What relevance might the libertinage of Ancient Regime France

What relevance might the libertinage of Ancient Regime France have to our
contemporary society?
Keywords:
Libertinage; Gender; Queer; Violence; Conservatism
Abstract:
The 2011 Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair reinvigorated discourse amongst French academics
surrounding the notion of a professed “singularité française,” a uniquely French way of
conducting romantic relations inspired by the literary and philosophical movement of Ancient
Regime libertinage. In so doing, academics such as Habib and Raynaud attempted to
appropriate eighteenth-century libertine doctrine to contemporary society. This paper
considers this insistence upon libertinage and its possible relevance to twenty-first-century
society. The paper specifically notes the horrific implications of Habib and Raynaud’s
maintenance of libertine doctrines concerning gender relations in the present day. This essay
ultimately exposes this school’s neo-conservative aims as it clings to a nostalgic form of
conservatism. Employing both feminist and queer theory, argument centres upon the
examination of gender and sexual relations in the Marquis de Sade’s Justine ou les Malheurs
de la vertu and La Philosophie dans le boudoir in conjunction with Choderlos de Laclos’
Liaisons Dangereuses.
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“I long thought I could lead my life as I wanted. And that includes free behaviour between
adults.” (Dominique Strauss-Kahn in Carvajal 2012)
“I began to live truly independently of everything that could place limits on my inclinations
[…] I thought I could live perfectly free.” (Giacomo Casanova in Wolff 2012:155)
More than two-hundred years separate French former IMF chief Strauss-Kahn’s statement,
made following his alleged rape of a hotel maid in 2011 and that of the infamous libertine
Casanova. Yet these declarations, drawn from two seemingly disparate periods of history,
present near identical evocations of libertinage; an arguably ‘masculine’ belief in the
individualist pursuit of sexual pleasure without limits or ethical constraints facilitated by the
overthrow of the female will. Eighteenth-century libertinage ostensibly endures within
twenty-first-century masculine behaviour. Though denounced by American feminist, J.W
Scott, Strauss-Kahn’s elicitation of libertinage reignited the belief among French academics
such as Théry in a professed “singularité française” (in Ozouf 1995:1), a “French way of
doing sex” (Scott 2007:11), a neo-conservative notion (Eribon 2011) that emerged within
French academia with the bicentennial of the French revolution in 1989. Figures such as
Raynaud and Habib reclaim the considerations of gender relations evinced in the “galanterie”
and “séduction” of eighteenth-century literature, including libertinage (Raynaud 2011),
stressing its distinct place within the national identity of contemporary France. Drawing
inspiration from the gender relations of libertine fiction, they advocate the necessary
subordination of the female within the politics of seduction, an intrinsic feminine inferiority
that must be maintained. Citing d’Urfé, Habib writes that “non seulement la soumission totale
est un bien, mais c’est presque une condition de l’amour féminin” (2006:256). Male
hierarchy is the means of maintaining a “harmonie” without the “guerre des sexes déclarée
par les féministes” (Eribon 2011).
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Critical discourse has long “turned away from, rather than towards ethics” (McMorran 2011)
in its consideration of gender relations in libertine literature. Libertinage’s violence and
claims of patriarchal dominance have been largely ignored by critics of Laclos (Poisson
1985:131), manifestations of brutality reduced to purely linguistic concerns for structuralist
considerations of Sade, for whom “le libertinage [est…] un fait de langage” (Barthes
1971:140-141). Ethics are discounted, the largely female victims of Sade’s libertine violence
viewed as mere “object[s] of a verb.” (McMorran in Wynn 2013:230) However, in light of
the recent ‘ethical’ criticisms emerging from both Britain and America and with a
consideration of the portrayal of libertinage present in Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses and
Sade’s Justine ou les Malheurs de la vertu and La Philosophie dans le boudoir, this essay
will pursue a single thesis. Examining Raynaud and Habib’s desire to maintain their vision of
eighteenth-century libertinage, establishing it mimetically within contemporary society, this
essay will propose that the neo-conservative school disregards the horrors of the violence
implicated in the maintenance of this patriarchal morality, a system that eludes circumvention
by the female. Moreover, such figures support a profoundly misconceived image of
libertinage that fundamentally ignores libertinage’s circumventive nature, particularly its
subversion of Katz’s hetero/homosexual hierarchies of sexuality.
Defining the libertine as one for whom “all compunction, all humanity must be overcome
[…] how will a young lady bear with so sensual a man? […] the most abject submission is
but fuel to him” Richardson’s Clarissa (2011:325) exposes a key aspect of libertinage; the
necessary female submissions to the male libertine’s will, a Hegelian master/slave
configuration that ensures his individualism. Such patriarchal hierarchies are in accordance
with a contradictory natural order in which, as Sade notes, “toute forme est égale aux yeux de
la nature,” (1973:102) with the vital exception of women, “qui ne sont que les machines de
la volupté” (ibid., “les bêtes de ménage dont il faut se servir” (249). These notions of
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libertinage echo in the gender relations described by the contemporary neo-conservative
school, a “consentement amoureux” by which the sexes “doivent être comprises de façon
hiérarchique [qui nécessite…] la soumission à son supérieur” (Scott 2011).
Dworkin contends that libertinage’s naturalised hierarchical gender binaries uphold “the
belief that women exist to be used by men” rendering it “difficult to make credible the claim
that a crime committed against women must matter.” (1983:74) Within these binaries, as
Sade’s Philosophie dans le boudoir notes, “la violence même étant un des effets de ce droit
[naturel], nous pouvons l’employer légalement” (2011:2630) against women and from whose
unequal position, as Bataille stresses, pleasure is derived. The perpetuation of such doctrines
by the neo-conservative school arguably justifies rape, civilising attitudes concerning sexual
violence towards women. It ignores the pain of the subjugated Justine. Denied power within
the Sadeian ‘natural order’ to transgress masculine vice and its dominance, Justine’s attempts
at resistance are continually forced into passivity. The male revels in the enforcement of his
supremacy, in “[la] déchirer [… il] serai[t] dans l'ivresse,” (1983:292) as Justine is
repeatedly raped, tortured and assaulted in almost all her interactions with the male sex. The
cyclical repetition of these visions of masculine dominance demonstrates, in Butler’s words,
the means “by which the subject installs its boundary” (1993:114) within the male/female
gender hierarchies. Justine is physically overpowered within Sade’s system by which the
unique aim “was to evoke involuntary responses from one’s partner, especially audible ones”
(Nagel in Soble 2008:18) for the male’s pleasure. Solely permitted to express herself
‘audibly’ within the sexual act, Justine may only manifest her resistance in pained screams,
“pouss[ant] des cris épouvantables” (162). If, as Barthes notes, “le cri est la marque de la
victime,” the tortured females of Sade’s work are not, “celle qui subit” (1971:147). Rather,
they are victims, forced to endure the violence as heteronomous Kantian objects to be
violated in an effort to “secure the agent’s own pleasure.”(Nussbaum in Soble 2008:296)
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Solely given the right to ‘audible’ resistance within the Sadeian order, women demand to be
viewed as the subject, rather than the object of this violence, imploringly calling for us to see
their suffering, “vous me voyez, monsieur?”(34). Equally, “if we cannot ‘hear’ Justine
scream,” (McMorran 2013:244) as readers, her pain is rendered evident as she recounts her
brutal rape at the hands of Sévérino. Justine pauses to announce that “je n’avais de ma vie
tant souffert” (162). McMorran writes that such an intermission in the recounting of violence
“dwells on the reader’s consciousness.” Indeed, recounted from the first person, victim
perspective, it encourages “a more empathetic […] response to Justine as a subject, rather
than object of suffering” (2013:244)
Goulemot suggests that readers of libertine literature cannot employ McMorran’s
‘empathetic’ reading; Sade’s violence occurs ‘linguistically,’ in “encre” rather than “sang”
(Thomas 1994:175); in a vacuum without relation to the ‘real world’ and its morality. Indeed,
“no bodies [are] offered up to the gaze […] there is no need to return to the real world, since
the text is entirely closed, relying on […] the capacity of the text to evoke” pleasure or indeed
portray the pain of the subjugated female (Goulemot 1995:47). Yet such a reading belies the
vital paratextuality of Sade’s works. Although often omitted from modern editions, early
printings of Justine and Juliette contain significant visual support in the form of engravings.
These images depict the female victim pleading with her male oppressor in explicit and
pornographic detail. They offer up the “bodies […] to the gaze” denied according to
Goulemot, in the “textual enterprise” of the narrative form that may only elicit an
“imaginative rendering” (47) of the written pleasures of sadism, isolated from its horrific
reality. Genette writes of the paratext that it ensures the novel’s “presence in the world,”
(1997:1) rooting it beyond the rules of the textual Sadeian world “sans contraintes” (Sade
2011) to ‘real world’ ethical concerns. These engraved representations of Sade’s world render
the violence required to reinforce the natural patriarchal hierarchy horrifically plausible. In
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Phillips’ words, one “sees more and conceives less,” violence is rooted in the realms of
possibility, “facilitating a sympathetic image of Justine” (Phillips 2001:107). Thus, even if
Goulemot claims we cannot ‘hear’ the cries of the victim or imagine the violent acts of the
narrative, with the crucial paratexual addition to Sade’s work, we might see and comprehend
her pain in the context of our own world and its morality. In so doing one gains, as Genette
notes, a “more pertinent reading of it,” (1) we comprehend the pain and horrors of the
maintenance of the patriarchal hierarchy.
Exposed to the horrors of the violence inherent in libertinage’s gender hierarchies, one might
suggest that little “harmonie” exists in their maintenance by the neo-conservative school.
Harmony is replaced by a horrific cacophony of “hurlements épouvantables” (Sade
1983:317) as we ‘hear’ their cries and ‘see’ their pain. The ethical implications of upholding
libertinage’s politics of seduction in contemporary society thus have a horrific potentiality.
The maintenance of the gender binaries of libertinage produces horrific results. However, the
neo-conservative school claims that within the gender hierarchies of libertinage, “la
sujétion des femmes au désir des hommes est la source de leur influence et de leur pouvoir”
(Scott 2011). Therefore, it would seem that the marginalised, subjugated position of the
female as the “l’esclave de l’homme” (Laclos 1903:78) within libertinage might propose a
“radical space of openness and possibility.” (hooks in Rendell 2006:206) It is a marginal
space in which the female may harness and diffuse power, an invocation of Spivak’s strategic
essentialism. For Merteuil of Liaisons, who understands that “la femme qui se résigne à rester
dans sa condition opprimée est condamnée au malheur,” (Nojgaard 2002:405) yet who within
Laclos’ libertine system of feminine power is solely permitted to employ her passive female
state as a strategic method to dominate her opponents, such an exercise of power is ultimately
futile. Indeed, in order to “faire de ces hommes[…] les jouets de mes caprices,” (Laclos
1996:262) Merteuil must strategically enact the role of the passive female, honing her craft
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through the enactment of a set of scripted codes of female submission provided by the study
of the masculine gallant literature; “une Lettre d’Héloïse, et deux Contes de La Fontaine.”
(100) Indeed, Merteuil recreates the patriarchal harem structure with the sultan “tyran”
dominating over the female “esclave” (Laclos 1903:78) as she “le considérer comme un
sultan au milieu de son sérail, dont j’étais […la] favourite” (Laclos 1996:101) Though it may
only be a ‘performance’ in order to ascertain and exert power, it is an act that perpetuates the
image of the passive female, supporting the gender binaries that bolster masculine hegemony.
Within a sexual economy whose essentialist nature denies the female access to power, any
expression of authority by a woman merely reinforces the masculine order. Indeed, whilst
such an instantiation of strategic essentialism asks that the female employ her power to
reverse and deconstruct such binaries, Merteuil’s expressions of authority merely perpetuate
male dominance. She demands Cécile’s downfall, educating her in the hierarchical structures
of seduction, forming her passivity to the male until she does not even possess control over
her own language. Indeed, her letters are written from Valmont’s dictation (“je l’ai décidée à
en écrire une autre [lettre] sous ma dictée”(378)), a symbol of total submission of self within
a novel in which personal written record is the sole informant of character.
Though Jaton suggests that Merteuil enacts a “virulent attack on the integrity of the social
order” (in Conroy 1989:256), finding power within the politics of seduction, Merteuil is
inexorably confined within an order that requires her submission in order to ensure her
power, moreover, expressing that authority through the dissemination of patriarchal
domination. In maintaining libertinage’s gender hierarchies, the neo-conservative school
seeks to confine the females of contemporary France to an uncircumventable order. As
Wittgenstein writes, “a picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in
our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably” (1958: §115).
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Defined in seventeenth-century accounts as a practice that “hait la contrainte,” (Richelet
1680) libertinage remains an anarchic pursuit within contemporary discursive analysis,
embodying a determination to “attack with unbelievable tenacity the foundations […] that
underpin every human grouping.” (Laborde 1974:131) Yet as considerations of both Sade
and Laclos demonstrate, libertinage does not, according to this definition, transcend all
aspects of elements of domination, maintaining a fundamental conservatism within its
patriarchal gender hierarchies. This understanding embodies a conservative vision, an aspect
crucially unquestioned by libertinage. In seeking to uphold the gender hierarchies of
libertinage, the neo-conservative school thus arguably clings to a rare conservatism within
libertine fiction. This points to the movement’s protectionist nature, “qui a pour fonction
d’annuler la déstabilisation produite par les mouvements politiques et culturels,” (Eribon
2011) as it criticises both the rise of feminism (Habib notably condemning de Beauvoir’s
influence upon gendered relations in his Galanterie Française) and the advancements in the
fundamental rights of the LGBT community in France. In solely upholding the gender
binaries of libertinage within contemporary society, they seek to maintain the values of
patriarchy and heteronormativity.
Laclos and Sade transgress the heteronormativity of eighteenth-century France. Largely
ignored or ridiculed by the eighteenth-century philosophes, sodomy continued to be viewed
in its biblical context as “the most heinous of sins” (Edmiston, 2013:71), considered a
heretical act, worthy of the death penalty. Whilst they may expose the impossibility of
transcending the gender hierarchies, Sade and Laclos do reverse the hierarchical structures of
heterosexuality/homosexuality that underpin heteronormativity. Unlike his contemporaries,
Laclos does not deny or deride sapphism, Merteuil admitting a profound attraction for Cécile,
openly declaring her bisexuality as she “raffole de cet enfant: c’est une vraie passion” (117).
She establishes herself as a potential “rival dangereux” (ibid.) for Cécile’s affection, a lover
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who might seek to challenge the heterosexual order. Yet Sade goes still further than Laclos’
realm of possible romantic challenges. The term ‘homosexuality,’ as Katz notes, has long
existed as a means of denoting non-procreative sex in binary opposition to ‘heterosexuality’,
the “normal, ‘other-sex’ Eros” that allows for the ‘natural’ “‘need’ ‘drive’ or ‘instinct’” for
propagation” (in Kimmel 2009:88).Sade actively destructs this ‘natural’ heteronormativity
and its ‘natural’ procreative sexuality, Dolmancé of Philosophie declaring in that procreation
within the ‘natural order’ is “n’est qu’une tolérance de sa [la Nature] part.” (Sade 2011:866)
Rather, Dolmancé establishes sodomy, and moreover male-on-male sodomy as a service to
nature, for “foutre les femmes en cul, n’est l’être qu’à moitié; c’est dans l’homme que la
nature veut que l’homme serve cette fantaisie.” (864) In so doing Dolmancé implies that all
sexual inclinations derive from nature, including that of homosexuality, a statement
reinforced in ‘Français, encore un effort’s’ affirmation that “la sodomie est le résultat de
l’organisation [biologique],” (2756) overturning heterosexuality’s claim to the sole ‘natural’
status. More than merely ‘natural,’ sodomy is expressed as the most pleasurable sexual act,
particularly in its ‘natural’ male-on-male configuration, “il n’est point dans le monde entier
une jouissance qui vaille celle-là.” (1814) Thus, in denying the wholly natural pleasures of
sodomy, an act preferred by nature herself, Sade ultimately reverses Katz’s assertion of the
paradigms of queerness within the dominant dialectical tension between ‘natural,’ creative
heterosexuality and ‘unnatural,’ homosexuality. Heteronormative society and its Christian
prohibition of sodomy are against nature and thus wrong.
To conclude, in seeking to maintain the gender hierarchies of libertinage within
contemporary culture, the neo-conservative school’s prescriptive insights incurs serious
ethical consequences. As examination of Sade and Laclos’ works demonstrate, to uphold
masculine hegemony and female subservience has horrifically brutal consequences for the
female as she is held within a system that she cannot escape. Stockinger writes that Sade is
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“responsible for the first authentic first-person defence of homosexuality that went beyond
mere tolerance in French literature” (in Edminston 2013:113). Indeed, in portraying
homosexual seduction and sexuality in their works both Sade and Laclos ostensibly pave the
way for later queer writers and queer criticism. The neo-conservative school, clinging to a
rare conservatism within libertinage and discounting its transcendent nature ignores its vital
circumvention of heteronormative values that holds particular relevance to our contemporary
heteronormative culture.
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