The point of the article is to study the sociological impact of the figure of the androgyne and its avatars in two novels from the 1830s, (Théophile Gautiers Mademoiselle de Maupin and George Sands Gabriel), whose heroes are in both cases a female character who passes or chooses to pass for a man. In these two novels, published a few years apart, through the same inter-textual and figurative device, a mystical and philosophical dimension co-exists with a sociological one, which explores first the artists relationship with the concept of Beauty in a utilitarian society, and then above all the alienation of women submitted to social illusions or to the alienations of patriarchal law.