Love, Pleasure and Subjectivity in the Eighteenth-Century French Novel

Catherine Cusset. Les Romanciers du plaisir (Paris: Champion, 1998). Pp. 144. € 32.95.

Pierre Hartmann. Le contrat et la séduction. Essai sur la subjectivité amoureuse dans le roman des Lumières (Paris: Champion, 1998). Pp. 469. €62.20.

While related by their subject matter, these studies are far apart in terms of the depth and elegance of their analyses. Of the two, Pierre Hartmann's remarkable treatment of Enlightenment subjectivity deserves the full attention of anyone working on the novel in the eighteenth century. Indeed, Pierre Hartmann has written one of the most important and intelligent books on the eighteenth-century novel to appear in recent years. His synthetic approach, combining historical, social, psychological as well as aesthetic elements, leads to remarkable new insights into the works of many of the greatest French novelists of the period (Marivaux, Crébillon, Rousseau, Laclos, Sade, Rétif de la Bretonne), with the addition of the foreign novelist most admired and influential in eighteenth-century France, Samuel Richardson.

The fundamental assumption behind Le contrat et la séduction is that the intellectual revolution that took place during the Enlightenment affected not only science, philosophy and theoretical thinking in general, but also profoundly modified notions and representations of subjectivity. Hartmann traces this revolution in subjectivity where it can be most fruitfully observed in this century of sociability and the rise of the novel: the treatment of the intersubjectivity of love in the great novels of the age. To do so, he defines what he considers two foundational categories of modern subjectivity, categories which first emerged in the dialectic of courtly love during the renaissance of the twelfth century, but of which the development culminates only in the Enlightenment: seduction and contract. Seduction and contract, according to Hartmann, are the poles between which, in the eighteenth century, the rich space of intersubjectivity extends. Roughly speaking, contract can be defined as a relation between individuals based on some degree of equality and transparency; whereas seduction, in contrast, implies some form of manipulation and domination. Here lies the interpretive power of these categories. They are precise enough to be easily identifiable, yet also flexible enough to assume countless variations, even to the point of reversing the seemingly fixed polar values attached to them. Contract can become so formalized as to make meaningful intersubjectivity impossible, on the other hand, seduction, under certain conditions of spontaneity and reciprocity, can be the occasion of authentic communication. Because of their plasticity as conceptual categories, seduction and contract can yield strikingly illuminating analytical results.

After a brief overview of the literary history of the subjectivity of love in the West, Hartmann begins his study with three authors who explore the different paths of seduction: Marivaux, Crébillon and Richardson. In Marivaux's world, contractual relations are systematically devalued as forms of intersubjectivity that are fossilized and void of substance. What the author of La Vie de Marianne favors throughout his mature works is a very specific type of seduction, free of any kind of dependence or domination, based on an affinity between souls and a reciprocity of feeling, essentially unconscious and therefore spontaneous. In other words, it is a double movement of recognition between two sensibilities. Marivaux extends this model of reciprocal, spontaneous seduction, from the sphere of love to all interpersonal relations, even to the relation between author and reader. It thus leads to a general aesthetic perception of the world. Marianne reacts to others with an intuitive movement of sympathy or repulsion, which is to say with an aesthetic judgment that immediately informs her on the possibility of a genuine dialogue of subjectivities. Hence the ideal of an aristocracy of the heart, an elite of sensibility whose members are all related through intersubjective harmony.

Even though the aristocracy of sensibility in La Vie de Marianne does not necessarily coincide with the aristocracy of birth, it largely presupposes belonging to the best society: it is an...