which outraged audiences because it featured a kiss between two women. Colette's appearance in Le Rêve d'Egypte in 1907 was the first time Salome had appeared overtly as both a femme fatale and a lesbian. Unlike Maud Allan, Mata Hari, and Ida Rubinstein, Colette appropriated Salome not as her identity but as her personal accomplice, her transforming device, in searching out her own true identity as a woman with a powerful male sensibility.

This chapter takes a more critical stance towards the review to examine its cultural conservatism and reticence towards identity politics. The review’s literary tastes, largely shaped by the legacies of Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, are shown to harbour a sense of artistic exceptionalism which often precludes representations of the everyday, and therefore also limits political solidarity with those usually defended by Lignes. Despite the racial or gendered exclusions it can produce, literary elitism or conservatism is in itself not necessarily criticised, but the hostility to mass culture inculcated by some aesthetic Marxist approaches is seen to be politically unhelpful in the present moment and other approaches to cultural politics in Lignes are sought. After Alain Badiou’s Circonstances 3 caused a row over anti-Semitism and the critique of Israel, it is suggested that the strategic essentialism of Judith Butler provides a more appropriate stance compared to Badiou’s strategic universalism. Lastly, Lignes’ virtual silence on gender and sexuality issues (a stance softening in recent issues) is contrasted to the Parti Socialiste’s progressive measures on parity, PACs and gay marriage.

This chapter describes Colette Willy's relationship with Sophie-Mathilde-Adèle de Morny, or Missy, one of the Belle Epoque's notable cross-dressing lesbians; the launching of Colette's stage career; her performance in the pantomime entitled La Chair (The Flesh); and the publication of her widely acclaimed book, The Vagabond.

Highsmith published two novels in 1955, both celebrating liberation from traditional moral values. In The Talented Mr. Ripley, Highsmith deals with central subjects of the New Sensibility—madness and violence. Most importantly, the criminal, a man without fixed identity, manages not only to kill others and profit from it but to keep his ill-gotten gains. In Strangers on a Train, Highsmith digs into the seductive power of madness and how it can draw innocents into its web. The chapter also examines Highsmith’s personal obsession as captured in a pulp fiction novel, published two years earlier, The Price of Salt (published under the name Claire Morgan). Here Highsmith depicted a lesbian love affair which, contrary to common portrayals of the era, does not end with disgrace. The chapter fits these novels within the context of lesbian and sexual liberation in the period.