Rétif, Sade, and the Origins of

Pornography: Le Pornographe
as Anti-Text of La Philosophie
dans le boudoir
Amy S. Wyngaard

abstract
Nicolas-Edme Rétif de la Bretonne’s 1769 Le Pornographe—the
work from which the term pornography is derived—is not in
itself pornographic, and scholars working on the history of
por­nography emphasize the work’s 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
pornography—and in particular in Sade’s literary production—
by proposing a reading of Sade’s La Philosophie dans le boudoir
(1795) as a parody and perversion of Rétif ’s text. Sade’s dramatic
dialogue, which presents a perverted family tale, subverts the
sentimental model that Rétif ’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 Rétif 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 Rétif ’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: Rétif de la
Bretonne, Sexuality, and Pornography” is forthcoming from University
of Delaware Press.

Eighteenth-Century Fiction 25, no. 2 (Winter 2012–13)

ECF ISSN 0840-6286 | E-ISSN 1911-0243 | DOI: 10.3138/ecf.25.2.383
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 384 amy s. wyngaard

For modern readers, it is perhaps one of the greatest ironies

of eighteenth-century French literary history that Nicolas-Edme
Rétif de la Bretonne’s Le Pornographe—the work from which the
term “pornography” is derived—is not in itself pornographic.
Much like other “bad books” of the time,1 however, this text on
the reform of prostitution (with its title derived from the Greek
pornê, prostitute, and graphein, to write) was subject to cen­
sor­ship and condemned by critics as immoral, libertine, and
“disgusting” when it was first published in 1769.2 Despite creat­
ing an initial scandal and piquing public interest enough that the
author published an expanded edition in 1775 (dated 1770) and
a third edition in 1776 (not to mention the counterfeit editions
1 As Lynn Hunt has established, the category known as pornography, along with
the word itself, did not exist before the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Hunt, “Introduction: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800,” in
The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–
1800, ed. Lynn Hunt (New York: Zone Books, 1993), 13–14. Throughout the
eighteenth century, books about sex were classified with other works offensive
to the state, religion, and morality under the general rubrics of “mauvais livres,”
“livres interdits,” or “livres philosophiques.” For more on these categories, see
Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New
York: Norton, 1995), 87–88; Jean-Marie Goulemot, Ces livres qu’on ne lit que
d’une main: Lecture et lecteurs des livres pornographiques au xviiie siècle (Aix-
en-Provence: ALINEA, 1991), 18–19; and Hunt, “Introduction,” 16–20.
2 Rétif states that his first censor, Chenu, “me [le] rendit en disant que c’était
légaliser un état immoral.” Rétif de la Bretonne, Monsieur Nicolas, ou le cœur
humain dévoilé, ed. Pierre Testud, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 2:176.
Rétif undertook a three-month rewrite, but the censor Philippe de Prétot also
refused the book. With the help of the bookseller Valade, Rétif obtained a
new censor named Marchand, who, the author says, gave Sartine, lieutenant
general of police and director of the Librairie, a positive account of the con­
tents and ultimately approved the work (Monsieur Nicolas, 2:199). Rétif was
disappointed in critics’ reception of his text. Denis Diderot, for example, wrote:
“Il est incroyable qu’un homme qui a quelque style, des idées, de l’érudition,
la connaissance des langues et des mœurs anciennes, passe son temps à nous
débiter des rêveries sur un sujet aussi dégoutant [...] C’est un excellent livre de
garde-robe.” Cited in Daniel Baruch, introduction to Œuvres érotiques de Restif
de la Bretonne, ed. Baruch (Paris: Fayard, 1985), 19. In his Mémoires secrets
dated 19 July 1769, Louis Petit de Bachaumont wrote: “Ce livre, qui n’est ni d’un
débauché, ni d’un jeune homme, ni d’un fol, ni d’un sot, ni d’un cynique, prouve
à quel point d’égarement le prétendu esprit philosophique nous a conduits;
lorsqu’on voit un auteur grave, érudit, sage, honnête et profond, traiter une
matière sur laquelle il aurait eu honte dans un autre temps de porter même ses
regards: pour prévenir les suites du libertinage, en donner un traité complet,
et vouloir réduire en principes d’administration l’école du vice et d’infamie?”
Cited in Annie Le Brun, preface to Le Pornographe, in Œuvres érotiques de
Restif de la Bretonne, ed. Baruch, 27.

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rétif, sade, and the origins of p orno graphy

that circulated in the provinces), after the Revolutionary period

the work was largely forgotten.3 If nineteenth- and twentieth-
century medical doctors and social reformers sometimes looked
to Le Pornographe for inspiration, and contemporary scholars
periodically remind us of the importance of its title, it seems
that since Rétif ’s time little attention has been paid to the work’s
actual contents.4 This oversight is reinforced by the existence
3 Scholars disagree about the number and status of the various authorized
versions of the work: Le Pornographe, ou idées d’un honnête homme sur un
projet de règlement pour les prostituées (London and The Hague, 1769); Le
Pornographe, ou idées d’un honnête homme sur un projet de règlement pour les
prostituées (London and The Hague, 1770 [1775]); and Le Pornographe, ou idées
d’un honnête homme sur un projet de règlement pour les prostituées (London
and The Hague, 1776). Rétif appears to have considered the second edition of
1775 (dated 1770) the definitive edition, and the 1776 version a reprinting. The
second edition that I consulted at Harvard University is consistent with Rétif ’s
description, containing two appended texts, Représentations à Mylord Maire de
la ville et cité de Londres, sur les filles entretenues de France, vulgairement dites
courtisanes, ou demoiselles du bon-ton, attributed to Mathieu-François Pidansat
de Mairobert, and Jean-Pierre Moët’s Code de Cythère, ou lit de justice d’Amour
(181–252 and 389–476) and notes O (on luxury); P (on abuses of priests); and
Q (on Ninon de Lenclos; Pierre Testud erroneously states that note Q was
added to the third edition). The second edition also contains an introductory
Avertissement des libraries and, at the end of the work, a summary of critics’
comments on Le Pornographe and La Mimographe and Rétif ’s responses, as
well as details of his plans for Les Gynographes. The 1776 edition that I consulted
at Cornell University is identical to the second edition, with the addition of
a “supplément au Pornographe et suite de la note Q” (477–92) consisting of
an alphabetical list that adds information to the text; gives the names and
addresses of various Parisian madams; and discusses at length Guilbert de
Préval, the doctor who, Rétif states, found a way to prevent and cure syphilis
but was persecuted for it. See Monsieur Nicolas, 1:929n4, 2:199n6, 2:903. On the
counterfeit editions of Le Pornographe (at least three), see Rétif de la Bretonne,
Mes ouvrages, in Monsieur Nicolas, ed. Testud, 2:902; and James Rives Childs,
Restif de la Bretonne. Témoignages et jugements (Paris: Briffaut, 1949), 212–14.
4 Although Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, in his 1836 De la prostitution dans la
ville de Paris considérée sous le rapport de l’hygiène publique, de la morale et
de l’administration, dismisses Le Pornographe along with other texts (“je n’y ai
trouvé que des erreurs et des idées fausses, à l’exception toutefois de quelques
notions historiques dont j’ai su profiter”), Alain Corbin notes Rétif ’s influence
on Parent-Duchâtelet’s classification of prostitutes. See Parent-Duchâtelet, La
Prostitution à Paris au xixe siècle, ed. Alain Corbin (Paris: Seuil, 1981), 61, 61n2.
In the early twentieth century, medical doctors such as Jean Avalon and R.-F.
Picardeau signalled the value of Rétif ’s ideas for reforming prostitution and
stopping the spread of venereal disease. See Kathryn Norberg, “From Courtesan
to Prostitute: Mercenary Sex and Venereal Disease, 1730–1802,” in The Secret
Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century France and Britain, ed. Linda
E. Merians (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 39–40. Sébastien
Dulac, editor of a 1994 edition of Le Pornographe, suggests that legislation to

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of numerous incomplete modern editions, two of which go so

far as to excise the sentimental epistolary narrative entirely and
reproduce only the reform treatise that it frames.5
To be sure, Rétif is known for the poor quality of his writing
as well as for his verbosity; these editors may well have believed
that they were doing the reader a service by abridging a lengthy
tome and reprinting what they saw as the essence of the work.
Such practices, however, have contributed to a number of mis­un­
der­standings about the text—including its lack of substantive links
to the modern pornographic genre. In 2006, James A. Stein­trager
pro­posed a rethinking of Le Pornographe within the history of
pornog­raphy, stating that “Rétif ’s simul­taneous insis­tence on
the need for the bureaucratization of prosti­tution and on the
para­mount value of intimacy was precisely what the radicals of
later eighteenth-century libertine writing such as Sade active­
ly, if largely unconsciously, sought to negate.”6 He argues that
“modern pornog­raphy came to be ... by defining itself against”
Rétif ’s text; by get­ting rid of the prostitute and shifting the focus
away from social issues and political allegory, pornog­raphy took
on its modern guise as “dirty books” focused on bodies and
pleasures.7 While I agree fully with Steintrager’s arguments about

regulate prostitution put forth in France by Joël Le Tac in 1979 was inspired
by Rétif ’s text; Dulac includes Le Tac’s proposal in his edition. See Rétif de la
Bretonne, Le Pornographe, ed. Sébastien Dulac (Monaco: G. Rondeau, 1994),
10, 113. Scholars working on the history of pornography routinely absent the
work from the genre’s 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.
5 Henri Bachelin’s edition, available in many university libraries and often cited
by critics, excises Rétif ’s preface and frame narrative and publishes only the
treatise, along with D’Alzan’s discussion of compensation and part of note A
on the “état actuel de la prostitution.” See Rétif de la Bretonne, Le Pornographe,
in L’Œuvre de Restif de la Bretonne, ed. Henri Bachelin, 9 vols. (Paris: Éditions
du Trianon, 1930–32), 3:9–46. B. de Villeneuve’s edition also excises the frame
nar­rative, while it includes notes A–N and the text of Code de Cythère, ou lit de
justice d’Amour in an appendix. See Rétif de la Bretonne, Le Pornographe, in
L’Œuvre de Restif de la Bretonne, ed. B. de Villeneuve (Paris: Bibliothèque des
curieux, 1911).
6 James A. Steintrager, “What Happened to the Porn in Pornography: Rétif,
Regulating Prostitution, and the History of Dirty Books,” Symposium 60 (Fall
2006): 190. DOI: 10.3200/SYMP.60.3.189-204
7 Steintrager, 200–1.

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rétif, sade, and the origins of p orno graphy

the importance of Le Pornographe in the gene­alogy of pornog­­

raphy, I believe that the literary relationship between Rétif ’s text
and later por­no­graphic works—specifically Sade’s La Philosophie
dans le boudoir (1795)—is traceable and con­crete. In this article,
I will examine the role that Le Porno­graphe played in pornog­
raphy’s develop­ment, in par­ticular in Sade’s literary pro­duc­tion, by
proposing a reading of La Philosophie dans le boudoir as a parody
and per­version of Rétif ’s text.
As a number of scholars have established, pornography in a
modern sense developed at the end of the eighteenth and the
begin­ning of the nineteenth centuries. Lynn Hunt and Walter
Kendrick trace the advent of the regulatory category of pornog­
raphy to increased fears about the accessibility of licentious
works—traditionally available exclusively to a male elite—to the
lower classes and women.8 In addition, Hunt emphasizes the trans­
formation in content that occurred during this time: whereas early
modern pornography was linked to social and religious critique,
modern pornography focused almost exclusively on pleasure.
Sade’s works—La Philosophie dans le boudoir in particular—were
central to this transition. Paradoxically, al­though his texts were
socially and politically subversive, they paved the way for the devel­
op­ment of the modern, apolitical genre by attack­ing every aspect
of conventional morality; according to Hunt, pornog­raphy thus
became identified with a general assault on morality rather than
on specific criticisms of Ancien Régime sys­tems, and “increasingly
needed no other justification.” After 1799, political pornography
was virtually nonexistent, having been replaced by novels that
sub­sumed explicit sexual scenes to sen­­­ti­­mental narra­tive and that
developed into a distinct genre associated with the underside of
bourgeois and domestic life.9
Le Pornographe played a key role in pornography’s evolution
not only by giving name to the modern genre, but also by serving
as a Sadean anti-text. Rétif ’s work was in Sade’s library at the
time of Sade’s death in 1814 and, I will argue, was likely one of
the principal sources from which he borrowed, rewrote, and
8 See Hunt, “Introduction,” 12–13, 36, 44–45; and Walter Kendrick, The Secret
Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture (New York: Viking, 1987), 26–31,
48–50, 57–58.
9 See Hunt, “Pornography and the French Revolution,” in The Invention of
Pornography, 302–5, 330–32, 338–39.

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distorted material in composing La Philosophie dans le boudoir.10

Rétif himself noted a connection between his work and Sade’s,
complaining bitterly about Sade’s twisted appropriation of his
text: “Le monstre auteur propose, à l’imitation du Pornographe,
l’établissement d’un lieu de débauche. J’avais travaillé pour arrêter
la dégradation de la Nature; le but de l’infâme disséqueur à vif, en
parodiant un ouvrage de ma jeunesse, a été d’outrer à l’excès cette
odieuse, cette infernale dégradation!”11 In turn, Rétif produced
his own parody in the pornographic L’Anti-Justine (1798), which
he presented as a voluptuous antidote to Sade’s cruelty.12 Rétif ’s
claim cannot be dismissed as mere vanity since Le Pornographe,
the most well-known treatise on prostitution circulating in
France at the time, spawned numerous responses and imitations,
including that of Sade.13
10 On the contents of Sade’s library, see Œuvres complètes du marquis de Sade,
ed. Gilbert Lély, 16 vols. (Paris: Au Cercle du Livre Précieux, 1966–67), 2:590;
and David Coward, “Rétif critique de Sade,” Études rétiviennes 10 (1989): 76.
11 Rétif de la Bretonne, Juvénales, in Monsieur Nicolas, ou le cœur humain dévoilé,
ed. Testud, 2:1032–33. Rétif refers to Sade’s La Théorie du libertinage in his
1796 comment; as Testud explains, the title refers to a trilogy, the first volume
of which is La Philosophie dans le boudoir (Monsieur Nicolas, 2:1035n1).
Rétif ’s account of Sade’s parody, which evokes Sade’s description of houses of
prostitution with offices selling tickets that allow clients to perform various
tortures, ostensibly refers in detail to the second volume—Les Conversations
du château de Charmelle—which has been lost. See Monsieur Nicolas, 2:451n8;
and Pierre Testud, “Rétif et Sade,” Revue des Sciences Humaines 83, no. 212
(1988): 117–18. A handful of scholars have reprinted Rétif ’s comments: see
Coward, 76–77; Michel Delon, introduction to Dialogue entre un prêtre et un
moribond, Les Cent vingt journées de Sodome, ou l’école du libertinage, and
Aline et Valcour, ou le roman philosophique, in Œuvres du marquis de Sade, ed.
Delon, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1990–98), 1:xxvii–xxviii; and La Philosophie
dans le boudoir, ed. Jean Deprun, in Œuvres du marquis de Sade, ed. Delon,
3:1279. In addition, Pamela Cheek, Hunt, and Steintrager suggest that Sade’s
discussion of prostitution in the Revolutionary pamphlet was a response
to Rétif. See Pamela Cheek, Sexual Antipodes: Enlightenment Globalization
and the Placing of Sex (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 112–13;
Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992), 137; and Steintrager, 199. To my knowledge, no one
has analyzed fully the textual links between Rétif ’s and Sade’s works.
12 Rétif de la Bretonne, L’Anti-Justine, ou les délices de l’amour, in Œuvres érotiques
de Restif de la Bretonne, ed. Baruch, 394.
13 Four treatises on prostitution were published in eighteenth-century France
before Rétif ’s text: Bernard Mandeville, A Modest Defence of Publick Stews
(1724), translated into French as Vénus la populaire, ou apologie des maisons
de joie (1727); Jean-Pierre Moët, Code de Cythère, ou lit de justice d’Amour
(generally thought to have been published in 1746), which Rétif appends to

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rétif, sade, and the origins of p orno graphy

As critics such as Jean Deprun, Lucienne Frappier-Mazur, and

Julie Candler Hayes document, Sade was a serial “emprunteur
abusif ” or practitioner of “literary incest” and “literary parricide,”
who, throughout his corpus, appropriates, radical­izes, and subverts
passages taken from other authors.14 Scholars note the presence
of several anti-texts in La Philosophie dans le boudoir—including
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761), Émile,
ou de l’éducation (1762), and Du contrat social (1762), and Pierre-
Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782)—
although, for reasons already mentioned, Le Pornographe is nota­
bly absent from such lists.15 But Rétif, whom Sade excoriated in

the 1775 edition (dated 1770) of Le Pornographe; Denis Laurian Turmeau de la

Morandière, Représentations à Monsieur le lieutenant général de police de Paris
sur les courtisanes à la mode et les demoiselles du bon ton (1760); and Henri
de Goyon de la Plombanie, L’Homme en société, ou nouvelles vues politiques
et économiques pour porter la population au plus haut degré en France (1763).
Critics such as Erica-Marie Benabou and Cheek emphasize the influence that
Rétif ’s treatise had on subsequent works on prostitution, among them the
anonymous Code, ou nouveau règlement sur les lieux de prostitution dans la
ville de Paris (1775); Jourdan Lecointe, La Santé de Mars, ou l’art de conserver
la santé aux gens de guerre (1790); and the unsigned Les Demoiselles Chit-Chit
du Palais-Royal (thought to have been published in 1793). See Benabou, La
Prostitution et la police des mœurs au xviiie siècle (Paris: Perrin, 1987), 494–99;
and Cheek, 111. See also Steintrager, 191–92, 197–98.
Jean Deprun, “Quand Sade Récrit Fréret, Voltaire et d’Holbach,” in Roman
14 
et Lumières au xviiie siècle (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1970), 333. Julie Candler
Hayes argues that the “intra-literary relationships” visible in Sade’s theatre—
based on techniques of distortion, displacement, and denial—replicate the
con­fused and perverted (family) relationships played out in his works. Hayes,
Identity and Ideology: Diderot, Sade, and the Serious Genre (Philadelphia:
John Benjamins, 1991), 122, 105–40. Lucienne Frappier-Mazur notes two
parodic techniques in Sade’s work, the first linked to parody in a strict sense
(borrowings, parodic passages) and the second associated more generally
with subversive discourse, that is, his use of parodic structures related to the
motif of the orgy, such as circu­larity, specularity, transgression, inversion, and
heterogeneity. She mentions Le Pornographe as a Sadean anti-model without
going into detail, seem­ingly referring to the reform treatise exclusively in
citing the work’s “esprit bourgeois,” “sa morale du travail, son utilitarisme,
son paternalisme, son civisme, son égalitarisme et son souci populationniste.”
Frappier-Mazur, Sade et l’écriture de l’orgie: Pouvoir et parodie dans “L’Histoire
de Juliette” (Paris: Nathan, 1991), 6, 126.
15 
The phrase “la mère en prescrira la lecture à sa fille” that appears on Sade’s title
page evokes statements from the prefaces of both Rousseau’s Julie and Laclos’s
Les Liaisons dangereuses. In the preface to Julie, Rousseau famously writes:
“Jamais fille chaste n’a lu de romans.” Rousseau, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse,
ed. Michel Launay (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1967), 4. In his preface to

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his Idée sur les romans and in his personal correspondence, was
likely his ultimate (and not surprisingly unavowed) target, for Rétif
represented all that Sade disdained in literature. Unlike Henry
Fielding and Samuel Richardson, whom Sade admired, Rétif was
a popular, prolific author whose convoluted style and sentimental,
moralistic plots were highly predictable, with virtue always tri­
umphing over vice—anathema 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
Rétif, for his part, returned Sade’s enmity in full, objecting to the
cruelty and violence manifested in his personal life and in his
texts—thereby adding plenty of fuel to Sade’s fire.17
Les Liaisons dangereuses, Laclos states: “Loin de conseiller cette lecture à la
jeunesse, il me paraît très important d’éloigner d’elle toutes celles de ce genre.”
Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses, ed. René Pomeau (Paris: Flammarion,
1996), 75. See also Goulemot, “Beau marquis parlez-nous d’amour,” in Sade,
écrire la crise, ed. Michel Camus and Philippe Roger (Paris: Belfond, 1983),
119–20. 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 (124–25) and Marcel Hénaff discuss
Sade’s overturning of Rousseau more generally in his oeuvre, while Philippe
Roger compares and contrasts La Philosophie dans le boudoir and Les Liaisons
dangereuses. Hénaff, Sade: The Invention of the Libertine Body, trans. Xavier
Callahan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 99–100, 127.
Roger, Sade: La Philosophie dans le pressoir (Paris: Grasset, 1976), 67–87.
See also Deprun’s excellent notes to La Philosophie dans le boudoir in the
Pléiade edition of Sade’s works, which document the author’s borrowings and
manipulations of material from other writers.
16 Sade, Justine, ou les malheurs de la vertu, in Œuvres du marquis de Sade, ed.
Delon, 2:129. In his Idée sur les romans, composed in the 1780s and published
with Les Crimes de l’amour in 1800, Sade writes: “R... inonde le public, il lui
faut une presse au chevet de son lit; heureusement que celle-là toute seule
gémira de ses terribles productions; un style bas et rampant, des aventures
dégoûtantes, toujours puisées dans la plus mauvaise compagnie; nul autre
mérite enfin, que celui d’une prolixité ... dont seul les marchands de poivres le
remercieront.” Sade, Idée sur les romans (1800; Paris: Palimugre, 1946), 39. He
continues: “On n’a jamais le droit de mal dire, quand on peut dire tout ce qu’on
veut; si tu n’écris comme R... que ce que tout le monde sait, dusses-tu, comme
lui nous donner quatre volumes par mois, ce n’est pas la peine de prendre la
plume; personne ne te contraint au métier que tu fais; mais si tu l’entreprends,
fais-le bien” (46). See also Sade, Idée sur les romans, 33–36, 48; and Maurice
Heine, Le Marquis de Sade, ed. Gilbert Lély (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), 286–90.
Rétif attacked Sade in his Nuits de Paris (1788–94), where he stages an orgy
17 
that recalls the affaire de Marseille and a scene of human vivisection that
evokes the affaire d’Arcueil (Testud, “Rétif,” 108–9). Rétif calls Sade various

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rétif, sade, and the origins of p orno graphy

In both its structure and its content, La Philosophie dans le

boudoir can be seen as an act of writing against Rétif. The text’s
dramatic dialogue, which presents a perverted family tale, subverts
the sentimental model that Rétif ’s text explicitly elaborates. The
Revolutionary pamphlet inserted into the dialogue, presenting
plans to establish houses of prostitution for men and women,
appro­priates and distorts elements of the reform treatise in Le
Pornographe. I will read the two texts in concert, showing not only
how Sade may have been less revolutionary than reactionary in his
writing, but also how Rétif ’s work can be inserted into the history
of pornography as a pivotal text: one that, if dismantled by Sade
at the end of the eighteenth century, was recuperated by narrative
models associated with the emergence of modern pornography at
the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The Frame Narrative
Following on the heels of the publication of Rétif ’s first novels,
which feature letters posing as translations from the English
in the style of Mme Riccoboni, Le Pornographe combines the
sen­­ti­mental, epistolary genre—at the height of its popularity
follow­ing the publication of Rousseau’s Julie—with the reformist
mania taking root in mid-century France.18 The reform project is
embedded in the epistolary narrative: D’Alzan, a libertine on the
path to salvation, includes in his letters to his friend Des Tianges
the project for the reform of prostitution, which he sees as the

names, including “égoïste vicieux,” “exécrable auteur,” “scélérat,” and “monstre”

(Coward, 74–75). Further, in Monsieur Nicolas, the revolutionary Danton is
portrayed reading the sadistic passages of Sade’s Justine before committing his
own acts of cruelty (1:1044). For discussions of the two authors, see Maurice
Blanchot, Sade et Restif de la Bretonne (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 1986);
Delon, introduction to Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribond, xxviii–xxix,
lviin2; Barry Ivker, “On the Darker Side of the Enlightenment: A Comparison
of the Literary Techniques of Sade and Restif,” Studies on Voltaire and the
Eighteenth Century 79 (1971): 199–218; Gilbert Lély, “Le Marquis de Sade et
Rétif de la Bretonne,” Mercure de France 1130 (October 1957): 364–66; Sade,
Œuvres complètes du marquis de Sade, ed. Lély, 2:483–87; and John Phillips,
“Critique littéraire et intertextualité: Le Cas de Sade et de Rétif de la Bretonne,”
in Critique, critiques au 18e siècle, ed. Malcolm Cook and Marie-Emanuelle
Plagnol-Diéval (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 269–80.
18 Le Pornographe inaugurates Rétif ’s series of reforms entitled Les Idées
singulières: subsquent volumes include La Mimographe on theatre (1770);
Les Gynographes on women (1777); L’Andrographe on men (1782); Le
Thesmographe on laws (1790); and Le Glossographe on language (unfinished).

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source of all societal ills. D’Alzan has a double in the Englishman

Lewis Moore introduced in the work’s preface, similarly a repentant
libertine who, after wallowing in immorality in France for five
years, returned to his native country to pen a reform project that
supposedly inspired Le Pornographe.19
The epistolary narrative provides both a cover story and a coun­
terpoint for the discussion of prostitution. D’Alzan, repenting a life
of debauchery and its “suites fâcheuses” (ostensibly syphilis), falls
under the tutelage of Mme des Tianges (Adélaïde), the virtuous
wife of his newlywed friend M. des Tianges, who has been away
for three months on business in Poitiers.20 Her attempts to lead
her “student” from a life of vice to virtue centre on a plan to unite
him and her sister, Ursule de Roselle, in marriage. As she puts it to
her husband: “Il ne faudrait plus qu’un amour honnête, légitime,
pour achever de l’affermir dans le bien” (55). D’Alzan, for his part,
agrees that love and marriage are the solution to his woes, telling
M. des Tianges: “Je suis enfin convaincu qu’il y a des femmes
dignes d’être adorées [...] Ton bonheur a excité mes désirs” (58).
Mme des Tianges shepherds the couple through the awkward­ness,
uncertainty, and excitement of first love, advising the young Ursule
to be cautious and telling the worldly D’Alzan to be sure of his
intentions. As it turns out, D’Alzan’s uncle, D’Alzan de Longepierre,
had been in love with the mother of Ursule and Adélaïde and had
wanted his nephew to marry Ursule; overjoyed to hear that his
nephew plans to do so, he promises to leave all of his money to
D’Alzan after his death. The machinations of La D——, D’Alzan’s
spurned mistress, nearly bring the couple’s courtship to a tragic
end. After receiving a letter from Mme des Tianges accusing him
of two-timing Ursule with this “femme perdue” (who had shown
Mme des Tianges [altered] love letters that D’Alzan had written her
showing recent [false] dates), D’Alzan falls gravely ill. Thanks to his
uncle’s intercession, D’Alzan is able to establish his innocence with
the two women and marries Ursule in his sickbed. The epistolary
narrative ends with M. des Tianges’s joyful return to a home now
shared by his wife, sister-in-law, and best friend.
19 As Cheek notes, Rétif ’s Englishman may be a nod to Mandeville’s A Modest
Defense of Public Stews (112).
20 Rétif de la Bretonne, Le Pornographe, ed. Annie Le Brun, in Œuvres érotiques
de Restif de la Bretonne, ed. Baruch, 55. References are to this edition, unless
otherwise noted.

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Throughout the text, a number of scenes convey the acute

senti­mentality made popular by the works of contemporary
authors and artists. D’Alzan’s account of a supper shared with
his uncle, Ursule, and Mme des Tianges echoes the family values
and together­ness evoked in Denis Diderot’s drame bourgeois and
Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s genre paintings, complete with a loving
patriarch and an adoring younger generation: “Jamais partie
bruyante ne m’a satisfait comme ce souper tranquille, sérieux
même, chez un vieillard respectable, au milieu d’une famille
sensée. La joie a brillé quelque­fois, mais c’était le rire de la raison.
Pour mon oncle, il était d’une humeur charmante [...] Il lui
[Ursule] adressait de temps en temps la parole, et toujours pour
lui dire des choses flatteuses. Je ne puis t’exprimer combien cette
remarque m’a fait de plaisir [...] je sens, depuis que j’aime Ursule,
augmenter ma tendresse pour mes parents” (141). Even more
emotional is the moment when the uncle describes the pathetic
state of his lovesick nephew and how he had to help carry him
to bed: “Il ne me reconnaissait pas, il ne me voyait pas! Joignez
à cela une fièvre brûlante, des sanglots, de longs soupirs, c’est
le tableau de la situation. J’ai moi-même aidé à le porter dans
son lit” (147).21 In yet another scene, D’Alzan spies on Mme des
Tianges and Ursule as Adélaïde counsels her sister on men and
love: “Elles se sont embrassées, mon cher Des Tianges. Je les
voyais, je me contenais à peine. Durant quelques moments, elles
ont formé un groupe ... . O mon ami, l’art n’est rien: comment
pourrait-il exécuter ce divin modèle! [...] Adélaïde! ... divine
Adélaïde, que vous êtes digne d’être la sœur d’Ursule et la femme
de mon ami!” (86). The sister’s embrace captures the extreme and
often ambiguous intimacy that permeates the tale. The letters
trace a complex web of relationships that propose a variety of
intimate con­figurations among the friends and family members.
Adélaïde is portrayed as lover and wife to Des Tianges and as
sister and mother-figure to Ursule and D’Alzan (55, 86, 150); Des
21 Steintrager also notes Rétif ’s appropriation of prevalent sentimental models
and his use of the Diderotian term “tableau” (Steintrager, 195). Rétif
developed parallels with Greuze’s patriarchal family scenes throughout his
career. Another prominent example can be found in La Vie de mon père,
which con­tains scenes that echo Greuze’s Père de famille qui lit la Bible à ses
enfants (1755). See the prefatory matter to Rétif de la Bretonne, La Vie de mon
père, ed. Gilbert Rouger (Paris: Garnier, 1970).

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Tianges perceives D’Alzan as a friend and a brother (114); D’Alzan

proclaims that his attachment for Des Tianges rivals that of his
wife (141). The four are united in the “douce intimité” wished for
by Des Tianges that has multiplied and intensified their ties as
sisters, brothers, husbands, and wives (114).22
While focusing on the emotional satisfaction derived from close
friendships and family ties, the frame narrative emphasizes that
marriages combining love and desire, such as that of M. and Mme
des Tianges, are the pinnacle of human relationships. As D’Alzan
writes to Des Tianges when criticizing divorce and adultery:
“Vous ne vous êtes pas mariés de la sorte, la belle Adélaïde et toi:
vous vous êtes épousés tout de bon [...] Une femme, jeune, plus
touchante que les Grâces, vive, enjouée, faite pour le monde et
pour l’amour, vit dans la retraite parce que son mari est absent,
souhaite imbécilement son retour, compte les semaines, les
jours, les heures qui doivent s’écouler sans le voir” (56). D’Alzan
replicates this ideal in his marriage to Ursule. Using a vocabulary
that combines suggestions of physical passion (“volupté,” “désiré,”
“ardeur”) with the more lofty sentiments of love (“félicité,” “union
délicieuse,” “âmes étroitement unies”), he describes his happiness
to his friend: “Ah! Des Tianges! Mon cœur nage dans une mer de
volupté! ... J’ai désiré, avec toute l’ardeur dont je suis capable, la
main de Mademoiselle de Roselle; depuis que je l’ai obtenue, je sens
ma félicité plus vivement encore que je ne l’ai désirée [...] Comment
se trouve-t-il des hommes qui craignent cette union délicieuse de
deux âmes étroitement unies par les mêmes affections, les mêmes
biens, par ces êtres innocents qui leur doivent le jour, en un mot
par les lois les plus saintes de la société?” (150–51).
In underscoring his characters’ quest to unite love, sex, and
marriage, Rétif upholds the relational ideals proposed in novels
such as Rousseau’s Julie, which fostered notions of mutual ten­
der­ness and monogamy in marriage and invited readers to
consider the roles of spouse and lover as one and the same.23
22 On these points, see also Cheek, 111–12; Steintrager, 196.
23 See Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy, trans.
Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1986), 109–20; René Pillorget, La Tige et le rameau. Familles anglaise et
française xvie–xviiie siècle (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1979), 43–80; and James
Traer, Marriage and the Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1980), 48–78.

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Le Pornographe distinguishes itself from other fiction of the time

in its explicit elaboration of these ideals. Marriage is presented not
mere­ly as a prescribed ending, but as a moral and social contract
(“un engagement durable que l’on contracte” [142]) for private and
public good, resulting in individual happiness and fulfilment, as
well as, perhaps most importantly, robust families and a strong
nation. Rétif ’s epistolary tale functions as a kind of treatise on
sen­ti­men­tal­ity that exposes its ideological program. It presents
itself as an exemplary sentimental text not only by enumerating its
narrative formulas, but also by expounding on its philosophy—a
philosophy of the (marital) bedroom that in many ways is just as
extreme as Sade’s, and is ripe for parody.24
The narrative of La Philosophie dans le boudoir, in the form of
a dramatic dialogue, distorts this sentimental tale. Sade’s version
echoes Rétif ’s in that two male and two female characters are
bound by an extreme version of the ties of family and friend­
ship. The education undertaken is not sentimental and socially
(re)productive, but sexual and libertine: Mme de Saint-Ange, the
married mistress of M. de Mistival (and whose name, not coin­
cidentally, rhymes with des Tianges),25 assumes at his request the
sexual initiation of his adolescent daughter Eugénie with the help
of Mme de Saint-Ange’s brother, the chevalier de Mirvel, and his
friend M. Dolmancé, the work’s main philosophizer. The intimate
configurations seen in Le Pornographe, where blurred relation­
al boundaries underline the intensity of the emotional bonds
between characters, are developed to their fullest extent as incest and
homosexuality: Mme de Saint-Ange has sex with her brother and
with Eugénie; the chevalier de Mirvel and Dolmancé are established
lovers. The dramatic dialogue—a generic form associated with
24 In this way, Rétif ’s text combines the two prevalent discourses about
marriage in the eighteenth century, as discussed by Chris Roulston: marital
advice literature and “the marriage novel.” Roulston, Narrating Marriage in
Eighteenth-Century England and France (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing,
2010), 15–93.
25 Laurent Versini points out Sade’s perverse predilection for giving his liber­
tine characters names containing the word “ange.” Sade’s naming of Mme
de Saint-Ange establishes compelling parallels and reversals with Rétif ’s
central virtuous pedagogical figures, the aptly named des Tianges, while also
call­ing up characters such as Laclos’s Cécile and Mme de Volanges. Versini,
“De quelques noms des personnages dans le roman du xviiie siècle,” Revue
d’Histoire littéraire de la France 61, no. 2 (1961): 184–85. <http://gallica.bnf.
fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5727838m/f27.image>

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philosophical libertinage that allows for strategic allusiveness, in

contrast to the identification and sympathy generated by the sen­ti­
mental epistolary form—facilitates the theatrical action that defines
the book.26 Eugénie’s libertine instruction progresses through care­
fully staged sexual acts that punctuate the discus­sion and illustrate
its main points, mostly invoking the primacy of pleasure in the
name of nature, which according to Dolmancé trumps the notions
of virtue and reciprocity that Rétif presents as being at the heart
of the sentimental union (“Une seule goutte de foutre éjaculée
de ce membre, Eugénie, m’est plus précieuse que les actes les plus
sublimes d’une vertu que je méprise”; “Il n’est point homme qui ne
veuille être despote quand il bande”).27
If Le Pornographe emphasizes the “deliciousness” of the emo­
tion­al bonds between man and wife and the “sweetness” of
friend­ship, La Philosophie dans le boudoir uses the same lexicon
to describe sexual pleasure: the “deliciousness” of sodomy and
orgasm; the “sweetness” of perversion. Sexual acts—orchestrated
and executed with precision and performed in groups (“Rabaissez
vous-même la culotte de ce jeune homme [...] que le devant ...
et la derrière [...] se trouvent à votre disposition ... Qu’une de
vos mains s’empare maintenant de cet ample morceau de chair
[...] et que l’autre [...] chatouille ainsi l’orifice du cul” [148])—are
devoid of intimacy. The emotional transports of Le Pornographe’s
correspondents are transformed into the “ah”s and blasphemies
that accompany moments of physical pleasure and release; tender
words of love are turned into graphic commands (“Chatouille-
moi, mon ange [...] Poussez! ... Poussez!” [114]). Romantic love is
rejected as an emotion based on physical desire that leads to mad­
ness. Dolmancé exhorts his pupil to pursue the ultimate objective
of love—possession—while avoiding any emotional attach­­ment:
“Foutez, divertissez-vous, voilà l’essentiel; mais fuyez avec soin
l’amour [...] Je le répète, amusez-vous; mais n’aimez point; ne vous
26 See Florence Lotterie, “Hybrides philosophiques: Quelques enjeux du dia­
logue matérialiste dans Le Rêve de d’Alembert et La Philosophie dans le
boudoir,” Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’“Encyclopédie” 42 (April 2007): 59–
60. <http://rde.revues.org/index2403.html> Patrick Reilly discusses Sade’s
perversion of the Socratic dialogue through the use of theatrical elements and
“monologism” in “Sade et les dialogistes de la subversion dans La Philosophie
dans le boudoir,” in Lire Sade: Actes du premier colloque international sur Sade
aux USA, ed. Norbert Sclippa (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004), 107–20.
27 Sade, La Philosophie dans le boudoir, ed. Yvon Belaval (Paris: Gallimard,
1976), 67, 259. References are to this edition.

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embarrassez pas d’avantage de l’être: ce n’est pas de s’exténuer en

lamentations, en soupirs, en œillades, en billets doux qu’il faut; c’est
de foutre, c’est de multiplier et de changer souvent ses fouteurs, c’est
de s’opposer fortement surtout à ce qu’un seul veuille vous captiver,
parce que le but de ce constant amour serait [...] de vous empêcher
de vous livrer à un autre [...] qui deviendrait bientôt fatal à vos
plaisirs” (173). Discourses exploring love and relationships are dis­
proved and displaced by Dolmancé’s logic and reason—however
illogical or contradictory—as he systematically dismantles notions
at the core of the moral and social order in eighteenth-century
France: the belief in God, parental authority, the criminality of
murder, the abjectness of cruelty.
In an unequivocal upending of Le Pornographe, where marriage
and family are presented as primary human goals, these institutions
are condemned in La Philosophie dans le boudoir as undermining
individual freedom and happiness. In scenes that mirror M. and
Mme des Tianges’s discussions with their pupils about the joys and
sanctity of spousal relationships—in which marriage is repeated­
ly portrayed as a union of hearts and souls leading to “félicité,”
“tendresse,” and “bonheur” (85–86, 150–51)—Mme de Saint-
Ange tells Eugénie that marriage (described as “[un] joug,” “[une]
contrainte,” and even as a source of “douleur” for women) is absurd
and unjust and that adultery is justified based on natural rights
(87). Along the same lines, in the name of liberty and the pursuit of
sex, she argues that girls and women should prostitute themselves
in order to experience the widest range possible of partners and
pleasures, as she herself has done (83–84, 103). Opposite Rétif ’s
characters, who see children as the fruits of a secure and happy
union, Mme de Saint-Ange and Dolmancé expound on the liber­
tine philosophies and practices against procreation: Dolmancé
argues that the propagation of species is not a law of nature, but at
most “une tolérance” in the quest for sexual pleasure (160); both
characters instruct Eugénie in various methods of birth control
and avoiding pregnancy (95–97); Mme de Saint-Ange states that
she would cease being Eugénie’s friend the moment Eugénie be­
came pregnant—but that if it were not the girl’s fault, she would
aid her in aborting the fetus or in killing her infant (122–23). As
for concerns about depopulation (an eighteenth-century obsession
and a dominant theme in Le Pornographe), Dolmancé soundly dis­
misses them because, like creation, he tells Eugénie, destruction

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is also a law of nature; further, he asserts, France suffers from a

parasitic problem of overpopulation (158, 77–78).
The ultimate blow to (sentimental) constructs of the family is
struck at the end of the book, when the morally upright Mme
de Mistival arrives to rescue her daughter from the libertines’
clutches. The group has been warned of her arrival by a letter
from M. de Mistival, who, taking notions of spousal authority
to the extreme, asks that they punish her “rigoureusement”
(266). The group undertakes the task with perverted cruelty,
with Eugénie taking part in the beating, whipping, and rape
of her mother. After a syphilitic servant is brought in to infect
Mme de Mistival, Eugénie sews up her vagina, “afin que vous
ne me donniez plus ni frères ni sœurs” (283).28 The final act of
violence involves Dolmancé’s commanding the mother to beg
her daughter’s forgiveness for her “abominable conduite envers
elle” and Eugénie’s slapping her face and kicking her out the
door. The work concludes with Dolmancé’s perverse invocation
of his libertine family, which can be seen as a tongue-in-cheek
evocation of Le Pornographe’s happy foursome: “Pour nous, mes
amis, allons nous mettre à table et, de là, tous quatre dans le
même lit. Voilà une bonne journée! Je ne mange jamais mieux, je
ne dors jamais plus en paix que quand je me suis suffisamment
souillé dans le jour de ce que les sots appellent des crimes” (287).
The twisted refashioning of the traditional family unit, starkly
played out in the tale of Eugénie’s being pimped by her father and
par­ticipating in her mother’s violation, is completed here by the
total evacuation of family ties: Mme de Saint-Ange’s brother, the
Chevalier, who leaves to take Mme de Mistival home, is replaced
by her gardener Augustin, demonstrating that Sade’s “family” is
com­prised of a rotating cast of characters who are linked not by
blood or love, but by sex and shared ideology—including the belief
that the most intense sensations come from doing “ce qu’il y a de
plus sale, de plus infâme et de plus défendu” (102). Ironically, of
course, Sade’s characters are dependent on traditional values for
their libertine pleasures, just as Sade’s literary perversions hinge
upon and reify Rétif ’s sentimental narrative.
28 Hunt’s classic reading of this scene emphasizes the (Revolutionary) Freudian
fantasies—the absent father and the obsession with the bad mother and
engendering—at work behind Sade’s dismantling of the family (Hunt, The
Family Romance, esp. 141–43).

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rétif, sade, and the origins of p orno graphy

The Reform Treatise

In Le Pornographe, the discussion of prostitution is presented in

contrast to the happy domesticity depicted in the frame narrative.
D’Alzan, having frequented brothels in the past, sees prostitution
as the cause of immorality and social decline—the antithesis of the
virtuous and productive lifestyle he now seeks to lead. He paints
prostitution as “un mal nécessaire” with moral and physical dangers
that must be attenuated through legislation (65–66). He proposes a
“pornognomonie” or “la règle des lieux de débauche” in his letters
to Des Tianges, which the friends proceed to debate (60). D’Alzan
advocates for the establishment of parthénions, or brothels, which
all prostitutes would be forced to join under threat of corporal
punishment and which would be regulated by the state. The
project encompasses everything from parthénion administration
(establishment of a governing council of twelve elected citizens,
appointment of gouvernantes and a Supérieure within the brothel,
presence of a guard force) to its physical set-up (a building
located in a sparsely occupied neighborhood, with a courtyard,
two gardens, and hidden entryways), to the daily occupations
of the inhabitants (organized around work, exercise, meals, and
recreation) and their appearance (baths every two days, tasteful
clothing, no creams, perfume, or makeup), to the punishments
incurred for various infractions (treated with clemency the first
two times, except in cases of lying to a client about a pregnancy or
trying to trick him into marriage, which carry sentences of hard
labour). The plan also includes transactional details: clients pay
varying fees at a ticket office, which entitles them to choose among
women staged according to their age and beauty along different
corridors; men (amants en titre) can also pay a daily fee to “keep”
a prostitute (fille entretenue) for themselves. Several articles focus
on the issue of venereal disease, describing the system in place
to ensure the health of the prostitutes and clients. Women are
examined for disease every day, treated by an in-house physician
the moment symptoms occur, and kept sequestered until they are
perfectly healthy. Clients are examined upon entry and fined if
they show signs of illness (106).
Significantly, the plan addresses in detail issues surrounding
preg­nancy and child rearing. Not surprisingly, given the concerns
about depopulation voiced throughout the text, reproduction was

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encouraged, with birth control prohibited and abortion criminal­

ized. Attempts were made to alleviate physical and emotional
burdens of motherhood: pregnant women who were not kept as
mis­tresses would be separated from the general population and
given special care; after childbirth, a woman would place the
baby with a wet nurse and be given the opportunity to see the
child every week. Amants en titre had choices too: have the baby
nursed by its mother or place the child elsewhere; take the child to
have him or her raised secretly, or as their son or daughter; leave
the child in the care of the brothel, from which the child could
be reclaimed at any time; or designate the child to inherit the
bio­logical father’s fortune. Physically adept boys who remained
in the brothel were destined to become soldiers, serving the state
in various capacities according to their skills and merit; others
would be given a profession such as tailor, shoemaker, gardener,
or labourer. Less attractive girls would be trained to become
dress­makers or hairdressers; others would be given a lady’s edu­
ca­tion in art, music, dance, and fashion and granted a dowry to
marry, with preference being given to marriages that united them
with other brothel offspring. After grown children left the brothel,
the council would serve in loco parentis, stepping in as neces­sary to
ensure that they fulfil their social and spousal duties.
The establishment of a family-like structure within the brothel
is presented as being for the good of the nation. D’Alzan clearly
summarizes this purpose: “Voilà donc un moyen presque infaillible
[...] de mettre dans l’État une pépinière de sujets qui ne lui seront
pas directement à charge, et sur lesquels il aura une puissance
illimitée, puisque les droits paternels et ceux du souverain se
trouveront réunis” (157). The children were seen as invaluable
assets to the state, adding to the population and saving peasants
from becoming soldiers and abandoning agriculture, thereby
risk­ing the national food source (156). Prostitutes in their old age
would also be well-cared for, saving them and society from “un
avenir pénible”: rigorous rules would be put into place to protect
those who could still work from abuse and disease; those who
were no longer able to work would be allowed to retire from the
profession and live in a separate part of the brothel, free to teach
music and dance to the younger prostitutes for compensation if
they chose to do so (138). Even the working prostitute is integrated

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rétif, sade, and the origins of p orno graphy

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, D’Alzan explains, a general rule of human nature is
respected that links physical pleasure and love: “La distinction
du physique et du moral n’exista jamais dans l’homme qui pense:
pour lui, aimer c’est jouir et jouir c’est aimer” (126). The union of
physical pleasure and romantic love, D’Alzan argues, is the source
of human happiness, providing a consolation from misery and the
certainty of death (80, 180–85).
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 parthénion serves a dual function, transforming
the prostitute and the brothel—in part by insisting on love and
intimacy—into 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. Rétif ’s brothel seeks to main­
tain—and to replicate to the extent possible—the 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 Rétif ’s reform treatise and frame narrative are closely
linked through narrative devices as well as themes, the integration
of Sade’s pamphlet, “Français, encore un effort si vous voulez être
29 Mark Poster advances similar arguments, while his focus on the reform
treatise leads him to emphasize the utilitarian rather than the sentimental
aspects of Rétif ’s vision: “[Rétif ’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, 111–12; and Steintrager, 196–97.

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 402 amy s. wyngaard

républicains,” into the dramatic dialogue has been perceived as

problematic. In the text’s fifth dialogue, Dolmancé introduces the
pamphlet, which he bought that morning at the palais de l’Égalité,
saying it will respond to Eugénie’s question “si les mœurs sont
vraiment nécessaires dans un gouvernement” (185). Although the
pamphlet develops ideas presented in the frame narrative (most
notably concerning atheism, adultery, sodomy, homosexuality,
incest, and murder) and is subsequently discussed and debated
by the characters, following Gilbert Lély several prominent critics
have noted its “arbitrary” appearance in the work, suggesting
that Sade composed it later and decided to insert it into La
Philosophie dans le boudoir in order to bring the text up to date
with Revolutionary ideas and rhetoric.30 What such interpreta­
tions have neglected to recognize is that the content of the
pamphlet is, above all, consistent with Sade’s overall parody of
Le Pornographe. In the pamphlet, Sade not only appropriates and
distorts Rétif ’s ideas concerning the reform of prostitution, but
he also elaborates on his opposing conception of the family and
the nation—one that again subverts and perverts Rétif ’s vision
through its criticism of marriage and traditional social structures
and its advocacy of adultery and incest.
Perhaps the most striking parallels and reversals between the
two texts can be found in the passages on prostitution, which
present a cornerstone of Sade’s republican vision. Sade’s project
draws on numerous elements of Rétif ’s reform treatise, adapting
them to his libertine and libertarian views of the individual, society,
and government. In the name of liberty and equality, the pamphlet
calls for the establishment of government-protected brothels for
both male and female clients—thus reconceiving and radicaliz­ing
Rétif ’s overwhelmingly heterosexual and patriarchal model.
Echoing Rétif ’s argument that regulating prostitution would
30  See Sade, Œuvres complètes du marquis de Sade, ed. Lély, 2:501; Yvon Belaval,
preface to La Philosophie dans le boudoir, ed. Belaval (Paris: Gallimard,
1976), 19; Maurice Blanchot, “Français, encore un effort ... ,” La Nouvelle
Revue française 13 (October 1965): 600; Delon, “De Thérèse philosophe à La
Philosophie dans le boudoir, la place de la philosophie,” Cahiers d’histoire des
littératures romanes 7, nos. 1–2 (1983): 76–77; and Delon, introduction to La
Philosophie dans le boudoir and L’Histoire de Juliette, in Œuvres du marquis
de Sade, ed. Delon, 3:xiii. The opinions of Sade critics mirror the gestures of
Rétif ’s modern editors, who, as mentioned above, have chosen to publish
Rétif ’s pornognomonie independently from his sentimental narrative.

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rétif, sade, and the origins of p orno graphy

protect the family and society, Sade proposes that such institutions
would promote peace and stability: “[l’homme] sortira satisfait et
sans aucun désir 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, women—like
men—can pursue “la jouissance de tous les sexes et de toutes les
parties de leur corps,” Sade maintains that his brothels, not unlike
Rétif ’s, would ultimately contribute to the growth and strength of
a national, republican family, “où 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
Sade’s 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 matrons—similar to
Rétif ’s governesses—ensure that the woman is delivered to him
“pour satisfaire, avec autant d’humilité que de soumission, tous les
caprices qu’il lui plaira de se passer avec elle, de quelque bizarrerie
ou de quelque irrégularité qu’ils puissent être, parce qu’il n’en est
aucun qui ne soit avoué dans la nature, qui ne soit avoué 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
Rétif 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
man’s right to pleasure: “Cette considération est sans aucune valeur;
dès que vous m’accordez le droit de propriété sur la jouissance, ce
droit est indépendant des effets produits par la jouissance; de ce
moment il devient égal que cette jouissance soit avantageuse ou
nuisible à l’objet qui doit s’y soumettre” (223); “Dès que les égards
qu’on aurait pour cette considération détruiraient ou affaibliraient
la jouissance de celui qui la désire, et qui a le droit de se l’approprier,
cette considération d’âge devient nulle” (223–24). The cruelty
described here, which Sade asserts is redressed by women’s equal
right to pursue pleasure in the brothels erected specifically for

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 404 amy s. wyngaard

them, is fully carried out in Justine, where, in what may be another

play on Rétif ’s reform plan, the girls living in the convent at Sainte-
Marie-des Bois are subjected to a highly regimented existence that
includes serving as monks’ sexual slaves for month-long periods
(242–54).31 The sexual hierarchies inherent in the brothel (which
Rétif seeks to attenuate) become the most salient characteristic of
Sade’s model, where la loi du plus fort reigns.
As with Rétif ’s reforms, Sade’s plans for prostitution are inex­
tricably linked to his (re)visioning of the family and nation. Sade’s
conception of a (sexual) community of men, women, and children
entails the creation of a redefined, republican family where the
eternal bonds of marriage are nullified, along with notions of
adultery and monogamy. In language reminiscent of that used
by his libertine characters, in the pamphlet Sade exhorts women
to follow their sexual urges without regard to moral or conjugal
obligation: “Qu’aucun frein ne vous arrête” (228). Further, incest
is seen as natural and desirable, strengthening families, and by
extension, the nation: “[L’inceste] étend les liens des familles et
rend par conséquent plus actif l’amour des citoyens pour la patrie;
il nous est dicté par les premières lois de la nature, nous l’éprouvons,
et la jouissance des objets qui nous appartiennent nous sembla
toujours plus délicieuse” (229–30); “l’inceste devrait être la loi de
tout gouvernement dont la fraternité fait la base” (230). It is here
that the differences between Rétif and Sade blur. Rétif, who is
thought to have had incestuous relationships with his daughters,
similarly saw incest as a source of intense sexual pleasure and as
a natural extension and expression of paternal and filial love—as
well as prescriptive for a healthy, republican corps politique. In an
unpublished manuscript, he writes: “Ce sont des moyens de paix
et de concorde que de marier nos enfants ensemble [...] lorsqu’on a
établi la république française, j’aurais voulu qu’on en eût fait le chef-
d’œuvre de l’humanité en laissant aux hommes une liberté plénière
d’épouser leur mère, leurs sœurs, leurs filles.”32 Significantly, his
response to Sade in L’Anti-Justine breaks down on this point: if
Rétif succeeds in writing against Sadean violence, there is nothing
satirical about his semi-autobiographical staging of the incestuous
31 See Coward, 76.
32 Cited in Testud, “Rétif,” 122. For more on incest in Rétif ’s life and works, see
Testud, “Rétif,” 121–22; and Testud, Rétif de la Bretonne et la création littéraire
(Geneva: Droz, 1977), 632–55.

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rétif, sade, and the origins of p orno graphy

relationship between a daughter and the father who pimps her

in order to fulfil her sexual desires, or the multiple first-person
narrations describing the primacy and variations of these desires.
Unknowingly, and unwittingly it would seem, in L’Anti-Justine
Rétif advances a plot that replicates and upholds key elements of
La Philosophie dans le boudoir—and in this convoluted manner
parodies himself.
The personal and literary tensions between Rétif and Sade boil
down to the narcissism of small differences. As a comparative
analysis of their works demonstrates, in the last decades of the
eighteenth century the demarcation between the sentimental and
the pornographic became increasingly difficult to distinguish.
Both Rétif and Sade depended upon extremes—of emotion,
of sensation—in ways that make certain passages of their texts
almost interchangeable. Although the two authors would have
been loathe to recognize or to admit it, at times their parodies of
each other redouble or collapse to reveal the consonances between
their respective texts and ideologies. After all, the libertine orgy in
La Philosophie dans le boudoir only realizes and renders explicit
what remains unacted and unwritten in Le Pornographe, with
its hints of a multiplicity of incestuous and homosexual bonds
among characters—an erotic domesticity that Rétif himself would
fully explore in L’Anti-Justine. Their plans for prostitution equal­ly
recognize the carnality of human desires and the urge to satisfy
them, something that Rétif attempts to normalize and insti­tu­tion­
alize both within and outside of marriage in the name of public
good and which Sade builds upon in order to give free reign to
individual pulsions within a libertine republican model.
Le Pornographe is a significant text in the history of pornog­
raphy not only because it served as an anti-text of La Philosophie
dans le boudoir, but also because it formed the foundation of an
ongoing textual dialogue between Rétif and Sade that evolved
the genre in important ways. Sade’s rejection of the intimacy at
the core of Le Pornographe led Rétif to compose L’Anti-Justine,
which, in its evacuation of overt social and political commentary
and its por­trayal of the intense emotional and physical bonds
between father and daughter, prefigures key tendencies in later
pornog­­raphy. Following Hunt’s definition, L’Anti-Justine can be
seen as the ultimate “modern” pornographic text through its

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 406 amy s. wyngaard

integration of domestic fiction and eroticism—and one that only

strengthens the con­nections between the two authors and their
contributions to the incipient genre.33 In the end, the perceived
irony surrounding Le Pornographe’s title versus its non-salacious
content is replaced by yet another, that Sade and Rétif, who hated
each other and who thought themselves to be working towards
opposite goals, in fact share credit for pornography’s advent.
•

33 See also Annie Stora-Lamarre’s discussion of nineteenth-century pornog­

raphy in L’Enfer de la iiie République: Censeurs et pornographes (1881–1914)
(Paris: Imago, 1990), 22–44.

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