Revolutionary Love in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century France (review)

In this engaging tour de force, Allan Pasco examines the affective life of France in the second half of the eighteenth century and early years of the nineteenth, using literature as an historical archive to inform his study. Although, as he notes, the use of novels, poems, and plays as documentary resources for the study of history is widespread, Pasco judiciously devotes his first chapter to a considered discussion of the practice. Passing in review the other available archives exploited by cultural historians – police and court documents, notarial records, legislation, mémoires judiciaires, pamphlets, handbills –, he reminds readers that those sources, while extremely valuable, are not only incomplete and fragmented but also of limited usefulness when seeking insight into people's attitudes and mind-sets. Pointing, as well, to the frustrating scarcity and perhaps limited reliability of personal documents (family papers, letters, diaries) from the repressive Revolutionary period, Pasco rolls up his sleeves to argue for the validity and discuss the methodology of using literature as a readily available and abundant archive.

Acknowledging that he is "following the lead of some cultural historians" (8) and citing widely from their work, Pasco builds on it adeptly to construct a defense of literature as historical archive that is particularly tailored to the eighteenth century. While all literature is "a response to reality, whether by reflection or reaction" (9), late eighteenth-century literature is, he contends, "particularly reliable" (16) as an indication of reality (and mentalités), due to the increased numbers of readers whose massive purchasing power influenced book production and presumably favored works that responded to their desires and concerns. Observing that novels of the period were pervaded by reflections and commentaries on contemporary society, Pasco posits that people were demanding verisimilar literature and looking to novels "to elucidate aspects of their world, to reveal it as it was in actuality, to explain things so that they would be more able to understand and cope with the turmoil they saw and sensed around them" (19).

Nevertheless, gaining insight into the mentalités of the late eighteenth century ("ferreting out" significant attitudes, as Pasco aptly puts it) is a meticulous process. Advocating that æsthetic consideration of a text precede cultural analysis insofar as possible (a refinement on Cary Nelson's call for a merging of the two), Pasco stresses repeatedly that each text must be interrogated by a critic or historian well-trained to attend to its function, tradition, and genre. He also insists that literature must be subject to the same ground rules and procedures that would apply to any historical archive: use of a large sample, significant congruence in the material considered, and regular testing against other sources.

His implementation of this modus operandi is masterful as he elegantly traces the evolution – and identifies a revolution – in French society's attitudes toward love and marriage in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Chapter 2 tracks the gradual, though hardly smooth, shift from love-as-duty to love-as-passion, the former allowing for friendship or affection governed by reason in traditional dowered marriages dictated by father/family and consecrated by the church, the latter affirming that only intense love could bring the happiness to which an individual was entitled and which alone could justify marriage. Chapter 3 situates love in the context of a discredited monarchy, weakened church, and embattled family, contending that in this destabilized environment sentiment became a religion. The unsettling impact of the legalization of divorce in 1792 is investigated, showing the double-edged sword of that new freedom, and analysis of the fictional incidence of plot foci such as love at first sight, love-tests, and suicide, provides evidence of the high-stakes, oft-dashed hope placed in true love in the desperate search for stability unavailable elsewhere.

Pasco finds more evidence of an unsettled society's insecurity in the eighteenth century's attempts to study "natural" man. His fourth chapter considers the "Tahitian...