Sex Education in Eighteenth-Century France ed. by Shane Agin (review)

Society and Culture edited by Frederick Toner AGIN, SHANE, ed. Sex Education in Eighteenth-Century France. SVEC 2011:09. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7294-1016-8. Pp. vi + 302. $96. Upon seeing this book’s title, readers may wonder whether its topic is not an anachronism. In response, editor and contributor Shane Agin acknowledges in his introduction the presence of a dichotomy between on the one hand, Michel Foucault’s assertion that the eighteenth century saw a heightened production of discourse on sexuality while, on the other hand, educational theorists produced merely a “telling silence” on the subject (4). Deducing from this that sex and education were—at least publicly—separated in eighteenth-century France, Agin situates sex education somewhere between two emblematic extremes: a naive pubescent girl getting her “premières leçons d’amour” from observing billing doves in a painting by Greuze (fittingly reproduced on the book’s cover) and Diderot preparing his daughter for marriage by having a female sculptor, Mademoiselle Biheron, teach her the “physiology of sexual relations” (7). On the broad spectrum between these two poles of sex education—none and an anomalous formalized version—this book analyzes texts from disciplines as varied as literature, religion, pedagogy, history, philosophy and medicine in order to determine how sexual knowledge was disseminated, gained, and used in eighteenth-century France. This interdisciplinarity is one of the book’s strengths, as it shows us how many different fields made contributions to sex education. Although the result does not resemble sex education as we know it today, the book’s thirteen richly annotated essays demonstrate convincingly that in the margins of the mainstream, efforts were indeed made to educate citizens about sexual practices and behaviors. Despite the covert, marginal nature of this sex education, this volume studies not only relatively minor figures and their influence, but also such giants as Rousseau, Diderot, Laclos and, naturally, Sade. This well-structured book has three sections, each examining contributions to sex education in a different domain. It guides readers through its topic like a pyramid, with a comprehensive foundation followed by an ever more narrow focus in subsequent sections. In “Regulation,” four scholars analyze Enlightenment recommendations for regulating sexual behavior. The broad range of regulation sources illustrates how countless areas of eighteenth-century life and society were infiltrated, touching and affecting nearly everyone to some extent through religious and secular pedagogical treatises (Jean Bloch), conduct manuals (Allan H. Pasco), Catholic confessor manuals (Paul Scott), and (pseudo)scientific treatments for masturbation (Kathryn A. Hoffmann). The next section “Reflection and evaluation” traces sex education in various more specific genres and works, namely utopian literature (Jean M. Goulemot), ethnographic and anthropological texts (Matthew Lauzon), Rousseau (Shane Agin), and a novel by Restif de la Bretonne (Cecilia Feilla), the latter essay suitably inserted after the one on Rousseau. The final section entitled “Narratives of education, initiation and discovery” zooms in even further by analyzing narrative strategies employed specifically to describe first sexual experiences in memoirs (Didier Masseau), Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses (Chris Roulston), pornographic literature (Jean-Christophe Abramovici), libertine literature (Juliette Cherbuliez), and Buffon and La Mettrie Reviews 583 (James Grantham Turner). Those of us teaching relatively conventional courses on French literature—at the graduate level in particular—will find Roulston’s essay quite valuable for its discussion of female education as it relates to sex education . Cherbuliez’s concise history of libertinism could also be used productively in teaching. Summaries of the essays, an extensive bibliography (with a useful division between texts written before and after 1800) and an index conclude the volume, which will appeal primarily to a mature audience due to its subject matter. Scholars and (graduate) students in eighteenth-century French history, culture and literature will find it of great interest; those in women’s studies and gender studies will also note that the predominantly masculine nature of the topic as evidenced by both eighteenth- and twenty-first century texts, would present another fruitful axis of scholarly investigation in itself. University of North Texas Marijn S. Kaplan ARNAR, ANNA SIGRÍDUR. The Book as Instrument: Stéphane Mallarmé, The Artist’s Book, and the Transformation of Print Culture...