This book is an unequivocal celebration of Beauty--not the sentimental, middle-class idea of beauty, but the all-encompassing beauty to which the Aesthetic writers were enslaved. The prologue sets forth Gautier's cult of pure aesthetics, and the book is a fulfillment of every sublime principle delineated in the prologue.

The plot is relatively simple: Magdalene is a woman who is discontented with the traditional role of a woman, so she dresses as a man and ventures forth as "Theodore." An aesthete, D'albert, falls in love with her despite her male persona, and Magdalene in turn falls in love with his mistress Rosette. But it is much more complex than that. It is a meditation on the nature of the muse, on the subject-object relations in art, on the implications of gender politics, on the eternal Aesthetic in both life and art.