Chapter 9 of Joris-Karl Huysmans's (1848–1907) À rebours [Against Nature] (1884) sees the aesthete protagonist des Esseintes overwhelmed by a fit of Baudelairean spleen. Attempting to ‘cool his brain with some of the solanaceae of literature [solanées de l’art]’, he turns to the work of Charles Dickens (1812–70), ‘so charmingly adapted for convalescents and invalids’ (AR 9.177; 109). Des Esseintes turns to literature for ‘effects’, opening Dickens in the hope of changing his mood. Art is productive and its effects bodily, convalescent, ‘effets hygiéniques’ (11.201; 132). To des Esseintes's surprise, however, the novelist produces the ‘opposite effect’ to that expected, and he reacts against Dickens's characters, with their ‘all-concealing draperies [vêtues jusqu’au cou]’:

Dickens's realism is accused of romanticism, his ‘chaste lovers’ and ‘puritanical heroines’ only partially hidden by the modesty of their clothing. Desire has been marginalised, masked like the bodies in euphemisms of ‘ecclesiastical modesty’. Dickens is accused of being fearful of penetration, whether sexual or into the heart of things. Consequently, des Esseintes puts Dickens aside, and with him ‘all thoughts of straight-laced Albion [la bégueule Angleterre]’ (AR 9.177; 109). Cultures clash: French decadence is pitted against a prudish Britain, with Dickens's name metonymic not only for London but for the nation itself.

This engagement with Dickens, seemingly an incidental flourish meant to take aim at conservative British culture, is more important than might be initially suspected. It reminds us that Huysmans is writing ‘after Dickens’, and that later nineteenth-century literature is haunted by the spectre of Dickens's work. In one sense, to write ‘after Dickens’ means after realism, and in this context, it should come as no surprise that À rebours is often regarded as the moment when Huysmans, who had hitherto been associated with and identified himself with naturalism, broke with Émile Zola (1840–1902) (Baldick 1955 : 78–91; Laver 1954: 59–73; Livi 1972: 25–37).