Fictions of Pleasure: The Putain Memoirs of Prerevolutionary France (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781644533239)

Out of the libertine literary tradition of eighteenth-century France emerged over a dozen memoir novels of female libertines who eagerly take up sex work as a means of escape from the patriarchal control of fathers and husbands to pursue pleasure, wealth, and personal independence outside the private, domestic sphere. In these anonymously published novels, the heroines proudly declare themselves prostitutes, or putains, and use the desire they arouse, the professional skills they develop, and the network of female friends they create to exploit, humiliate, and financially ruin wealthy and powerful men. In pursuing their desires, the putains challenge contemporary notions of womanhood and expose the injustices of ancien-r馮ime France. Until the French Revolution spelled the end of the genre, these novels proposed not only an appealing libertine utopia in which libertine women enjoy the same benefits as their male counterparts but also entirely new ways of looking at systems of power, gender, and sexuality.

Author: Alistaire Tallent
ISBN-10: 1644533235
ISBN-13: 9781644533239
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Language: English
Published: 12/15/2023
Pages: 226
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs