Privacy, Publicity, Pornography: Restif de la Bretonne's Ingénue Saxancour, ou La Femme séparée

Abstract

Privacy, Publicity, Pornography: Restif de la Bretonne 's Ingénue Saxancour, ou La Femme séparée Rori Bloom In his preface to the most recent edition oíIngénueSaxancour, ou La Femme séparée, Daniel Baruch raises RestiFs novel to the status ofa "livre de combat que les féministes auraient dû depuis longtemps mettre à sajuste place, la première."1 As an impassioned plea of a battered wife against her sadistic husband, La Femme séparée (1789) addresses the plight ofwomen's rights (or the lack thereof) at the end of the Old Regime before the Revolution allowed unhappy partners to avail themselves of divorce. However, in an age when the term "philosophical books" included both socio-political tracts and pornographic texts, Restifs novel belongs to both genres, founding a discourse of liberation for women on the literary exploitation of one woman's story in an exploration of pain and punishment reminiscent ofthe works ofthe Marquis de Sade.2 1 Daniel Baruch, "Notice" for Ingénue Saxancour in Restifde ta Bretonne II (Paris: Laffont, 2002), 471. References are to diis edition. 2 See Robert Darnton, Edition et sédition: l'Univers de la littérature clandestine au KVIIf siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 13-16. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 17, Number 2,January 2005 232 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION As author ofa 1769 tract entided LePomographe, Restifintroduced die word "pornographer" into French, but he did so with characteristic ambiguity in a text thatproposes to reform prostitution but at the same time titillates readers with a detailed description of this profession.3 Twenty years later, in La Femme séparée, the pretence of the philosophic is again undercutby Restifs penchantfor the pornographic , but in a less obvious and more problematic way. Ingénue Saxancour is not a prostitute, exposing herselfto the violence oflife on the streets, but rather awife exposed to sexual violence in her own home. In showing this second situation to bejust as dangerous as the first, La Femme séparée exposes the secrets of spousal abuse, crossing the line between private and public.4 This central tension between the private and the public spheres5 is expressed in the story's telling, as the victim becomes the vigorous agent of her own defence and the text moves from private complaint to public outcry, defining itself doubly as a mémoireand a mémoirejudiciaire. When die question ofauthorship is closely examined, however, this duality is resolved by its own impossibility, for the ingenuous Ingénue seems incapable of composing a sophisticated legal argument. The text thus deconstructs its narrator's claim to authorship, constandy hinting that it is not the product ofan amateur but ofa professional author. The presence ofthis third person in the private problems of a couple seems strangely invasive, but, while critics have found this external perspective aesthetically interesting, they have more or less dismissed it as morally unproblematic.6 However, when the sexual brutality endured by Ingénue is not recounted by the victim but by 3 The entry "pomographe" in the Petit Robertdictionary refers to Restifs as the first known usage ofdie word. 4 See Mary Trouille, "Truth Stranger Than Fiction: Wife-Abuse in Restifde la Bretonne's Ingénue Saxancour," SVEC: Studies on Voltaire and theEighteenth Century 1 (January 2003), 311-44. Trouille concludes that "Restifs is still one of the most powerful depictions of spousal abuse ever written" (344). 5 Jürgen Habermas has situated an important "structural" transformation of the public sphere in the eighteendi century and uius a new distinction between private and public life. See Habermas, TheStructural Transformation ofthePublicSphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: MlT Press, 1989). 6 Isabel Herrero explains die intrusion of the audiorial presence in die novel as characteristic ofdie internal intertextuality ofRestivian writing. Herrero, "Ingénue Saxancour de Restifde la Bretonne ou l'ambiguïté du point de vue," Eludes rétiviennes 13 (December 1990), 21-40. Frank Houriez describes the presence ofdie father's voice in die daughter's story as a textual effort at reconciling their relationship, strained by Ingenue's unauthorized marriage. Houriez, "Collage et coherence dans IngénueSaxancour" Étudesrétiviennes 15 (December 1991), 15-30. INGÉNUE SAXANCOUR233...