A Gallery of Ordinary Portraits in Words and Images: Restif de La Bretonne's Les Contemporaines du...

A Gallery of Ordinary Portraits in Words and Images:Restif de La Bretonne’s Les Contemporaines du commun

(1782-1783)

C H R I S T I NA I O N E S C U *

Since the nineteenth century, Restif ’s Les Contemporaines has been one of themost prized possessions in the bibliophile’s library. Complete sets of this work,comprising no fewer than sixty-five volumes and copiously illustrated withengravings whose quality oscillates from superb to mediocre, are nowadaysa rare commodity.1 In its extensive collection of works by Restif, the Biblio-thèque nationale de France has preserved copies of Les Contemporaines pre-viously owned by Marie-Antoinette and bound with her coat of arms. It iscertainly not difficult to speculate on the appeal of this work to the legendaryqueen who, during the years preceding the Revolution, would delight inplaying a simple milkmaid in the comfort of her treasured Hameau. After all,Les Contemporaines presents what one critic has astutely described as ‘casehistories of some two hundred feminine figures’,2 in a gallery of verbal andvisual vignettes which depict the adventures of both the ‘jolies femmes del’âge présent’ and the gueuses – be they nobles or commoners, Parisian orprovincial, privileged or destitute, promoters of social virtue or examples ofmoral failure. Women belonging to all ranks and orders of society, oftendressed in fashionable clothes but wearing the out-of-style high heelsfavoured by Restif, women engaged in affairs of the heart or participating inother quotidian activities, find their place in Les Contemporaines by springingfully formed from the author’s journalistic pen or by acting as muses to hisfertile imagination. The extraordinary length and breadth of this gallery offeminine portraits are nothing short of remarkable, resulting directly fromthe space allocated to many characters who were previously excluded fromthe literary realm. Referring to the second series of this monumental work,Les Contemporaines du commun (1782-1783), Charles Beuchat remarked forexample that: ‘Pour la première fois, les charcutières, les écosseuses de pois,les pâtissières et les crémières trouvent une place dans les livres’ (‘For the firsttime, the female butchers, pea-shellers, pastry-makers and cheese-sellers finda place in books’).3 Not the least interesting feature of Les Contemporaines,however, is the transposition of these feminine portraits from text into images.

While perusing the original edition, the reader is no doubt struck by theunusual, often peculiar, images punctuating its pages. It would have beeneasier for Restif, and considerably more profitable no doubt, to commission

Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 31 No. 3 (2008)

© 2008 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 GarsingtonRoad, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

licentious illustrations for Les Contemporaines – that is, conventional imagesexploiting the female figure and banking on the power of desire. While he wasof course no stranger to these illustrated books ‘qu’on ne lit que d’une main’(‘to be read with one hand only’),4 in this instance Restif generally resisted thetemptation to delve into the erotic imagination, as lucrative a venture as thatmay have proven to be at the end, given the commercial success of thissegment of the book trade in the eighteenth century.5 Such a focus, however,would have eclipsed Restif’s socio-historical preoccupations, which are clearlyoutlined by the author in the voluminous paratext of the second series.Drawing on iconographical studies and visual semiotics, I propose to analysethe interplay between texts and images in Restif’s Les Contemporaines ducommun to provide a reflection on aesthetic representation and visualcommunication in relation to the author’s stated intentions and to the artisticframework in which the images were crafted. I argue that the engravingscommissioned for Les Contemporaines du commun should not be considered‘paratextual’ or ‘peripheral’ but an integral part of the literary work by virtueof the unique context of production in which they were created.6 Because thewriter’s specific vision for his work fully included its illustration, the visualworld that he created in collaboration with the artists is as original as it isnoteworthy.

Even today scholars and general readers interested in Les Contemporainesare more likely to consult the eighteenth-century editions of this book, due tothe fact that no new complete edition has appeared since Restif ’s time.Inevitably, therefore, they find themselves in the unusual situation of lookingat the illustrations that accompanied the text in its original form and ofhaving to take them into account in their reading process. It is an unusualsituation indeed as both literary theorists and art historians have traditionallyconsidered engravings commissioned to illustrate literary works to be ofsecondary importance to the text. This subordination has been seen as aresult of the image using a different system of representation, iconic asopposed to verbal, or as a consequence of the illustration not belonging to thetext in the same way as the dedication or the title due to its artisticprovenance.7

Moreover, illustrative engravings have often been judged to be inferior inquality to the text, or considered problematic because they appear to distortmeaning or they offer an individual, often confining, reading. Other theoristshave argued that original illustrations should be considered an integralcomponent of the illustrated book precisely because of their physical presencewithin the material object. In the case of Les Contemporaines du commun, thislast argument seems particularly compelling, given the original format of thefirst three editions as well as the survival of factual evidence proving Restif ’sactive and substantial involvement in the illustration of his book.

Attested by various primary sources, such as Restif ’s journal, this authorialinvolvement resulted in a collaborative process of production unparalleled inmagnitude and scope in the history of eighteenth-century book illustration

394 CHRISTINA IONESCU

© 2008 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

in France. As Nicholas Cronk has convincingly demonstrated, in the periodstretching from the publication of La Nouvelle Héloïse to the Revolution,novelists became increasingly involved in the illustration of their works.8

Nonetheless, even in this particular context, the close collaboration betweenRestif and the designer Louis Binet (1744-1800),9 which led to the inventionof a unique visual language and a priori established a multifaceted text–imagerelationship, is most unusual. It is clearly the personal vision of the author,deploying identifiable and distinct modes of visual expression, more than thecreative touch of the artist, that stamps the image with its unique identity.Antony Griffiths does not exaggerate at all when he observes that Restif’s‘illustrations became the most original of their time’.10 John Grand-Carteretattributes Restif ’s interest in visual expression to a ‘sens de l’image’ due tohis unique ability to think ‘littérairement et graphiquement’, to hold boththe pen and the brush, to employ both media as complementary means ofexpression.11 Pierre Testud somewhat disagrees with Grand-Carteret’s assess-ment, noting that Restif was not at all interested in painting or drawing buthe was instead aware of the power of the image to orchestrate a theatricalmise en scène or to create an instant visual tableau.12 I hold that Restif, keenlyaware of the limitations and unique possibilities offered by both media,worked within a larger context, that of the popular culture of his time, aculture that was becoming increasingly visual as the Ancien Régime wasapproaching its final days. Infused with intertextual references, theengravings commissioned for Les Contemporaines du commun blend icono-graphical elements from disparate sources, largely mirroring the docu-mentary intent of the plates commissioned by Diderot for the Encyclopédie,making inventive use of the popular imagery found in contemporarypaintings and prints, and drawing on the Rococo aesthetic and thematicrepertoire which clearly allured the writer, and doing so while strangelymanifesting some identifiable neoclassical tendencies. It is precisely in thepowerful tension between these disparate influences that the originality anddysfunctionality of the engravings commissioned for Les Contemporaines ducommun lie.

Let us begin by considering an ordinary story. ‘La Jolie Tabletière’ (Fig. 1)provides a penetrating analysis of bourgeois morals and character as well asa piercing satire of human ambition. The subject of the engraving illustratingthis story is explained in the following terms:

La jolie tabletière assise dans sa boutique, ayant à côté d’elle la Comtesse sasœur, et de l’autre son amant, qui lui présente la matière de son ouvrage, de lasaveur pour broder un panier: le père est au tour; le mari de la sœur aînée luiaide; la mère est dans le comptoir. L’amant de Julie, dit à la Comtesse, enregardant la jolie tabletière: ‘Julie embellit tout, même l’amour!’ (xxiv.310)(The pretty girl who makes chessboards is sitting in her shop; on one side of heris seated her sister the Countess, and on the other is her lover, who hands her thematerials she works with, something to add appeal to the embroidery on abasket; the father is at his lathe; the elder sister’s husband is helping him; the

Restif de La Bretonne’s Les Contemporaines du commun (1782-1783) 395


mother is at the counter. Julie’s lover says to the Countess, eyeing the prettychessboard-maker: ‘Julie makes everything more beautiful, even love itself !’)

The setting is thus the family’s boutique which doubles as a workshop.Whereas the plates commissioned for the Encyclopédie tend to favourrepresentations of ateliers, to emphasise the aspect of production in thedepiction of the craft, Restif appears more interested in the boutiquesdisplaying the products for sale, and thus in the social dimension of thebusiness. The fabrication of objects, however, is not completely excluded here:to the left, the father and his son-in-law are operating a woodworking lathe,

1. Unsigned engraving for ‘La Jolie Tabletière’. By permission of the ThomasFisher Rare Book Library (Toronto, Canada)



and Julie is said to be working on a basket, ‘un joli panier à fiches’ (‘a pretty pinbasket’, xxiv.341). The most striking aspect of this illustration is theextraordinary display of objects located on the shelves in the background,objects of which the text makes no mention. Curiously, under the heading‘Tabletier’, it is the Encyclopédie which provides us with a detailed list ofobjects in which the toy- and game-maker specialises, many easilyrecognisable on display in the image commissioned for ‘La Jolie Tabletière’:

Leurs ouvrages particuliers sont des tabletiers pour jouer aux échecs, autrictrac, aux dames, au renard, avec les pièces nécessaires pour y jouer; des billeset billards, des crucifix de buis ou d’ivoire [...]; enfin toutes sortes d’ouvrages decuriosité de tour, tels que sont les bâtons à se soutenir, les montures des cannes,de lorgnettes et de lunettes, les tabatières, ce qu’on appelle des cuisines, desboëtes à savonnettes, etc. (xv.809-10)(What they particularly make are boards for playing chess, trictrac, draughts,fox and chickens, and the pieces needed to play them; marbles and billiard-balls,crucifixes in box wood or ivory [...]; in a word, all sorts of curious objects turnedon a lathe, such as crutches, handles for canes, frames for pince-nez andspectacles, snuff-boxes, little portable containers for spices and so on, soap-boxes, etc.)

Given the duodecimo format of the book, it is surprising to see such anelaborate composition and concentration of detail: six figures whose physicalappearance as well as emotions are carefully rendered; a busy background insuch an intimate interior, where even the ceiling serves a purpose – to exhibitwhat could be antler and ivory, some of the precious materials used by theartisan to craft various objects of his trade. In contrast to the more opulentdisplay of objects that we see behind glazed cabinets in ‘La Belle Bijoutière’,the shelving here is open and functional. The seating area is more crammedand it does not feature any of the comfortable armchairs found in thejeweller’s shop. The hierarchy of professions is thus rendered in visualterms.

A careful reading of the textual scene shows that one detail of particularimportance was excluded from the visual representation of the scene: theneighbours watching the family through the store windows. Such an openingto the outside could have been easily designed behind the counter, and yet thisspace was ascribed instead to the displaying of objects. The global renderingof the scene by the inclusion of all its narrative segments thus acquires animportance second to the representation of the craft. Nonetheless, the pretextfor the family working together was Monsieur Le Riellet’s request to proveto the neighbourhood that his daughters were not embarrassed by ‘l’état de[leur] père, qui est celui d’un honnête marchand’ (‘[their] father’s station inlife, which is that of an honest tradesman’, xxiv.341), even though one wasmarried to a count and the other engaged to a marquis – in other words, tovalidate his existence and to prove his worth by showing his honest characterand social utility as a craftsman. Although he takes pride in his work, the



craftsman aspires for more, prematurely reflecting on how the two marriageswill bring about a certain social recognition. The image, though, does nottreat this flaw in his character, focusing exclusively on the performanceof work, and resulting in a scene which is highly idealistic but at the sametime reflective of a new ideology of work. Operative in France since themid-eighteenth century, this new ideology was championed by ‘moralistsand theorists, monarchs and reformers, public officials and prelates, en-cyclopaedists and physiocrats [who] had begun to recognise – implicitly whennot explicitly – the importance of work both as a concept of political economyand as an economic and social necessity’.13 One should not forget that inLa Noblesse commerçante (1756), the Abbé Gabriel-François Coyer haddenounced the parasitical nobility and had argued that honour should bemeasured in terms of utility. Until then, performing manual labour andvoicing preoccupations with economic gain and personal achievement weregenerally seen as being incompatible with a noble heritage and high status insociety. Although he implicitly takes a stand in this ideological debate, Restifdoes not construct a proper argument in favour of work. It should be notedfurthermore that he also refuses explicitly to end this particular story with aneasy moral, and concludes instead with the suggestion that his work providesa mirror to his epoch, an observation which emphasises the documentarynature of his Contemporaines: ‘Un jour ces Nouvelles seront précieuses pour lapostérité, parce qu’on y verra l’histoire du temps où vivait l’auteur, surtoutdans les conditions communes’ (‘One day these Nouvelles will be prized byposterity, because in them will be found the history of the author’s owntimes, and especially the way in which the common people lived’, xxiv.345).The use of the verb ‘voir’ in the closing sentence of ‘La Jolie Tabletière’ isperhaps inadvertent, but even so it is doubly significant as the author relieson a combination of verbal and visual means of communication in theconstruction of his gallery of portraits of ordinary women. Envisioned andexecuted at relatively the same time as the text, perhaps even concurrentlygiven the rapid composition of so many stories, the engravings illustrating LesContemporaines should not be considered independently from their writtencounterpart. In this context, image and text coexist not only in a physicalsymbiosis, in other words as two essential components of the book as amaterial object, but as the primary constituents of the literary work. What ismore important, a unity of vision defines the production of both. Theelaborate paratext of Les Contemporaines clearly indicates that Restif ismotivated by a socio-historical conspectus: his aim is to apply the scientific,objective observation of the individual in society, as well as of socialinstitutions and processes, to the workings of the literary imagination, in theinterest of capturing the intimate picture of reality as it was lived by hiscontemporaries. He even affirms that as the author of Les Contemporaines heacts as ‘l’historien de personnages’ (‘the historian of characters’, i.6),supposedly limiting his involvement to changing the characters’ names andother details which would allow the reader to identify them.14



Transcending what the author insists is mere description and objectivetestimony, these novelettes and historiettes aim to penetrate the surfaces ofurban architecture and social life to show, through words and images, glimpsesof the ways in which Restif’s contemporaries lead their daily existence,experience society and view their world. Restif weaves economic, familial,religious and political threads to document the moral and social fabric of hiscontemporary Parisian world as he sees and interprets it, often creating adistinctly utopian picture in the process, such as in the scene representing thefamily working together in ‘La Jolie Tabletière’. These threads are often thin,non-descript and only superficially penetrative, since a disconnect separatesthe vouloir from the faire, intent from practice, the author’s voiced intentionsand the actual finished product. The reader expecting an updated supplementto the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers, faites ou approuvées par Messieurs del’Académie Royale des Sciences, issued between 1761 and 1788, or the literaryequivalent of the Encyclopédie, with a classification and delineation ofprofessions and social types, in which places and things would be clearlydetailed or shown, will surely be disappointed. Restif ’s vast series of stories hasa particular focus, but it is not what one would expect after reading theparatextual material: in the introduction to Les Contemporaines, the authorstates that his portrayal of interesting and meaningful events in the lives ofindividuals will allow the reader to ‘anatomiser le coeur humain’ (‘anatomisethe human heart’, i.5). Except for some occasional tableaux, the end result isnot a picture of everyday reality as it will be painted by the nineteenth-centuryrealists. It is not factual or material detail that matters but characters’emotions, beliefs and attitudes. The psychology of individual and collectivebehaviour, the principles of domestic economy, and the criticism of both urbancorruption and moral degradation are the most colourful threads interwovenin the textual fabric of Les Contemporaines. As we saw in the engravingaccompanying ‘La Jolie Tabletière’, the image is where material culture andethnographic detail resurface and find their place.

Recognising the overwhelming popularity of livres à gravures and at thesame time attempting to make more difficult the publication of counterfeiteditions of his work, Restif had commissioned one illustration for every storysince the very inception of the first edition of Les Contemporaines. Facing theimage is normally the sujet de l’estampe, which is not always an excerptreproduced verbatim from the story; the text follows the image, which thenacts as its frontispiece. In a letter to the engraver Sergent who had severelycriticised the content, form and execution in Binet’s illustrations, Restif insiststhat: ‘Le sujet gravé doit toujours avoir un rapport avec le titre’ (‘The subjectof the engraving must always be related to the title’, xvii, n.p.). Thisrequirement becomes particularly important in Les Contemporaines ducommun, where the moment, detached from the temporal sequence, quiteconsistently illustrates the main character in her working environment (evenif she is not necessarily working), and thus establishes a link between thecharacter’s profession as stated in the title and the story which is told on the



following pages. Indeed, this is the only link, as the character’s occupation hasvery little or nothing to do with the story being told. Some contemporaines aregrouped by theme or by profession under one heading, and the correspondingimage contains a group portrait, no doubt an economical way to provide anillustration for each story. This sometimes leads to strange juxtapositions ormontages. For example, the engraving illustrating ‘Les Femmes qui portentmalheur à leur ami’ is peculiarly divided in half: one side is devoted to ‘La BelleMarchande de Soieries’, the other to ‘La Belle Ferronière’, without any visuallinks between the two scenes illustrated side by side. Volume 26 is entirelycomposed of group portraits in what suggests an almost obsessive desire tocatalogue professions that are then quickly classified under a common themeand represented in a single engraving – for instance, ‘Les Femmes laidesaimées de leurs maris: Tâilleuse, Sculpteuse, Peintresse, Massone’, with allfigures shown working in a composite scene. At times the engravingsfeaturing a large group portrait were printed on a wider page which was theninserted in the book as a fold-out, a feature of scientific illustration, as foundin Chambers’ Cyclopaedia and Diderot’s Encyclopédie. Volume 29 includes a‘double estampe’ representing ‘Les Jolies Crieuses, ou les XX filles des bassesprofessions de Paris’ – twenty modestly dressed workers sitting in a semi-circle, their male companions behind them, with a large dining table in thebackground, and emblematic objects placed on the ground which allow for aquick identification. Group portraits such as the latter could be too easilydismissed as sketchy and uninspired, as hastily recording and constructing aphysical presence, if we neglect the iconographical tradition to which theybelong.15 In fact, they are not much different from many collective portraits ofmerchant and craft guilds that had flourished during the Dutch Golden Age,showing members wearing their traditional robes, in stiff and formal poses,with their respective emblems. In France images of craftsmen identified solelyby their emblem had decorated countless stained-glass windows, as a tributeto group benefactors of Catholic churches, since the establishment of theguilds in the Middle Ages. The media of painting and stained glass affordedthe artists more latitude than that of engraving, notably by the use of colour,but the principles of representation are similar in their simplicity. Yet in thisextant visual tradition images of women at work are quite rare. Insofar asthey record a collective feminine presence in the world of work, these groupportraits that we find in Restif’s Contemporaines du commun should then beconsidered exceptional despite their limitations.

The engravings accompanying the Contemporaines du commun are partof Restif’s program to depict faithfully the reality of everyday life throughthe representation of a more tangible and concrete materiality. In the sup-plementary preface included in volume 19, Restif specifies: ‘Les estampesdes Contemporaines du commun auront un mérite qui leur est particulier:c’est de mettre sous les yeux l’espèce de marchandise des commerçants et lesprincipaux outils des ouvriers ou des artistes dont il sera question dans lanouvelle, ce qui en variera les fonds et les accessoires’ (‘The engravings for Les



Contemporaines du commun [working-class women of the present day] willhave one particular advantage, namely to show the kind of merchandiseoffered by shop-keepers, and the most important tools used by the workmenor artists mentioned in the nouvelle, which will give some variety to the basicstory and the related matters’, xix.6).

Accordingly, these products and tools should not be seen as superfluousdetails or decorative features, as they were intended to serve a specificpurpose. This was to assist the writer in his task by supplementing the textwith visual information which contributes to the depiction of literarycharacters, in addition to providing new and diversified backgrounds in theengravings as more and more volumes were added to the work. Underliningthis decision to show rather than to describe could be the belief that a pictureis worth a thousand words, or that the verbal system of expression can nevertotally succeed in doubling the material object through description. It is alsopossible that Restif finds no pre-assigned place for these signifying objectsin the classical verbal portrait or in the traditional psychology of humanbehaviour. He does realise though that these objects solidify the sense ofpersonal and family identity associated with being a craftsman, shopkeeperor street vendor. Restif, who is persuaded that the working person is aboveall defined by his work, fully understands that the craft or trade also formsthe basis of social identity. The density of signifying visual detail variesthough from image to image. For example, ‘La Jolie Polisseuse’ is shownpolishing precious stones while sitting at an otherwise empty table; theworkers performing the same task in the background do not alleviate thestark simplicity of the room. If we consider this engraving, and many othersin which the referential space is vacuous or unsaturated, we understand whyRestif was so harshly criticised for failing to reflect adequately labels such as‘le père et l’initiateur du naturalisme’, which were actually bestowed uponhim by the nineteenth century.16 Other locales, however, are more carefullyrendered: ‘La petite regrattière devant son échoppe, nouant dans un mou-choir une livre de sel qu’elle donne à un homme, qui lui attache au cou unSaint-Esprit de brillants’ (‘The little salt-seller stands before her stall, tying apound of salt into a handkerchief, which she gives to a man who puts aroundher neck a diamond sash’, xxi.2). Here, one can observe for instance the smallweighing-scale with the various referent weights casually disposed aroundit.17 A significant number of engravings, such as ‘La Jolie Lunetière’, evenachieve an unusual degree of saturation through the accumulation of tools,objects in production and merchandise. These functional objects, which arenot solely represented to create aesthetically pleasing surroundings, actas a support for the literary character, and as a metonymic or symbolicalcharacteristic of spatial representation, consequently determining meaningin a powerful way. And they do even more: they anchor the text in a specificreality by reflecting their moment in time.

As we saw earlier, Restif clearly intended that the illustrations for LesContemporaines should constitute a visual documentary of his age. For this



reason, perhaps, and sooner than other writers and artists, he manifestlyunderstood the increasing desire of his contemporaries, especially provincialsand foreigners, to look at images representing furniture and decorativeobjects, hairstyles and fashion.18 Future readers such as Jules Soury wouldappreciate Restif ’s efforts:

Restif, à son habitude, entre, en ces historiettes, dans les plus minutieux détailsde mœurs, de langage, de costumes et d’ameublement; il donne les noms desrues, montre l’aspect et la disposition intérieure des maisons, explique lestermes d’atelier et de manufacture, décrit les outils de diverses industries,énumère une foule de professions qui n’existent plus aujourd’hui. Les estampes,fort nombreuses, indiquent les modes, les airs, les manières, la tournure desFrançais quelques années avant la Révolution. On le voit, les Contemporainessont une mine presque inépuisable de renseignements précieux pour lespeintres, les graveurs et les historiens.19

(Restif customarily goes into these little stories, giving the most minute details ofthe customs, language, costumes and furnishings; he gives the names of streets,shows what houses look like, and how the interiors are arranged, explains theterms used in workshops and in manufacturing, describes the tools used invarious industries, and lists a host of professions which no longer exist today.The abundant engravings show the fashions, the appearance, the behaviourand the bearing of the French a few years before the Revolution. As can be seen,the Contemporaines are a virtually inexhaustible mine of valuable informationfor painters, engravers and historians.)

‘La Fille du savetier du coin’ (Fig. 2), which recounts in minute detail thearrival of a provincial law clerk in Paris and his attempts to build a successfulcareer in the capital, would not have disappointed Jules Soury. This is a ratherunusual Contemporaine in that it does not really concentrate on the daughterbut on the savetier himself. The story is a perfect example of the valorisationby Restif of a profession located at the bottom of the elaborate hierarchyregulating footwear production in Paris under the Ancien Régime. Con-sidered the least skilled footwear tradesman because he was only able to repairshoes and work with salvaged leather, the ‘savetier’, the French equivalent ofa cobbler or shoe-mender, was traditionally classified under the petits métiersand the profession has since disappeared. The Encyclopédie quickly defines the‘savetier’, and represents him working on the street in humble conditions,physically excluded from the cordwainer’s workshop which is illustrated inthe vignette located at the top of the plate accompanying the article‘Cordonnier et Cordonnier-bottier’; in contrast, Restif devotes to him his fullattention in a Contemporaine. Because the story is a variation on the populartheme that appearances can be deceiving, Restif does not show him in anopen-air, stationary shop but in a comfortable bourgeois interior, dressedaccordingly, on a chair in front of a burning fireplace, topped by an elegantchimneypiece on which rests a small Rococo clock flanked on each side by acandlestick and a decorative object. A wrinkled apron and a hodgepodge of



oddities are spread on a table to the right of the cobbler. The notice on theengraving informs us that these constitute ‘tous les outils de sa profession’(‘all the tools for his profession’, xix.80), and when we compare them to thetools of the trade clearly shown and labelled in the aforementioned plate ofthe Encyclopédie, some of these objects appear to be almost cut-outs: held inthe mother’s left hand, the size-stick used to measure feet, with a slidingmeasure, and in her right hand the emblematic apron; in the father’s hand,the last, carved from wood, used as a working mould, around which hangs

2. Unsigned engraving for ‘La Fille du savetier du coin’. By permission ofthe Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto, Canada)



probably a piece of linen cord; on the table, assorted tools and scraps ofleather among which lies a most unusual-looking object known as a largeround or half-moon knife (‘couteau à pié’). These objects, whichmetonymically reconstitute the activities performed by the cobbler, are beingthrown into the fire in a metaphorical purification of the artisan. After all, thecobbler does not benefit from the distinguished history and tradition conveyedby the title ‘cordonnier’; his situation is different: ‘mon état est honnête,puisqu’il est utile à l’Etat; mais il n’est pas honorable’ (‘my situation is honest,because it is useful to the state, but it is not honourable’, xix.95). Since hisdaughter will marry the lawyer whom her father aided financially in buyinga charge, the cobbler will retire, away from Paris, as a bourgeois, allowing hisdaughter to lead a life unstained by her social origin.20 It is on this symbolicending and promising beginning that the image focuses.

Just as the verbal representation itself, the transposition of words intoimages is filtered through the writer’s powerful imagination. In spite of theauthor’s preoccupation with the faithful representation of the quotidianreality of his contemporaries, the engravings accompanying Les Contem-poraines du commun, more so even than those decorating the other series,have been severely criticised since the time of their publication. The mostpoignant criticism pertains to the representation of the female figure. BaronRoger Portalis was one of the first to notice some intriguing but strangedeformations:

[Restif] obligeait en effet son dessinateur à donner à ses personnages fémininsl’idéal rêvé par lui, c’est-à-dire des tailles de guêpes, des pieds de chinoises à latorture, comme il aimait tant à en rencontrer dans ses excusions nocturnes.Quand le dessinateur n’avait pas suffisamment, à son goût, aminci les ex-trémités, il corrigeait lui-même le dessin et forçait le graveur à en suivre les traitsbizarres.21

([Restif] indeed made his designer give his female characters the ideal ap-pearance which he dreamed of, that it to say with very narrow waists, and tinyfeet like those of Chinese women which had been tortured into that shape; itwas women with such features that he loved to encounter in his nocturnalexcursions. Whenever he felt that the designer had not made the feet narrowenough, he altered the drawing himself, and forced the engraver to follow thesestrange outlines.)

With their elongated silhouettes, doll-like faces, wasp waists, long andspindle-shaped legs, tiny feet and high heels, fashionable dresses andelaborated coiffures, they are a product of the author’s fetishistic orpathological imagination. Restif himself invented the neologisms ‘féiques’and ‘joncées’ to describe the feminine creations designed under his watchfuleye by the ever-obliging Binet. If these sensual and often playful femininefigures, who engage in amorous adventures and inhabit a rose-tinted world ofelegant and refined furniture, delicate sculptures and ornamental mirrors,did not surprise anyone when they made their appearance in the engravings



designed for the first series of Les Contemporaines, they seemed quite incon-gruous with the world of craft and labour depicted in the second series. Re-ferring to the engravings commissioned for Le Paysan et la paysanne pervertisin the letter to Sergent quoted above, Restif shows, however, a concern forhis readership’s expectations and a willingness to oblige: ‘toutes les figures yont la noblesse et le joli, parties essentielles pour le commun des lecteurs, quine veulent dans une estampe qu’un joli visage, qui fixe agréablement leurimagination sur l’héroïne’ (‘all the figures are noble and prelty, essentialcharacteristics for general readers, who want to see in a print only a prettyface, which pleasantly holds their imagination on the heroine’, xvii, n.p.).The findings of William H. Sewell, who studied the prints (in the collection ofthe Cabinet des Estampes) representing the mechanical arts from the latesixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, corroborate Restif ’s conclusion,suggesting that similar expectations of the female figure also governedscientific illustration at the time:

There are in fact some representations of women who worked in strictly femaletrades – laundering, dressmaking, millinery, and so forth. But the femaleworkers who are represented are virtually always young and pretty (or if not,then old and outrageously ugly) and are depicted alone, demurely (oroccasionally saucily) looking up from their work. The work that women aredoing is not very important in these images; it is hardly more than a pretext fordepicting a pretty girl.22

In Restif ’s Contemporaines, working women are not only beautified andsubjected to the author’s desires but also ‘endimanchées’, to use Restif ’s ownepithet. As we see in ‘La Jolie Tabletière’ and ‘La Fille du savetier du coin’,beautiful fashion icons adorn the engravings commissioned for Les Contem-poraines du commun – a marketing tool that is just as exploited today in thedesign of ads, posters and book covers. In this regard David Coward observesthat Restif knew how to exploit ‘la femme-affiche, la femme-marchandise’(‘the woman as poster, the woman as merchandise’).23 In the excerpt quotedabove, Jules Soury linked Restif’s preoccupation with fashion to the interest ofhis contemporaries, especially the large middle-class public, and sees itfeatured more and more in engravings, as attested by the popularity ofpublications such as the Galerie des modes (1778-1787) and the Monument ducostume (1789; plates in circulation earlier). The carefully cultivatedappearances and highly codified poses of Restif ’s contemporaines du communbelong more to the Rococo universe than to the world of work that we findrepresented in eighteenth-century genre painting. By their choice of subjectmatter and representational space, the engravings are reminiscent, none-theless, of the paintings of another social recorder, one of Restif ’s contem-poraries, the painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. Chardin himself workedwithin an interesting pictorial context: rooted in a northern tradition, thescenes of everyday domestic life which he favoured were not recognised in thehierarchy of the arts and were referred to as genre painting. His pictures of



daily life representing workers absorbed in their tasks, surrounded by objectsrendered with the utmost attention to detail, in their domestic environments,were bought by wealthy patrons and circulated widely in the form ofengravings.

This stylised representation of the female figure has certainly generatedmuch discussion, yet the significant presence of women in the visualrepresentation of the world of craft and labour of Les Contemporaines ducommun has been dismissed as insignificant, sketchy and idealistic. Restifcould have certainly chosen to represent his mobile heroines in differentmilieus, yet consistently he opts for their work environment. In Les Contem-poraines du commun, Restif thus recognises that women played a role asemployers and as skilled workers in artisanal trades, and captures themvisually as contributing members of society.

The plate illustrating ‘La Jolie Brocheuse’ (Fig. 3) shows a workshop wherethree brocheuses, skilled workers typically employed by booksellers (and who,as their name indicates, were almost always women) are engaged in the finalstep of production: inserting the book into paper wrappers. We do know thatthe presence of women was significant in book trade and production. This isone of the rare engravings in which the flow of production is clearly outlined.According to the description provided for the engraving, the first brocheuse isinserting some last pages into the book (it was normally the plates which wereinserted last), the second is folding the sheets of printed text, and the thirdoperates a small machine called the ‘cousoir’ to sew the book, while in thebackground a press holds down the bound books. It is interesting to note thatthe technical term ‘cousoir’ is only used in the sujet de l’estampe and not in thetext. The Abbé Jaubert offers the following definition for the term: ‘machinesur laquelle on applique les feuilles pour les coudre’ (‘a machine on which thesheets are laid in order to be sewn’).24 Incidentally, a different model of thismachine is documented in the first plate of the article ‘Relieur’ in theEncyclopédie, where it is also operated by a woman, albeit a modestly dressedone. This functional workshop must have resembled many small productionplaces in which books were artisanally assembled during the Enlightenment.

Although Les Contemporaines du commun plays on the interaction of char-acters drawn from all social strata, it is the pre-Revolutionary world of craftand labour that creates the lively background of this anatomy of humannature. There is no doubt that Restif, like Diderot before him, truly values theartisans’ intimate, hands-on knowledge of materials, their skill and oftenvirtuosity in manipulating them, as well as their remarkable industriousnessand overall work ethic. Oftentimes, his short stories and the illustrations thataccompany them offer an unusual and rare glimpse into a working person’sdaily existence and beliefs. The attention that Restif pays to this aspect of hiswork may suggest that he is motivated by a reformist ideology, that he isseeking to contribute to the removal of the stigma of inferiority marking thebody of artists and craftsmen, merchants and tradesmen, as well as peasantsand working lower classes by empowering them with a new authority and a



sense of legitimacy through the fictional world that he creates in his work –and in particular in Les Contemporaines du commun. Restif, however, is more ofan observer than a social reformer, carrying with him the heavy baggage ofpersonal experience. What is indisputable is that he does wish to recognisevisually the substantial contribution to society made by this large segmentof the population, a contribution which should justify their inclusion ascharacters in French literary texts. This recognition earned by an honestday’s work becomes almost an obsession as some of the sujets des estampesrefer in passing to characters working in the background. These backgroundworkers are sketchily represented, due in great part to the limitations imposed

3. Signed engraving for ‘La Jolie Brocheuse’ By permission of the ThomasFisher Rare Book Library (Toronto, Canada)



on the artists by the medium. In ‘IIde et IIIme Jolies Couturières’ we find: ‘Onvoit dans la pièce voisine les ouvrières au travail’ (‘In the next room we see thewomen at work’, xxi.208). ‘La Jolie Menuisière’ is gathering wood shavingsand placing them in her sister’s apron while: ‘On voit des ouvriers dans le fondde la boutique’ (‘We see workers at the back of the shop’, xxiv.346). In oneinstance Restif even specifies the exact type of work in which the backgroundcharacter is engaged, otherwise we would not be able to know for certain: inthe engraving illustrating ‘La Jolie Lingère’, ‘On voit dans le comptoir une fillede boutique qui aune de la mousseline’ (‘At the counter we can see a shopgirlwho is measuring some muslin’; missing from the sujet de l’estampe in theSlatkine reprint; xxv, facing the engraving).

The writer called by Charles Monselet ‘le peuple-auteur’25 is obviously fas-cinated by la petite histoire and seduced by la vie populaire. The engravingsfor Les Contemporaines du commun represent an animated Paris, capturingthe bustle of life in the streets, house interiors and workplaces. In Restif ’simagination, even the workshop, which constitutes the location of pro-duction in eighteenth-century Paris, has a clearly defined and prominentsocial dimension. Recent research has in fact shown that workshops ‘were farfrom introspective places, with personnel and activities spilling out on to thestreet and into the neighbourhood, and a great deal of coming and going’.26

Although this social aspect does at times resurface in the plates of Diderot’sEncyclopédie, it is in Restif’s Les Contemporaines du commun that it seems mostvisible. It is in the latter’s engravings that the work milieu serves first andforemost as the scene of marriage proposals, unexpected visits, clandestineencounters and heated exchanges – themes much cherished by the Rococoengravers. Remarkably, Restif’s work environments rarely possess the clini-cal cleanliness and airy spaciousness which characterise their idealisedcounterparts in the plates of the Encyclopédie. Neither roomy nor well lit, theyseem more true to reality, often appearing dark, cramped and even dangerous.Even some of the shops, where light tasks are performed, do not seem muchmore different. When examining carefully the engraving illustrating ‘La JolieTapissière’ (Fig. 4) one is inevitably struck by the numerous objects amassedin the small space: various pieces of furniture (an armoire in front of whichwe see two commodes piled up, which are topped by what appears to be theseat of a tabouret, its frame on the armoire; a pair of upholstered fauteuils à laReine suspended from the ceiling), a solid panel dangerously leaning againstshelves on which fabric is carefully stored in rolls and folded sheets, and thetapissière’s working table and tabouret. A ladder located in the backgroundcreates the illusion of an even larger storage space. In this jam-packed space,the tapissière is stitching a decorative border to a piece of flowing fabric inwhat could be curtains for a canopy bed or for windows.

In addition to domestic interiors, shops and workshops, the engravings ofLes Contemporaines also feature cobbled and narrow streets, airy boulevardsand parks, populated cafés and taverns, crowded bridges, the noisy world ofmarkets, the dangerous outskirts, as well as lively street theatres. Not even the



famous cris de Paris are ignored despite the author’s criticism of this lowestclass, criticism which is actually directed at the collective entity rather thanthe individual, as David Coward has sensibly pointed out.27 In the engravingaccompanying ‘Les Petites Marchandes du Boulevard’, for example, one ofthe most interesting of the Contemporaines because of the writer’s attempt toreproduce phonetically and lexically the speech of the marchandes, the sevencrieuses are represented in a composite linear portrait, a device frequentlyemployed in popular imagery of the cries since the Middle Ages. In the sujet del’estampe, Restif quickly identifies each one of the street vendors by her place

4. Unsigned engraving for ‘La Jolie Tapissière’. By permission of the ThomasFisher Rare Book Library (Toronto, Canada)



in the image and the object held in her hand, starting with the middle figure,Mignone who is carrying a box displaying ‘des cordons de montre, des perles,des épingles à brillants, &ca’ (‘watch straps, pearls, diamond pins, etc.’,xxvii.134). Printed in the form of suites and books, pictures of the cris de Parisand street life invaded the print market in the sixteenth century andcirculated even in the popular Bibliothèque bleue de Troyes. Among the mostpopular were Jacques Callot’s baroque series, which chronicled the daily life ofhis period,28 Abraham Bosse’s Les Cris de Paris (circa 1630), and the Bonnartbrothers’ Cris de Paris published in 1670. As Vincent Milliot has shown, in theeighteenth century, these images were enjoyed by a most diverse public,circulated widely in various forms and even inspired porcelain figurines.Painters such as Antoine Watteau and François Boucher expressed aninterest for this subject matter, but it was the sculptor Edmé Bouchardon,much admired by the Comte de Caylus, who produced a series of sixty imagesof les petits métiers, and to whom Restif unwittingly owes a large debt for hiscombination of elegance and realism in the portrayal of female workers.Restif ’s dignified crieuses are in no way coarse, deformed or grotesque.Although they appear frailer and are dressed more modestly than the othercontemporaines du commun, they remain nonetheless elegant and delicate. Thisis perhaps less the impact of Restif ’s particular vision than the result of whatVincent Milliot has called the ‘processus d’idéalisation’ (‘process ofidealisation’)29 of the cries of Paris in effect at the end of the seventeenthcentury, and which continued throughout the eighteenth century, culminat-ing with the series designed by Watteau de Lille and engraved by LaurentGuyot, Les Cris et Costumes de Paris (1786).

‘La Petite Laitière’ is one example of a crieuse. In this story, Restif captureswhat until not so long ago was a distinctive feature of the popular Paris of theearly hours in the morning, the arrival of milkmaids – robust young ladies,clad in white cotton dresses and wearing their bonnets, whose two-wheeledopen carts, drawn by vigorous percheron horses, laden with milk canistersfilled early in the country, made the rattling noise that along with the milk-maid’s cri acted as an alarm clock for many Parisians. Iconographic represen-tations of the milkmaid abound in the French popular imagination and areembedded in specific cultural as well as socio-economic contexts. This shortstory offered the author ample opportunity to select for the engraving aslightly erotic moment in the narrative, yet he chose to capture the milk-maid in her ordinary environment, performing the routine tasks of her dailyexistence while delivering milk to her urban clientele. This choice isparticularly interesting given its artistic context. It is a known fact thateighteenth-century illustrators did not rely exclusively on the text for sup-port but also on a visual repertory, which included paintings and engravingsexploring a similar topos as well as previously illustrated editions of the sameliterary work. In the eighteenth century, any visual representation of themilkmaid was intertextually connected to, if not determined by, illustrationsof La Fontaine’s ‘La Laitière et le pot au lait’ and La Borde’s ‘Le Pot au lait’. As



such, artistic and literary representations of the milkmaid were likely markedby the configuration of la cruche cassée – a peasant girl carrying a jug of milkon her head, surprised by the advances of a young man, tries to defend herselfand in the process spills the milk. The setting for the numerous engravingsillustrating this story was usually a beautiful landscape, often picturingluxurious vegetation and a village with a visible church in the distance. AlexSokalski has noted that the Cazin edition of the Chevalier de Boufflers’ Reine deGolconde, published as part of the Œuvres in 1782, contained an engraving byPierre-Clément Marillier and Nicolas de Launay representing such a scene,which recalls not only illustrations of La Fontaine’s fable but also Moreauthe Elder’s La Cruche cassée ou le villageois entreprenant.30 In La Cruche cassée(1773), Jean-Baptiste Greuze interpreted this particular theme, showing onlythe milkmaid in an upright position with the broken jug to her right in thebackground. In another painting representing a milkmaid, La Laitière (circa1780), which is very similar to La Cruche cassée in both size and composition,Greuze omits the broken milk jug and focuses on the innocent sensuality ofthe young girl. Some visual representations of the milkmaid are thus indebtedto Greuze’s La Laitière, engraved by Jean-Charles Levasseur in 1783, featuredin the exhibition ‘Rétif de la Bretonne: Le Paris populaire’ of 1934 at theMusée Carnavalet, which celebrated the second centenary of the author’sbirth. The catalogue, citing in a footnote Jean Locquin, states that Greuze’spainting seems to have inspired Restif ’s ‘La Petite Laitière’, which appeared inthe same year as the engraving.31 It is true that Restif, more so than Greuze,enveloped the scene in an atmosphere of suggestive purity and innocence.This was not the case, however, of most pictorial or textual representations ofthe milkmaid in the eighteenth century in France, in which sweet innocencewas erotically charged and often subverted, as Philip Stewart has shown in hisanalysis of the iconic connotations of spilt milk.32

The story gives Restif an opportunity to explore a subject of great interestto him: urban corruption of innocent country folk. The use of significant,specific detail in the description of Suzon the milkmaid anchors the story in asolid reality:

Suzon, la petite laitière, venait tous les jours avec un petit cheval bai-brun, fortjoliment arrangé, par la rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré jusqu’à la PlaceVendôme, qu’elle ne passait jamais. Elle avait un juste de poulangis gris-blanc,un jupon de moëlleton à raies rouges et blanches; une capote de baracan brun;une croix d’or; des bas de laine toujours propres, et des sabots en hiver.(xxii.447-8)(Suzon, the little milkmaid, came every day with a little bay-brown horse whichwas very prettily decked out, down the rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré as far asthe Place Vendôme, though she never went any further. She wore a smock madeof greyish-white plaid, a petticoat made of flannel with red and white stripes; ahood of brown material; a gold cross; woollen stockings which were alwaysclean, and in winter she wore clogs.)



In the engraving (Fig. 5), the impeccably dressed Suzon, wearing her cross, isshown talking to an old gentleman in the street, a metal cup in her hand,while a boy peers from behind a grilled window. Her small horse carries oneach side a wicker basket filled with canisters. The attention to detail is onceagain quite remarkable. On the left side of the horse, we see two emptycanisters, one large and one small, tilted; on the right, a canister standingupright, suggesting that the milkmaid’s work day is not yet over. The wickerbasket and the metal cup in the right hand of the milkmaid recall Greuze’s LaLaitière. The closed windows and doors located in the background indicatethat the scene takes place in the early hours of the morning. Few of theaforementioned details are given in the sujet de l’estampe, which suggests that

5. Unsigned engraving for ‘La Petite Laitière’. By permission of the ThomasFisher Rare Book Library (Toronto, Canada).



the artists had read the story or that Restif was closely involved in therepresentation of this particular scene. Small and delicate, wearing lightcolours, the figure of milkmaid contrasts powerfully with that of the manstanding in front of her, dressed in dark attire, whose body appears healthyand strong despite his reliance on a cane for support. The opposition in colourand shading accentuates the innocence of the young milkmaid and rendersmore powerful the thematic content of the scene. Nowhere is Restif ’s choicemore evident than in a comparison with two illustrated editions of La PetiteLaitière which appeared in the twentieth century. Lubin de Beauvais’s colourlithographs charge the story with an erotic flame absent from the originaltext.33 More faithful to the atmosphere of purity and innocence that envelopsRestif ’s text, Daniel du Janerand’s illustrative series in colour follows theadventures of the milkmaid though undefined space. Only the frontispiece isintertextually connected to the original engraving of this Contemporaine ducommun – it is a scene set in the street representing the milkmaid dressed inher red and white striped shirt with a bonnet covering her hair and a crosssuspended around her neck, being accosted by the old man. The building inthe background vaguely resembles the one in the original engraving and themiddle plane is occupied by a black horse. The objects of the trade havedisappeared; the focus is here entirely on the act of seduction.34

Restif ’s significant contribution to the cultural history and the socialconstruction of the pre-industrial material world through Les Contemporainesdu commun still needs to be evaluated globally and finally recognised in acomprehensive analysis. In so doing, we shall first need to recognise thatthis extensive work represents a one-man enterprise, a herculean task ofinventorying constrained by time and financial considerations despite thewriter’s best intentions, an encyclopaedic endeavour to be valued regardlessof the imperfections of the actual finished product.35 Nowhere is this ob-servation more evident than in the engravings in which the artists failedto reflect the author’s vision for his work or to contribute to the enrichment ofits visual translation.36 The visual representation of the contemporaines ducommun in their work environment, however, owes as much to Restif’simagination as it does to eighteenth-century visual culture, whose pillarsrepose on iconography, stylistic conventions, conditions of production andpatterns of consumption. This supports an argument for attributing lessresponsibility to Restif ’s involvement in the representation of the woman atwork, as literary scholars have tended to do thus far, and more to the artisticcontext to which these images belong. In many ways, Restif ’s engravingsabsorb the representational strategies deployed in the popular imagery thatinterested the readership of the Contemporaines, while also mirroring thetension underlining art during this period – the Rococo’s elegant and refinedfeminine universe and neoclassicism’s predilection for the moral instructionof readers and spectators. We thus need to consider these contemporaines ducommun less through a post-realist prism, less as unique products of Restif ’spersonal vision that were translated into images by Binet, and more as a



reflection of the artistic context in which they were created.37 Visually, thesefeminine characters often appear surrounded by Rococo clutter orrefinement, typically engaged in rapt communication or objectified by themale gaze, and performing their ordinary tasks in rooms humming with life.Ethnographic and technical details habitually resurface in these imageswithout dominating them as they do the plates in the Encyclopédie, fullysupporting Restif ’s claims for authenticity and for innovative participation inthe portrayal of characters. The clear delineation of the woman’s role as avirtuous wife, mother or daughter, as well as her steady portrayal as aproductive member of society, are at the core of the orderly and moral societyportrayed visually and textually in Restif ’s work – a work which defies easygeneric classification. The construction of the gallery of portraits of ordinarywomen in Les Contemporaines du commun should then be considered animportant part of Restif ’s contribution to the far-reaching Enlightenmentprogramme for the reform of society and of the ideology of work in general,underlined in his case by a belief in the individual contribution of women.

NOTES* I wish to thank David Adams, Roseann Runte, David Smith and Christina Smylitopoulos

for their critical and technical expertise, as well as the Research and Creative Committee atMount Allison University, which awarded me a Crake grant thus making possible thecompletion of the research for this article.

1. Les Contemporaines originally consisted of three series published in forty-two volumes: LesContemporaines, ou Avantures des plus jolies femmes de l’âge présent (1780-1782; 17 vols); LesContemporaines du commun, ou Avantures des belles marchandes, ouvrières, etc., de l’âge présent(1782-1783; 13 vols); and Les Contemporaines par gradation: ou Avantures des jolies femmes de l’âgeactuel, suivant la gradation des principaux états de la société (1783-1785; 12 vols). Although the titlepage indicates that the collection was printed in Leipzig by Büschel, it was actually published inParis first by the widow Duchesne and then by Belin. Gradually, Restif added other series to LesContemporaines: Les Françaises, ou XXXIV Exemples choisis dans les mœurs actuelles, propres àdiriger les filles, les femmes, les épouses et les mères (1786, 4 vols); Les Parisiennes, ou XL Caractèresgénéraux, pris dans les mœurs actuelles, propres à servir à l’instruction des personnes du sexe (1787, 4

vols); Les Filles du Palais-Royal (1790, 3 vols); and L’Année des Dames nationales, also sold as LesProvinciales, histoire des filles et femmes des provinces de Paris (1791-1794; 12 vols). For detaileddescriptions of these editions, see P[aul] L[acroix] Jacob, Bibliographie et iconographie de tous lesouvrages de Restif de la Bretonne (Paris, 1875; reprint New York, 1971). For practical reasons,references to Les Contemporaines given in the text of this article are to the 1988 Slatkine reprintof the second edition (the spelling and the punctuation have been modernised).

2. Ralph A. Nablow, The Addisonian Tradition in France: Passion and Objectivity in SocialObservation (Rutherford, NJ, 1990), p.137.

3. Charles Beuchat, De Restif à Flaubert, ou Le Naturalisme en marche (Paris, 1939), p.49.4. In Ces livres qu’on ne lit que d’une main. Lecture et lecteurs de livres pornographiques au XVIIIe

siècle (Paris, 1994), Jean M. Goulemot discusses a lengthy excerpt from Monsieur Nicolas whichperfectly illustrates Rousseau’s famous paraphrase designating this popular segment of bookproduction (p.54-60).

5. Some notable exceptions need to be mentioned: the engraving for ‘La Fille-garçon’(discussed by Christophe Martin, ‘Dangereux suppléments’: l’illustration du roman en France audix-huitième siècle [Louvain, 2005], p.119-21; and by Philip Stewart, Engraven Desire: Eros, Image,and Text in the French Eighteenth Century [Durham, NC, 1992], p.125-7), and the image used in‘Les Effets de la malédiction’ (see Stewart, Engraven Desire, p.268-9).

6. Without actually discussing the engravings, Claude Klein relegates them rather quickly tothe substantial and heterogeneous paratext of Les Contemporaines (‘Le paratexte desContemporaines’, Etudes rétiviennes 34 [2002], p.109-26, p.110).



7. It is the point of view maintained by Gérard Genette in the chapter ‘Le péritexte éditorial’of his Seuils (Paris, 1987), where he specifies: ‘J’appelle péritexte éditorial toute cette zone dupéritexte qui se trouve sous la responsabilité directe et principale (mais non exclusive) del’éditeur, ou peut-être, plus abstraitement mais plus exactement, de l’édition, c’est-à-dire du faitqu’un livre est édité, et éventuellement réédité, et proposé au public sous une ou plusieursprésentations plus ou moins diverses’ (I call editorial peritext all that area of the peritext whichis the direct and primary [but not exclusive] responsibility of the editor, or perhaps, moreabstractly but more exactly, of the edition, that is to say a book is edited and possibly reedited, andoffered to the reader in one or more forms with greater or lesser diversity’, p.21).

8. Nicholas Cronk, ‘Picturing the Text: Authorial Direction of Illustration in Eighteenth-Century French Fiction’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 14:3-4 (2002), p.393-414.

9. Louis Binet, who was also a painter, specialised in illustration, as an engraver and asa designer. Although his name is well known precisely because of his involvement in theillustration of Restif’s works, we still do not have at our disposal sufficient information about hislife and work. For some pertinent details, see Emile Bénézit, Dictionary of Artists (Paris, 2006),ii.495-6; Gordon N. Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, 1700 to 1914 (New York, 1982),i.141-2; and in particular Baron Roger Portalis, Les Dessinateurs d’illustrations au dix-huitièmesiècle (Paris, 1877), 1re partie, p.1-10. The opinion expressed by Jean-Claude Courbin-Demolinsregarding this artist has not dated at all: ‘Les XVIIIe et XIXe siècles n’ont pas tellement appréciéBinet, et en 1930 encore, les arbitres des canons académiques de la gravure classique ne fontpas à cet artiste la place qu’il mérite, répudient ses déformations qu’ils jugent excessives, et lerelèguent au 3

e ou au 4e rang des illustrateurs de son temps, âge d’or de la vignette et des

vignettistes’ (‘The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not appreciate Binet so much, andin 1930 still, the arbiters of the academic canons of classical engraving refused him therecognition he deserved, rejected what they regarded as his excessive distortions, and relegatedhim to the third or fourth rank of the illustrators of his day, which was a golden age of thevignette and of vignettists’; ‘Les femmes féïques de Binet’, L’Œil 81 [1961], p.22-31, p.22). Thecritic then adds that it is precisely these unusual deformations that are now judged interesting.Louis Binet is conspicuously absent from the new Dictionnaire encyclopédique du livre (Paris,2002- ), of which two volumes have appeared to date. On this extraordinary collaboration ofwriter and artist, see Pierre Testud’s ‘Rétif et Binet, ou la plume et le crayon dans LesContemporaines du commun’ (Etudes rétiviennes 31 [1999], p.49-64; special number devoted to‘Rétif et l’image’). The Restif specialist devotes his attention to the execution of the engravings,to the author’s personal contribution to the illustration of the Contemporaines as well as to thelinks established between text and image. It is interesting to note that he also sheds doubt on theexistence of letters exchanged by Restif and Binet (mentioned by John Grand-Carteret andsupposedly existing in a private collection).

10. Antony Griffiths, Prints for Books. Book Illustration in France 1760-1800, The PanizziLectures 2003 (London, 2004), p.42.

11. John Grand-Carteret, ‘Sur l’illustration dans l’œuvre de Restif ’, in Aventures galantes dequelques jolies femmes du XVIIIe siècle d’après Restif de la Bretonne (Paris, [1910]), p.459.

12. Pierre Testud, Rétif de la Bretonne et la création littéraire (Geneva and Paris, 1977), p.363.13. Cynthia J. Koepp and Steven Laurence Kaplan, ‘Introduction’, in Work in France:

Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice, ed. C. J. Koepp and S. L. Kaplan (Ithaca, NY,and London, 1986), p.21. The authors use the example of Candide, in which the Turk talkedabout work as being an antidote to boredom, vice and poverty, in order to ignite a discussion onattitudes to work in Enlightenment France: ‘Candide is symptomatic of the fact that by themid-eighteenth century a confused legacy of attitudes toward work inherited from classical andfeudal times and from religion clashed head-on with newer social, economic, and psychologicalrealities’ (p.13-53, p.21). Work as a source of dignity, work as a catalyst for good morals andbehaviour, and work as a positive source of wealth are all leitmotifs in Les Contemporaines ducommun not just an isolated theme treated in ‘La Jolie Tabletière’.

14. This assertion also applies to the illustrations. In her recent article ‘Séries de textes etsuites d’estampes en regard chez Rétif de la Bretonne’ (Cahiers de l’association internationale desétudes françaises 57 [2005], p.99-112), which examines volume 20 in the 1782 edition of LesContemporaines, Nicole Masson cites one written document in which Restif claims to have sentthe subjects of his Contemporaine to pose for the illustrator (p.111). On the subject of theresemblance of the engraved figures to real persons, see David Coward’s ‘Les gravures desContemporaines’ (Etudes rétiviennes 31 [1999], p.65-80, p.69-71). I will only mention the



description accompanying a drawing attributed to Binet for ‘La Jolie Loueuse de Chaises’ whichI found in an auction catalogue. This description provides a rare comparison of the drawingwith the published engraving (Catalogue de vente, Paris au temps de Versailles, XVIIe et XVIIIe

siècles. Livres – Documents – Autographes. Dessins originaux de Binet et Vivant Denon. Affiches etgravures, Hôtel Drouot, Salle 9, les 27 et 28 mars 1944, p.53). According to the author of thenotice, Restif’s portrait, true-to-life in the drawing, is less recognisable in the engraving, butGrimod de La Reynière’s disguised portrait apparently includes a well-known physicalimperfection. The author of this notice quotes Paul Lacroix, who had observed that ‘quelquesportraits trop ressemblants ont du être changés’ (’some of the portraits bearing too close aresemblance to the original had to be changed’) in order to protect the individuals involved.

15. Raymond Joly is perhaps the most severe critic of these engravings: ‘alors qu’au débutdes Contemporaines du commun (t. XVIII et suivants), les héroïnes nous sont montrées dans leurboutique, entourées de quelques spécimens de marchandise, ces indications déjà fort sché-matiques disparaissent vite; les estampes ne représentent plus que des “scènes intéressantes”,c’est-à-dire des assemblées de dames pressées comme des sardines et présentant au spectateur,sous de toilettes variées, un même minois, une même taille, et le même pied, monstrueux àforce de petitesse; parfois figurent dans quelque guirlande des outils rappelant la profession deshéroïnes: la peinture des conditions ne va pas plus loin que le titre et l’emblème’ (‘Whereas atthe start of the Les Contemporaines du commun (vol. 18 and ff.), the heroines are shown in theirshops, surrounded by some samples of their wares, these very schematic indications arerapidly dispensed with; thereafter, the engravings show only “interesting scenes”, namelygroups of women pressed together like sardines, and offering the viewer, in their various formsof dress, the same pretty face, the same waist, and the same foot, which is monstrous preciselybecause it is so small; sometimes there is an ornamental insert showing the tools whichremind us of the heroine’s profession; the depiction of their place in society is limited to thetitle and the emblem’; Deux Etudes sur la préhistoire du réalisme: Diderot, Rétif de la Bretonne[Quebec, 1969], p.12).

16. Jean Assézat writes: ‘C’est de lui que date, dans notre littérature, ce courant de réalité queBalzac recherchait avec tant de patience’ (‘It is from him that dates in French literature therealist current for which Balzac searched so patiently’; J. Rives Childs, Restif de la Bretonne:Témoignages et jugements [Paris, 1949], p.79). In De Restif à Flaubert, ou Le Naturalisme en marche,Charles Beuchat declares him the father and initiator of naturalism (p.34).

17. Pierre Testud finds this engraving somewhat unusual because the female vendor is notplaced at the centre of the image; he remarks that, nonetheless, the reader’s attention is directedtowards her by the pointed look and gesturing hands of three men at the back as well as by themale buyer’s right hand (‘Rétif et Binet’, p.58). The critic also signals the imposing proportionsof the buyer, which is, in my opinion, just a way to emphasise the constant danger to which thestreet vendors are exposed.

18. The Bibliographie universelle de Michaud states: ‘ces productions informes étaientrecherchées avidement, surtout dans les pays étrangers, où on les regardait comme despeintures fidèles des mœurs de Paris’ (’these imperfect products were avidly sought after,especially in foreign countries, where they were seen as authentic representations of Parisianmores’). Gérard de Nerval adds: ‘ses longues séries de contes [...] firent les délices de la provinceet de l’étranger longtemps après que Paris les eut oubliés’ (‘his long series of tales [...] were thedelight of the provinces and foreign countries long after Paris had forgotten them’). For more onthe reception of Restif’s Contemporaines, see J. Rives Childs, Restif de la Bretonne: Témoignages etjugements, from which I am quoting here (p.51 and p.64).

19. Jules Soury, Portraits du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1879), quoted by Rives Childs, Restif de laBretonne: Témoignages et jugements, p.85.

20. In his discussion of ‘La Fille du savetier du coin’, Pierre Testud insists on the origin of thecobbler’s fortune, which is not his profession practised ‘sous un petit couvert de toile cirée’(xix.87) but a recompense for a service rendered to a wealthy nobleman. It is by this means thatthe cobbler was able to provide his daughter with a good education and a substantial dowry, andthat he can now afford to live in a bourgeois apartment. Using this story as an example, the criticemphasises what he presents as the general sterilisation of professions and of workers thatpurifies both the text and the image: ‘dans l’iconographie des Contemporaines du commun, lesordide, la misère, la laideur, la guenille sont absents; ces caractères sont remplacés par unesthétisme qui aseptise la condition populaire, la rend présentable, et même admirable, grâce à labeauté du costume féminin, toujours au premier plan’ (‘The sordid, the poverty-stricken, the



ugly, the ragged, find no place in the iconography of Les Contemporaines du commun; thesefeatures are replaced by an aestheticism which neutralises the condition of the common people,making it presentable, and even admirable, thanks to the beautiful clothes worn by the women,which are always given prominence’; ‘Rétif et les “Contemporaines du commun”’, Etudesrétiviennes 8 [1988], p.43-9, p.45). I believe that the emphasis on the elaborate and elegantfeminine dresses stems from an unconventional understanding of the marketing power offashion due to its ability to embody social aspirations and lifestyles. In this respect, the image isa marketing device, a way to sell the book. On Restif’s view of clothing and fashion, see Gabriel-Robert Thibault’s numerous articles published in the Etudes rétiviennes.

21. Baron Roger Portalis, Les Dessinateurs d’illustrations au dix-huitième siècle, p.2-3.22. William H. Sewell, ‘Visions of Labour: Illustrations of the Mechanical Arts before, in, and

after Diderot’s Encyclopédie’, in Work in France, ed. Koepp and Kaplan, p.258-86, p.260.23. David Coward, ‘Les gravures des Contemporaines’, p.73.24. Abbé Jaubert, Vocabulaire technique, ou Dictionnaire raisonné de tous les termes usités dans les

arts et métiers (Lyon: A. Leroy, 1801), v.79.25. Charles Monselet, Rétif de la Bretonne, sa vie et ses amours (Paris, 1858), p.2.26. Geoffrey Crossick, ‘Past Masters: In Search of the Artisan in European History’, The

Artisan and the European Town, 1500-1900 (Aldershot, 1997), p.9. Crossick is summarisingArlette Farge’s research.

27. David Coward, The Philosophy of Restif de la Bretonne, SVEC 283 (1991), p.175.28. David Coward remarks in passing that Restif ‘se réclamait de Callot’ but that he ‘fait usage

des lieux communs de l’univers romanesque et théâtral’ (‘used common tropes from the worldof the novel and the theatre’; ‘Les gravures des Contemporaines’, p.77).

29. Vincent Milliot, ‘Le travail sans le geste. Les représentations iconographiques des petitsmétiers parisiens (XVIe-XVIIIe s.)’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 41-1 (1994), p.5-28,p.23.

30. Alex Sokalski, ‘Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Single Illustrations of Boufflers’sReine de Golconde’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 10:3 (1998), p.341-62, p.342.

31. Musée Carnavalet, Rétif de la Bretonne: Le Paris populaire. Carmontelle: Le Paris mondain(Paris, 1934), p.13.

32. Philip Stewart, Engraven Desire, p.75-80.33. Restif de la Bretonne, La Petite Laitière (Paris, 1911).34. Restif de la Bretonne, La Petite Laitière (Paris, 1945).35. In ‘Séries de textes et suites d’estampes en regard chez Rétif de la Bretonne’, Nicole

Masson considers Les Contemporaines to be a transitional work to what she calls the ‘littératurepanoramique’ that developed in the nineteenth century with works such as Victor-Joseph-Estienne de Jouy’s L’Hermite de la Chaussée d’Antin (1813) and the collective Les Français peints pareux-mêmes (1840-1842) (p.109). Masson looks at three functions served by the illustrations ofRestif’s work: narration, documentation and panorama. The critic argues that Restif’s interestwas always in the particular, in the individual, and not in the social type. David Coward notesthat Restif anticipates the photojournalism of the nineteenth-century illustrated magazine withits predilection for the marginalised (‘Les gravures des Contemporaines’, p.73).

36. According to Pierre Testud, the responsibility for recreating a specific work environmentfalls on Binet who often disappoints but compensates for this by his attention to fashion: ‘l’in-térêt documentaire des illustrations est plus dans la représentation du vêtement féminin quedans celle des outils et des marchandises’ (‘the documentary interest of the illustrations liesmore in the way in which women’s clothing is shown than in the depiction of implements andgoods’), creating thus a ‘Monument du costume avant la lettre’ (‘Rétif et Binet’, p.59).

37. Although they fully recognise the literary nature and scope of texts such as LesContemporaines and Les Nuits de Paris, historians do not hesitate to exploit them fully in theiranalyses. See, for instance, Daniel Roche’s The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the18th Century, originally published in French in 1981, translated into English by Marie Evans inassociation with Gwynne Lewis (Leamington Spa, 1987).

Christina Ionescu is an Assistant Professor of French in the Department of ModernLanguages and Literatures at Mount Allison University (Canada). She is a dix-huitiémiste witha specialisation in word and image theory who has published on the work of Françoise deGraffigny.



A Gallery of Ordinary Portraits in Words and Images: Restif de La Bretonne's Les Contemporaines du...

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