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Amy S. Wyngaard
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Rtif, Sade, and the Origins of
Pornography: Le Pornographe
as Anti-Text of La Philosophie
dans le boudoir
Amy S. Wyngaard
abstract
Nicolas-Edme Rtif de la Bretonnes 1769 Le Pornographethe
work from which the term pornography is derivedis not in
itself pornographic, and scholars working on the history of
pornography emphasize the works lack of substantive links to
the modern pornographic genre. In this article, I will elucidate
the role that Le Pornographe played in the development of
pornographyand in particular in Sades literary production
by proposing a reading of Sades La Philosophie dans le boudoir
(1795) as a parody and perversion of Rtif s text. Sades dramatic
dialogue, which presents a perverted family tale, subverts the
sentimental model that Rtif s text explicitly elaborates. The
Revolutionary pamphlet that it frames, which presents plans to
establish houses of prostitution for men and women, appropriates
and distorts elements of the reform treatise in Le Pornographe,
as Rtif himself perceived. By reading the two texts in concert,
I show not only how Sade may have been less revolutionary
than reactionary in his writing, but also how Rtif s work can be
inserted into the history of pornography as a pivotal text.
author
Amy S. Wyngaard is associate professor of French and Francophone
Studies at Syracuse University. Her book Bad Books: Rtif de la
Bretonne, Sexuality, and Pornography is forthcoming from University
of Delaware Press.
regulate prostitution put forth in France by Jol Le Tac in 1979 was inspired
by Rtif s text; Dulac includes Le Tacs proposal in his edition. See Rtif de la
Bretonne, Le Pornographe, ed. Sbastien Dulac (Monaco: G. Rondeau, 1994),
10, 113. Scholars working on the history of pornography routinely absent the
work from the genres development by emphasizing its non-pornographic con
tent despite its originating title. See, for example, Darnton, 86; Joan DeJean,
The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 136n30; Goulemot, Ces Livres,
14; and Hunt, Introduction, 13.
5Henri Bachelins edition, available in many university libraries and often cited
by critics, excises Rtif s preface and frame narrative and publishes only the
treatise, along with DAlzans discussion of compensation and part of note A
on the tat actuel de la prostitution. See Rtif de la Bretonne, Le Pornographe,
in Luvre de Restif de la Bretonne, ed. Henri Bachelin, 9 vols. (Paris: ditions
du Trianon, 193032), 3:946. B. de Villeneuves edition also excises the frame
narrative, while it includes notes AN and the text of Code de Cythre, ou lit de
justice dAmour in an appendix. See Rtif de la Bretonne, Le Pornographe, in
Luvre de Restif de la Bretonne, ed. B. de Villeneuve (Paris: Bibliothque des
curieux, 1911).
6James A. Steintrager, What Happened to the Porn in Pornography: Rtif,
Regulating Prostitution, and the History of Dirty Books, Symposium 60 (Fall
2006): 190. DOI: 10.3200/SYMP.60.3.189-204
7Steintrager, 2001.
his Ide sur les romans and in his personal correspondence, was
likely his ultimate (and not surprisingly unavowed) target, for Rtif
represented all that Sade disdained in literature. Unlike Henry
Fielding and Samuel Richardson, whom Sade admired, Rtif was
a popular, prolific author whose convoluted style and sentimental,
moralistic plots were highly predictable, with virtue always tri
umphing over viceanathema to an author whose purpose in
writing Justine, ou les malheurs de la vertu (1791) was to offrir
partout le vice triomphant et la vertu victime de ses sacrifices.16
Rtif, for his part, returned Sades enmity in full, objecting to the
cruelty and violence manifested in his personal life and in his
textsthereby adding plenty of fuel to Sades fire.17
Les Liaisons dangereuses, Laclos states: Loin de conseiller cette lecture la
jeunesse, il me parat trs important dloigner delle toutes celles de ce genre.
Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses, ed. Ren Pomeau (Paris: Flammarion,
1996), 75. See also Goulemot, Beau marquis parlez-nous damour, in Sade,
crire la crise, ed. Michel Camus and Philippe Roger (Paris: Belfond, 1983),
11920. For discussions of Sade and Du contrat social, see Scott Carpenter,
Sade and the Problem of Closure: Keeping Philosophy in the Bedroom,
Neophilologus 75, no. 4 (1991): 526. <http://www.springerlink.com/content/
n23k4qj1vp368456/> Frappier-Mazur (12425) and Marcel Hnaff discuss
Sades overturning of Rousseau more generally in his oeuvre, while Philippe
Roger compares and contrasts La Philosophie dans le boudoir and Les Liaisons
dangereuses. Hnaff, Sade: The Invention of the Libertine Body, trans. Xavier
Callahan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 99100, 127.
Roger, Sade: La Philosophie dans le pressoir (Paris: Grasset, 1976), 6787.
See also Depruns excellent notes to La Philosophie dans le boudoir in the
Pliade edition of Sades works, which document the authors borrowings and
manipulations of material from other writers.
16Sade, Justine, ou les malheurs de la vertu, in uvres du marquis de Sade, ed.
Delon, 2:129. In his Ide sur les romans, composed in the 1780s and published
with Les Crimes de lamour in 1800, Sade writes: R... inonde le public, il lui
faut une presse au chevet de son lit; heureusement que celle-l toute seule
gmira de ses terribles productions; un style bas et rampant, des aventures
dgotantes, toujours puises dans la plus mauvaise compagnie; nul autre
mrite enfin, que celui dune prolixit ... dont seul les marchands de poivres le
remercieront. Sade, Ide sur les romans (1800; Paris: Palimugre, 1946), 39. He
continues: On na jamais le droit de mal dire, quand on peut dire tout ce quon
veut; si tu ncris comme R... que ce que tout le monde sait, dusses-tu, comme
lui nous donner quatre volumes par mois, ce nest pas la peine de prendre la
plume; personne ne te contraint au mtier que tu fais; mais si tu lentreprends,
fais-le bien (46). See also Sade, Ide sur les romans, 3336, 48; and Maurice
Heine, Le Marquis de Sade, ed. Gilbert Lly (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), 28690.
17Rtif attacked Sade in his Nuits de Paris (178894), where he stages an orgy
that recalls the affaire de Marseille and a scene of human vivisection that
evokes the affaire dArcueil (Testud, Rtif, 1089). Rtif calls Sade various
into the sentimental model as she only takes on clients she desires
and has the right to refuse a client after discreetly examining him.
In this way, DAlzan explains, a general rule of human nature is
respected that links physical pleasure and love: La distinction
du physique et du moral nexista jamais dans lhomme qui pense:
pour lui, aimer cest jouir et jouir cest aimer (126). The union of
physical pleasure and romantic love, DAlzan argues, is the source
of human happiness, providing a consolation from misery and the
certainty of death (80, 18085).
However contradictorily, the reform treatise aims to advance
the same moralistic messages as the sentimental narrative about
the importance of human relationships and the sanctity of the
family. The parthnion serves a dual function, transforming
the prostitute and the brothelin part by insisting on love and
intimacyinto positive, productive elements in society while
protecting the traditional family unit. If prostitution is a neces
sary evil, it can also be recuperated into a socially meaningful
activity: the brothel inhabitants can be turned into a family, and
the experience of the prostitute and client can be humanized.29
Further, regulating prostitution would allow men to satisfy their
carnal passions without subjecting their wives and families to the
scourges of disease, infidelity, and divorce, as well as the abuse
and disrespect that could be transferred to wives by husbands
who treat prostitutes with brutality. Rtif s brothel seeks to main
tainand to replicate to the extent possiblethe idealized family
life of the extended Des Tianges household. His regulation of
prostitution boils down to a legislation of the (bourgeois) family,
with its attendant values of morality, paternal authority, and
feminine virtue.
Whereas Rtif s reform treatise and frame narrative are closely
linked through narrative devices as well as themes, the integration
of Sades pamphlet, Franais, encore un effort si vous voulez tre
29Mark Poster advances similar arguments, while his focus on the reform
treatise leads him to emphasize the utilitarian rather than the sentimental
aspects of Rtif s vision: [Rtif s] purpose was to transform prostitutes from
downtrodden, diseased women on the fringes of society, into members of a
respected profession with a useful social function to perform ... Prostitutes
were looked upon as objects; they were automatized. Although degraded
by fate and poverty, they were human beings and deserved respect. Poster,
The Utopian Thought of Restif de la Bretonne (New York: New York University
Press, 1971), 36. See also Cheek, 11112; and Steintrager, 19697.
protect the family and society, Sade proposes that such institutions
would promote peace and stability: [lhomme] sortira satisfait et
sans aucun dsir de troubler un gouvernement qui lui assure aussi
complaisamment tous les moyens de sa concupiscence (219).
While republican laws would assure that, freed from the ties of
(non-existent) marriage and notions of modesty, womenlike
mencan pursue la jouissance de tous les sexes et de toutes les
parties de leur corps, Sade maintains that his brothels, not unlike
Rtif s, would ultimately contribute to the growth and strength of
a national, republican family, o tous ceux qui naissent sont tous
des enfants de la patrie (225). Reversing the moral economy that
punishes or vilifies loose women as bad wives and mothers, in
Sades republic the more they frequent the brothels, the more they
are esteemed (226).
In the name of le bonheur de tous and the equal rights that
all men have to all women, all women would be obligated by law
to prostitute themselves at the brothels (222). A man can order a
woman he desires to go to a brothel, where matronssimilar to
Rtif s governessesensure that the woman is delivered to him
pour satisfaire, avec autant dhumilit que de soumission, tous les
caprices quil lui plaira de se passer avec elle, de quelque bizarrerie
ou de quelque irrgularit quils puissent tre, parce quil nen est
aucun qui ne soit avou dans la nature, qui ne soit avou par elle
(223). Sade annihilates any notion of choice or desire on the part
of the woman, underlining her status as a sexual object. Whereas
Rtif asserts the importance of looking after prostitutes health and
well-being for the good of both the prostitutes and society, Sade
proposes that any concerns about age or about physically hurting
or damaging a girl who is too young for sex are subsumed to a
mans right to pleasure: Cette considration est sans aucune valeur;
ds que vous maccordez le droit de proprit sur la jouissance, ce
droit est indpendant des effets produits par la jouissance; de ce
moment il devient gal que cette jouissance soit avantageuse ou
nuisible lobjet qui doit sy soumettre (223); Ds que les gards
quon aurait pour cette considration dtruiraient ou affaibliraient
la jouissance de celui qui la dsire, et qui a le droit de se lapproprier,
cette considration dge devient nulle (22324). The cruelty
described here, which Sade asserts is redressed by womens equal
right to pursue pleasure in the brothels erected specifically for