Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Volume 14
Issue 3 Fiction and Print Culture / Genre romanesque
et culture de limprim
Article 12
4-1-2002
Gender and Reading in the Late Eighteenth
Century: Te Bibliothque Universelle des Romans
Martin Hall
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Recommended Citation
Hall, Martin (2002) "Gender and Reading in the Late Eighteenth Century: Te Bibliothque Universelle des Romans," Eighteenth-
Century Fiction: Vol. 14: Iss. 3, Article 12.
Available at: htp://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/ecf/vol14/iss3/12
Gender and Reading in the Late Eighteenth Century: Te Bibliothque
Universelle des Romans
Abstract
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the number of readers and of books published increased
considerably. Tere were not only more readers but diferent sorts of readers, with diferent expectations and
intentions. Changes were taking place in the market for books, and authors and publishers responded to these
changes, seeking to target the new readers with diferent products and diferent marketing strategies. In
France, the period is marked by a great increase in the scope and diversity of publishing ventures, and by a
remarkable upsurge in the output of fction.
Tis article is available in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: htp://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/ecf/vol14/iss3/12
Gender and Reading
in the Late Eighteenth Century:
The Bibliotheque Universelle des Romans
Martin Hall
I
n the second half of the eighteenth century, the number of read-
ers and of books published increased considerably. There were
not only more readers but different sorts of readers, with differ-
ent expectations and intentions. Changes were taking place in the
market for books, and authors and publishers responded to these
changes, seeking to target the new readers with different products
and different marketing strategies. In France, the period is marked
by a great increase in the scope and diversity of publishing ventures,
and by a remarkable upsurge in the output of fiction.
l
These changes form the context in which this article will examine
one of the most original publishing ventures of the period, the Bib-
liotheque Universelle des Romans (hereafter BUR), the most ambitious
collection of prose fiction produced during the eighteenth century.2
Unlike earlier fiction anthologies, this forerunner of the Reader's Di-
gest did not offer its readers complete works, but extracts, summaries,
1 For an overview of the changes taking place in publishing, see David Bellos, "La Con-
joncture de la production," His/Dire de l'edilion fmnf.aise, ed. Henri-jean Martin and Roger
Chartier, 4 vols (Paris: Promodis, 1983-87), vol. 2, Le Livre /riolllphanl, 1660-1830, pp. 552-
57. For the novel, see Bibliogmphie till genre rDlIlanesq"efmllf.ais, 1751-1800, ed. Angus M a l ~
tin, Vivienne G. Mylne, and Richard Frautschi (London: Mansell, 1977), pp. xxxvi-xxxviii.
Between 1751 and 1800, novel production quadrupled.
2 The Biblio/heqlle Universelle des ROlllans appeared from July 1775 to June 1789 at a rate of
sixteen issues a year, each of about two hundred decimo pages.
El GHTEENTHCENTURY FI CTI ON, Volume 14, Numbers 3-4, April-July 2002
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and compilations of prose fiction from the most ancient times to
the present.
3
Indeed, one of the most distinctive features of the pro-
ject was its encyclopedic ambition, proclaimed in the introduction to
the first volume," and confirmed in the coverage of the subsequent
volumes. Over some fifteen years, it offered its subscribers the op-
portunity to sample novels from France, Britain, and Germany, and
narrative fiction from almost every known literature. Even more dis-
tinctive, perhaps, than this breadth of reference was its promotion
of pre-seventeenth-century French literature, and in particular the
medieval epic and later "roman de chevalerie."5
Editors, Texts, and Readers
This article will not be concerned with the literary-historical im-
portance of the BUR, but with issues related to reading and to the
reader. Hence, I will deal less with matters of content (what fiction
was chosen and how it was processed) than with the paratextual ap-
paratus of presentation (editorial introductions, notes, biographical
entries) which frames the material presented. My aim can be cla-
rified by reference to the most important study of the BUR, Roger
Poirier's 1976 monograph.
6
He explains the evolution of the BUR
in terms of its two editors-in-chief. The first was the well-connected
bibliophile Marc Antoine Rene de Voyer d'Argenson, marquis de
3 On the anthologization of prose fiction in England, see Robert D. Mayo, The English Novel
in the iVlagazines 1740-1815 (London: Oxford University Press; Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1962), esp. appendix 2, "Magazines Specializing in Prose Fiction," pp.
363-69. Redaction (the term Mayo uses to describe the process of extraction or abridg-
ment characte,-istic of the BUR) was rare before the nineteenth centull', with little of the
scope or ambition of the BUR. No comparable study exists of French prose fiction, but
Elisabeth Arend offers a useful survey of related material, "Bibliolheque. "Ceisliger Rau111 eines
jahrhunderls. Hunderl juhre!rtlnzosisrher Lilemllllgeschich!e i1ll Spiegel gleiclll/a111 iger Bibliogm/)h-
ien, uilschriJlen und Anthologien (1685-1789) (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag Jakob Hiller,
1987).
4 "[La lecture des romans], dirigee par la Philosophie & embrassant la generalite des Fic-
tions, devient I'etude la plus sure & la plus suivie de I'Histoire secrette & la plus fidelle,
par les faits qU'elle rassemble & les mysteres qu'elle devoile. C'est une chaine d'un nou-
veau genre, dont il faut saisir & suivre la progression: elle lie tous les temps, & marque
pour ainsi dire,les progres du genie & la peinture des passions." BUR,juilletl775, 1:6.
5 For the detail of what appeared, see Angus Martin, "La Bibliotheque Universelle des Ro-
mans," Studies on Voltaire and Ihe Eighleellth Cenlu,)' 231 (1985), 1-473.
6 Roger Poirier, La Bibliolhe'lue ulliverselle des romans. Rt!dacleurs, lexles, publir (Geneva: Droz,
1976).
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UNIVU?SU,U:' DLS ROivlANS 773
Paulmy, the second Jean-Franc;:ois Bastide.
7
Paulmy launches a pub-
lication with up-market ambitions, seeking in particular to promote
a revival of interest in early French literature and aiming at an af-
fluent and educated public comparable to that which subscribed
to the Encyclopedie. When this strategy proves a commercial failure,
Paul my gives way to the "roturier" Bastide, who rescues the enter-
prise by taking it down-market, refocusing its content to appeal to a
less educated and predominantly female readership.8
Poirier's account makes broad sense of the development of the
BUR, but at the cost of an excessive reliance on unverifiable infer-
ence and an exaggeration of differences in editorial strategy. As his
subtitle-RedacteU'rs, textes, public-suggests, he organizes his study in
terms of a model based on producer, product, and consumer. His
formulation of the relationship of these elements introduces an im-
portant distinction between "real" and "virtual" reader:
il ya en effet correlation tres etroite entre le lecteur et la collection alaquelle
il s'est abonne; l'editeur etant tributaire, pour le succes de celle-ci des gOltts
de ce lecteur, mais ces gouts ne sont pas tOluours ceux qu'il avait imagines au
depart ou qu'il avait cru pouvoir imposer ason lecteur. Lecteur virtuel d'une
part, lecteur reel d'autre part dont nous avons essaye, dans un dernier chapitre,
de degager les caracteristiques.
9
The crucial question which this passage raises, but which Poirier
does not address, is the following: how were this "real" reader's
tastes "imagined"? As Joan DeJean has shown in a recent study of
the "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes," the period extending
from the late seventeenth century through to the eighteenth was
marked by the growing anxiety which writers and critics felt as their
public became more diverse and less well defined.
lo
This anxiety was
particularly marked in the case of the novel, where the lack of any es-
tablished tradition of reception heightened the perception that the
consensus which prevailed between writers and readers in an earlier
period had broken down. We might then put Poirier's question more
7 See Poirier, p. 9. Bastide, who held the "privilege" for the publication from the start, was,
according to Poirier, the "prete-nom" for Paulmy, and for another nobleman, Louis de la
Vergne de Broussin de Tressan.
8 See Poirier, pp. 110-11,120-22.
9 Poirier, p. 7.
10 Joan DeJean, Ancients against Modems: Cl/Ill/re Wars find the /\Ilalling of a "Fin de Siee/e"
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
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broadly: how did editorial policy determine what sort of reader to
address, when the product being offered was different from any-
thing proposed before, and when the market itself was changing?
Like salesmen before and after them, the editors of the BUR had
to target their product at a customer, and at a customer whom they
had to construct ("imaginer") beforehand. This is the "Iecteur vir-
tuel" to whom Poirier refers, but whose construction he does not ad-
dress. The virtual reader could not be invented out of thin air. Its
construction would necessarily be based on the assumptions which
the editors made about their potential readership, and such assump-
tions would, to a significant degree, be rooted in the cultural norms
and expectations of the period.
In the absence of precise socioeconomic information about the
subscribers,JI Poirier's approach might seem a plausible one, but it
is flawed by the circularity of its argument.
12
Ifthe concept ofthe "vir-
tual" reader remains a valuable one, it is not as evidence which points
to a "real" reader. The inferential path runs in the opposite direc-
tion, towards the elucidation of the assumptions made by the editors
of the BURin promoting their product. The "virtual" reader is a con-
struct, a peculiarly complex one in the case of the BUR since he or
she is composed through different editorial perceptions and inten-
tions (Bastide, for instance, may well not have had the same reader
in mind as Paulmy). Moreover, the elaboration of the virtual reader
entails other complex constructions, and in particular the elabora-
tion ofa "virtual editor"-the vis-a-vis of the virtual reader-who pro-
poses texts, explains the context and method of presentation and so
on, who becomes, in fact, a participant in a "virtual" relationship. Of
course, the link between real and virtual editor is more readily ascer-
tained than that between real and virtual reader. In the case of many
of the texts presented in the BUR we know who prepared and intro-
duced them. The literary preferences and presentational strategies
of some of the major contributors can be defined. However, the vir-
tual editor must be granted some autonomy. What individual con-
tributors affirm in the editorial pages of the BUR is not solely the
I I For what little information has been published on the subscribers, see Anne Sauvy, "Lec-
teurs du siecle: les Abonnes de la Bibliotheque Universelle des Romans: premieres ap-
proches," A ustra!iall foun/al ofFrench Studies 23 (I986), 48-60.
12 Poirier infers the profile of a typical reader from internal and then confirms his
inferences by reference to anecdotal evidence and contemporary comments. The problem
is that the same assumptions or even prejudices about who reads what, and how, will inform
both the editorial constructs of the BUR and the corroborative material Poirier adduces.
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DES ROMANS 775
expression of their own views or personalities. It is also bound up
with editorial strategies which derive from a shared and largely un-
formulated set of assumptions similar to those \vhich construct the
virtual reader.
13
The editorial pages of the BUR dramatize the relationship between
editor and reader. Appeals are made to potential readers; the product
is presented in different ways to appeal to different tastes; protest-
ations of quality, authenticity, or whatever are made; the "reader"
is given a critical voice.
14
On occasion, the boundary line between
the fiction presented and its framing paratext becomes blurred as
the reader-editor relationship is projected in dialogues and letters
which become "mini-fictions" in their own right. Furthermore, the
texts themselves might also be said to take on a virtual existence.
Again, just as I would not seek to deny that "real" editors made
"real" decisions in the process of presenting texts and putting to-
gether the successive issues of the BUR, so I would not deny that
the texts offered to the reader have a "real" existence. Often, we
are given details of the process by which these texts have come to be
presented. We are told that an extract or abridgment has been made
from a particular manuscript or edition; we are given an explana-
tion andjustification of the treatment to which it has been subjected.
Beyond this, however, in the figuring of the relationship between ed-
itor and reader, the product itself, the text, taking on a virtual reality,
becomes part of a process of negotiation. 15
I will be concerned in the pages which follow with exploring the
space of mediation which the editorial pages of the BUR create. This
paratext, surrounding and supporting the fictional extracts, is itself
a sort of fiction. An anthology, by its nature, mediates between a
literary culture and a readership, but it also represents this act of
mediation in the discourse through which it addresses its readership.
It thereby creates a literary "space" in the sense in which Jacques
Dubois uses this term, that is, a set of conventional arrangements
13 For this reason, I will not distinguish between particular editors' preferences and assump-
tions. Such a study remains to be undertaken, but is beyond the scope of this article. See
Poirier pp. 9-31 for information on editors and contributors.
14 See, for instance, avril1784, 1:131-32.
15 The editors of the BUR were liule different from modern advertisers, who, in promoting
their product, also create a "virtual" product.
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which allow the process of mediation to take place.
16
The importance
of the BUR lies not simply in its proclaimed ambition to offer an
encyclopedic overview of prose fiction, or even in the originality of
its conception of what constitutes literary value. In addition, it offers
an insight into the way in which the literary exchange, the "contrat
de lecture" of producer and reader, was being transformed in the
last decades of the eighteenth century.
Gender and the Construction of the Reader
An important point made in a recent article on the diversification
of reading and readers in the first half of the nineteenth century is
that the industrialization of publishing in Western Europe and the
commodification of books were achieved through the targeting of
specific categories of reader, in particular, women, children, and the
working class.
1i
The degree of targeting might be new, the categor-
ies were not. Gender, class, and age were already the categories to
which eighteenth-century critics and writers referred when discus-
sing readers and reading, and of these, gender remained the most
important throughout the century. Thus while the editors of the
BUR were aware that their readers belonged to different classes and
age groups,18 they constructed their reader primarily by gender: to
read was to read as a man or as a woman.
This proposition can be verified by returning to Poirier's account
of the BUR, and to the change of editorship which he highlights as
the turning point in its history. As I suggested earlier, I have no quar-
rel with Poirier's basic account of this event. My only reservation is
that he does not pay sufficient attention to the manner in which
it \-vas announced to subscribers. The change occurred towards the
16 Jacques Dubois, L'lnslillllion rle la litteralllre. II/Irorlllrlion rl line sociologie (Brussels: Labor,
1978). See in particular pp. 10-15. The concept of mediation in the context of anthologies
is explored by Barbara M. Benedict, Making Ihe Morlem Reader: ClIltllrallVledialion in Early
Modem Lileml)" Anlhologies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). This is the most
important study of anthologies in the early modern period, but confines itself to English
literature.
17 See Martyn Lyons, "Les Nouveaux Lecteurs au XIX" siecle. Femmes, enfants, ouvriers,"
Hisloire de la leclllre dallS le monrle orcidenlal 50115 la direclion de Cllglielmo Cavalo el Roger Clwrtier
(Paris: Seuil, 1997), chap. 12, pp. 365-400.
18 One of the distinctive features of the BUR is indeed its attempt to explain the relationship
between a given culture and its literature in terms of the categories of class and age. See in
particular avril 1786, pp. 155-58.
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UNllfERSUJI,' DES ROMANS in
end of 1778, and was signalled in the opening pages of the first is-
sue of 1779, Subscribers were informed that Paulmy had withdrawn,
but Bastide was not named as his successor. Instead, a strange, doubt-
less fictional, epistolary exchange was set up between the Editor and
an anonymous female Subscriber.
19
The issue opened with the Edi-
tor's "Epltre" to this Contributor, entitled "A celle a qui je dois ce
volume." It was followed by the announcement of Paulmy's with-
drawal, and reassurances to readers about quality and continuity.
Before the actual selection, we are given the letter which accom-
panied the Contribution. These two letters are given here in their
entirety, beginning with the Editor's answer:
Je ne vous connois pas Madame, & ne chercherai pas avous connoitre. Deja
trop occupe, peut-etre, de votre procede genereux, j'apprens que vous etes
tresjolie. L'indiscret ami qui m'a fait cet aveu, en est puni par mes reproches;
il connoissoit ma sensibilite. Depuis ce moment, lorsqu'une femme, qui s'offre
a mes yeux pour la premiere fois, fixe sur moi les siens, si elle a des attrai ts,
je me sens trouble,je suis pret alui demander grace;je crois tOlUOurs qu'elle
va m'instruire de ce que je veux ignorer; & si je ne m'enfuis pas, c'est qu'il
n'est guere possible de fuir l'objet qu'on craint d'aimer. De grace, Madame,
ne m'apprenezjamais ce queje ne veux pas savoir. En me tirant d'embarras,
vous m'avez jete dans un embarras plus grand. Il est sans doute plus facile
de faire un Volume en peu de jours, que d'eviter tous les jours l'occasion
d'exprimer sa reconnoissance.Je dois au Public les momens & les soins que ce
sentiment obtiendroit pour vos channes; en m'obligeant vous m'auriez trahi;
malgre vous-meme, je ne pourrois plus m'occuper que de vous. Je dois cepen-
dant m'acquitter; & vousjugez bien que ce dernier devoir sacre sera bien rem-
pli) [sic] Votre sexe deviendra I'objet particulier de mes travaux; pour l'amuser,
je penserai avous, pour l'i nteresser, je me rappellerai sans cesse ce que je vous
dois; & je ferai parler les Amans, comme si je vous aurois parle moi-meme, si
j'avois pu me livrer au bonheur de vous servir. Combien d'Auteurs froids vont
vous devoir de la reconnoissance! Chaque expression foible, dans leur Ouv-
rage, sera animee par le feu dontj'aurois briHe pour vous. Vous saurez le secret
de mes motifs; vous jouirez tous les jours d 'un nOll\'el hommage; & sans nous
voir, nous serons en commerce continue!' Vous vous direz C'est pour moi
qu'il a ecrit cette phrase si tendre, cette lettre si passion nee: c'est en pensant a
moi qu'il a imagine ces soins, ces discours qui font palpiter cette belle. Votre
cceur sensible palpitera peut-etre aussi! Combien d'Amans plus reels & plus
heureux n'ontjamais eu une recompense aussi douce, ni obtenu une situation
aussi flatteuse!20
19 Capitalization of terms such as subscriber, reader, editor, and text will henceforth be used
to indicate that I am referring to the "virtual" as opposed to the "real" entity.
20 BUR,janvier 1779, 1: iii-vi. I have found no bibliographical record of the "contribution,"
which is entitled Oh! que de choses. Poirier attributes it to Bastide (p. 59).
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The Contributor's letter reads as follows:
Je suis femme, Monsieur; vous devez connoitre mon sexe, puisque vous ana-
Iysez les Romans. Nous aimons adonner; nous aimons aetre prevenues; nous
aimons a trouver une volonte soumise a la notre, un cceur reconnoissant de
nos bontes. Je cherche cela en vous. Un enchainement de circonstances m'a
rendu maitresse absolue d'un Manuscrit dontje suis fiere. Tout y est vrai malgre
la forme romanesque: cette forme vous y donne des droits; & je vous I'adresse.
J'exige, quoiqu'il soit bien tard, que vous en composiez votre prochain Volume.
L'ordre alphabetique que vous suivez, ne peut etre un obstacle a mes vceux,
puisque la lettre initiale du titre est un A. Enfin, Monsieur, c'est un projet
forme, c'est une passion; c'est tout ce qu'il faut pour esperer que vous ne
tromperez pas ma confiance.
21
These passages substantiate Poirier's claim that the change of edit-
orship indicated a change in editorial policy. The gist of the "Epitre"
might be expressed as "I, the new (male) Editor, will now write with
you, the (female) Reader, in mind." In addition, it seems legitimate
to see in the invention of the Reader-Contributor and her interven-
tion in editorial decisions a signal that the BUR was abandoning the
rigid classification system adopted by Paulmy, and encouraging a
more eclectic selection of materials and a more active form of reader
participation. And it is hard to disagree with Poirier that all this
was intended to suggest that the BUR was moving towards a more
"woman-friendly" formula, and jettisoning the "encyclopediste" am-
bitions of Paulmy.
These conclusions, however, hardly offer a complete explanation
of what is going on in the epistolary mini-fiction cited above. In the
first place, we might ask why it is so insistently erotic, why it goes
beyond the usual "galant" exchange, in which the lady grants a fa-
vour and the man reciprocates in a display of submissive gratitude.
It suggests a familiar fantasy in which a woman grants a man sexual
favours, under cover of anonymity, leaving him subsequently to scan
each female face he sees in an attempt to discover whether this is his
erstwhile partner. Furthermore, the anonymity of the exchange is
the precondition of its intensity-not only of its intensity, but also of
its replicability in further exchanges which will be equally anonym-
ous. The Editor-Lover will become the Author-Lover, writing to other
unknown women, transforming the work of others in order to gratifY
other unknown women, his Mistress-Readers.
21 BUR,janvier 1779, I: ix-x.
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This erotIcIzation of the reading relationship is not explicable
simply as a sales pitch to the female reader. It refers us to the chan-
ging conditions of reading and publishing in Western culture dur-
ing the last decades of the eighteenth century. Over the course of
the preceding century, the relationship between writers and their
public had become less intimate, and more anonymous-the first-
generation readers of La Ptincesse de Cleves constituted a relatively
small, homogeneous, and definable group compared to the mass of
readers who read La Nouvelle Heloise. Bastide's wooing of the female
reader must be read in this perspective, and also in the light of an-
other important development in the cultural space which reading
was coming to occupy in Western culture, a space increasingly con-
structed as private and intimate. To read was less and less to read
aloud to a listener, it was becoming essentially a process of reading
to oneself silently. And the Space of reading was thereby changing
from a public to a private one. At the same time, publishing was
becoming a large-scale commercial activity, foreshadowing its trans-
formation into an industry of mass consumption in the following
century, when different kinds of reader might be profiled and tar-
geted, but the individual reader remained anonymous. These two
tendencies which define the modern relationship between the pur-
veyor and the consumer of literature (the growing anonymity of the
readership and the heightened emphasis on reading as intimate and
private activity) thus find a curiously eroticized expression in the an-
nouncement of the editorial changes in the BUR22 The intimation
of change is expressed in the language of the past, as a somewhat
arch piece of "galant" eroticism becomes a metaphor for a funda-
mental change in the practice of reading and in the relationship
between the producer and consumer.
Women Writers and Readers
Gender is the dominant category through which critics of the novel
and social commentators in the eighteenth century sought to un-
derstand who read novels, and how. Their arguments on this topic
tend to propose answers in terms of a system of differentiation based
22 Pictorial representations of reading in the eighteenth century regularly associated intimate
reading with the female reader. See Roger Chartier, "Du livre au lire," Pm/iqtles de lalec/tlre,
ed. Roger Chartier (Paris: Payot, 1993), pp. 93-94.
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780 EIGHTEENTH-CENT RY FICTIOl
on gender stereotypes, which, predictably, turn out to be misogyn-
istic. The passages which I have just examined illustrate the point.
The view that they signal a shift to a more "woman-friendly" editor-
ial posture may seem at first reading plausible, but the concessions
to the female Reader are something of a Greek gift. We might be-
gin with a seemingly minor point, the disruption of the classifica-
tion system. In the Contributor's letter, a change in the classification
system (actually introduced a year earlier) is made to seem a con-
cession to female wilfulness. Impatient to satisfy her "passion," She
cannot be bothered to "wait her turn," and insists on seeing her con-
tribution inserted without delay. By implication, "male" order and
rational classification are being overthrown by "female" whim. The
set of oppositions which is constructed is hardly original: male ra-
tionality and order versus female spontaneity and "passion." We may
note that the Contributor identifies her position vis-ri-vis the Editor
(,Je suis femme, Monsieur; vous devez connoitre mon sexe, puisque
vous analysez les Romans") in terms which not only repeat the tra-
ditional identification of the novel as specifically a woman's
but which also define male and female in terms which set the former
over the latter: She is defined simply by being a woman, He by his
knowledge of Her; He is "savant," and She is the object of his "sa-
voir." While Bastide's mini-fiction might initially seem to signal that
the BUR is being realigned to attract a female readership, the terms
of the tacit contract which the epistolary exchange sets up consign
female Contributor and male Editor to roles based upon traditional
assumptions about gender. We should further note that the "plot"
of this fiction begins with a woman figured as an active (even dis-
ruptive) participant in editorial decision making, possibly even the
author of the piece she submits, and concludes with a set of passive
female Readers, "serviced" by the male Editor. This transformation
from active Contributor to passive Reader is important in two re-
spects. The evolution of the anthology in the eighteenth century
might be said to reflect the gradual reduction in the element of
reader-participation in the compilation of And, while
23 See Georges May, Le Dilemme <ill roman all xl'lIf sierle, EllIdes SlIr les m/JIJorls dll roman el de la
rriliqlle (/7/5-1761) (Paris and New Hm'en: Yale University Press and Presses niversitaires
de France, 1963), chap. 8, "Feminisme et roman,"
24 See Benedict, p, 11. Benedict makes the point that in England, the more participatory
misrellan)' of the late seventeenth century loses ground in the eighteenth century to the
more editor-dominated anl/lOlog)',
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the new Editor proclaims his devotion to the principle of such parti-
cipation, the final thrust of his tale is to position him as the exclusive
selector and provider of material.
It is also significant that it should be a female Contributor who is
reduced to passive Reader. This development must be read in the
context of the changing attitudes to women as novelists, and to the
relationship between gender and genre in the last decades of the
eighteenth century. Over the course of the century, as the novel be-
came the dominant literary genre, the importance of women's con-
tributions to the genre was downgraded. The BUR, in broad terms,
reflects this process, both in the assumptions made about women
writers and in the presentation of their work. The BUR's presenta-
tion of women writers, however, is not consistently disparaging. In
certain cases (La Fayette is the obvious example), the author's repu-
tation has become so well established as to be unassailable. In other
cases, the sort of novel which editorial policy promotes may lead to
the rehabilitation of specific women writers-an example of this is
Madeleine de Scudery, who is swept up in editorial enthusiasm for
the "Grand Roman" of the seventeenth century.25
The more typical entries are those which deal with less well known
writers. Here, we find a range of approaches which, in one way or an-
other, divert attention away from the "ceuvre," and towards other,
paraliterary considerations. The "notice" devoted to Villedieu, for
instance, gives little space to consideration of her novels, and, in-
stead, turns to a discussion of her colourful life. The lengthy entry
on Christine de Pisan likewise moves away from the works to the bio-
graphy, or, more accurately, to a romantic confection of the author's
life and loves, replete with cliches about women's tender hearts.
In both these cases, the biographical elements, more lengthy and
more romanticized than in the case of male writers, finally suffoc-
ate any discussion of the actual quality of the author's fiction. In a
more malicious vein, the entry on Marguerite de Lussan takes up
a familiar eighteenth-century line on women novelists, which ques-
tions whether they actually wrote the novels attributed to them, and
proposes that they were in fact helped by one or more men. Hav-
ing insinuated doubts about her authorship, the editor thenjokingly
refers to her extensive male acquaintance, but rejects any suggestion
that she was loose-living: she was too ugly, indeed almost masculine
25 BUR, octobre 1780, 1:4-5.
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782 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
in appearance. And so to the punch-line: she wrote like a woman
and looked like a man. The hatchet job is complete: any serious con-
sideration of Lussan's novels has been buried beneath the portrait
of a frumpish bluestocking.
26
The overt misogyny of the Lussan entry is not the norm. Generally,
praise rather than obloquy is the chosen method of depreciation,
praise in particular of supposedly feminine characteristics. Thus the
"notice" on Marguerite de Navarre celebrates her "feminine" qual-
ities (piety, gentleness), but this only serves to occlude any discus-
sion of her work. Riccoboni's Emestine, for instance, is a "fiction
ingenieuse, delicatement pensee." This sort of praise is character-
istic of the period and of the BUR Its implications become obvious
in the following statement:
La princesse de Cleves, milady Catesbi, le marquis de Rozelle, Stephanie, &
tant d'autres romans interessans, nous ont prouve que le genre d'ouvrage Oll
le cceur humain est devoile avec tant d'adresse, appartient par excellence ace
sexe, aqui la nature a confie les leviers qui rel1luent le cceur hUl1lain.
27
The ghetto of the "roman feminin" looms. Whereas, in the earlier
part of the eighteenth century, criticism of the novel might well have
cited the special aptitude of women to write novels as evidence of
their and the genre's inferiority, its growing prestige leads, in the
last quarter of the century, to an endorsement of the novel in terms
which make it a "masculine" genre. The corollary of this male colon-
ization of the novel is the relegation of women novelists to a sort of
reservation, where they are allowed distinctive qualities, but qualities
deemed inferior to those which male novelists exhibit.
The last stage in the depreciation of female creativity is reached
in the assertion that women are, by their very nature, destined to
produce only weak and uninteresting work. This claim comes in
an editorial entry which sums up the misogynistic drift of so much
eighteenth-century writing on women and the novel:
La femme vraiment Auteur se decele ainsi par certains traits. Elle ne c o n ~ o i t
que par details successifs, qu'elle sYl1ll11etrise avec artifice: la foiblesse de ses
26 For Lussan, see BUR, fevrier 1778, pp. 207-13; for Pisan, octobre 1779,2:119--40 and for
Villedieu, fevrier 1776, pp. 193-200.
27 BUR, fevrier 1781, p. 153;janvier 1788,2:3--4. Riccaboni '5 His/oire ri'Emes/ine first appeared
in the ReClteil de pieces de/achees par lvIadallle Riccoboni in 1765, and her Lellres de milariyJulielle
Ca/esby in 1759. The Lellres du marquis de Roselle by Anne-Lauise Elie de Beaumant was first
published in 1764, and the Lellres de S/e/Jl!anie by Fanny de Beauharnais in 1778.
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BIBLlOTHI,'QU UNllfRSI,'LU,' DI,'5 ROMANS i83
organes ne lui pennet pas de disposer une masse imposante d'evenements, ni
de dessiner largement des passions totuours trop timides ou trap reglees dans
son ame. Elle ne sait point sacrifier une foule de graces a une seule beaute. Elle
ne peut etre que femme, c'est-a-dire, aimable sans effort & sans exageration.
C'est par une douceur continue & methodique, pour ainsi dire, c'est par une
finesse d'esprit qui entretient la curiosite, par un sentiment delicat qui colwe
celui du Lecteur plutat qu'il ne l'ichall!!e, qu'elle vient a bout d'inspirer un
interet aussi modeste que sa plume. Elle plait, mais on sent le besoin d'une
habitude avec elle, avant que de passeI' a des sentimens vifs: on voit qu'elle n'a
voulu que plaire.
28
The passage plays variations on well-worn strategies of gendering,
mostly proceeding from the contrast between male strength and fe-
male delicacy. Women are limited in what they can achieve by their
physical inferiority ("la foiblesse de ses organes") and this will result
in their producing works which reflect these limitations, If the pas-
sage is distinctive, it is not for the originality of its ideas, but for the
persistence with which it sexualizes the reading relationship. Women
novelists cannot write for reasons related to their sexuality. Tepid,
passive, or at best simply desirous to please, how can they be expec-
ted to generate that ardour ("echauffer") and keenness ("sentimens
vifs") which will produce a response in the reader? As in the rituals
of courtship, so in the reading relationship: the writer of the pas-
sage assumes that the male takes the lead and the female responds.
The female author, incapable of feeling or communicating real emo-
tion, will remain trapped in the routines of the "aimable" and the
"vouloir plaire."
The argument has a further twist: those characteristics which dis-
qualify women as Authors (their delicacy, responsiveness, passivity,
and so on) predestine them to be Readers:
Mais par un autre effet du caractere, ces qualites qui la font plaire, ne lui
plairont pas a elle-meme. Une ame ardente veut etre etonnee, saisie, emportee
au-deJa des bomes du bien & du gout: & voila pourquoi les femmes, qui ont
en general cette ame, & des organes foibles, des sentimens abondants & beau-
coup de prejuges [sic], le gOllt de la f a ~ o n & point le germe qui cree, se livrent
les premieres a la magie male d'un livre qui les tyrannise plutat qu'il ne les
seduit, & qui tOluours f o r ~ a n t & fecondant les idees ou les passions ne leur
laisse, avec I'oubli de la violence, que le plaisir qui en est le resultat.
29
28 BUR, avril P8i, 1:135-37.
29 BUR, avriJ 1787, 1:137-38.
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784 EIGHTEENTHCENTURY FICTION
The message is clear: to read is to be raped, and women want to
be raped. The "livre" has become a sort of phallic prosthesis which
penetrates and inseminates the female Reader. The passage may
seem ludicrous in its expression, and rebarbative in its assumptions,
but it is the conclusion of an argument which begins with the epis-
tolary mini-fiction ofJanuary 1779. The guiding thread through the
examples which I have discussed has been the gendering of the read-
ing relationship. Author and Reader become entities determined by
gender, the former male, the latter female. Moreover, this gender-
ing is worked out in terms of a crude biological determinism with
the result that Authors are "naturally" male, and Readers female.
The model then of the Writer-Reader relationship is that of animal
courtship (again, conceived in a somewhat reductive manner): the
(male) Writer forces the (female) Reader, and in this lies their mu-
tual (and natural) fulfilment. And as is so often the case, when a
reductive biological determinism is promoted as a means of explain-
ing human conduct, the underlying proposition which emerges is
one which inscribes violence at the heart of human relations.
The Male Reader
The male Reader is constructed in broadly the same manner as
the female Reader, that is to say as a projection of cultural assump-
tions and fantasies about gender: opposing terms such as activity and
passivity, strength and weakness, reason and feeling, restraint and
impulse are gendered as male or female, and then used to define
"natural" male and female behaviour, responses, and roles. However,
the construction of the male Reader is not straightforwardly homo-
logous to that of the female Reader. The reason for this is that both
are elements in a dyadic entity, composed of Reader and Editor. As
we have seen, the construction of the female Reader is built upon the
eroticization of the reading relationship, in which the participants
are a female Reader and a male Editor. The gendering of the Ed-
itor is thus crucial to the definition of the female Reader, and this
Editor is always male. The editors and editorial collaborators of the
BUR, as far as is known, were all men, and certainly their editorial
contributions all construct the Editor as male.
3D
As a result, the iden-
tity of the male Reader is articulated in a different relationship to
30 It is perhaps worth underlining the point that such construction largely arose out of unfor-
mulated cultural assumptions about reading and gender.
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BIBUOTH(QUlo' IJLS ROMANS 785
the Editor, one predicated upon shared gender identity, rather than
on difference.
This fact, and its implications, become evident in a passage in
which the Editor seeks to explain the pleasure which he derives from
reading fiction, that is, when he projects himself as the Reader. This
passage is the counterpart to that which defines the female Reader's
relationship to the Text, and is almost as bizarre:
c'est ["la fee du roman"] la maitresse que j'aime, en qui je loue tout, it qui je
pardonne tout; c'est la maitresse qui m'aime, qui connoit le besoin de mon
ame, les gouts de mon esprit & le vceu de mon cceur. Elle se pare ou se neglige,
elle rit, elle pleure, joue, devise ou raisonne, & va tOLuours it mon cceur: elle
n'a qu'un but, c'est celui de me plaire: elle y parvient en m'occupant, en
m'amusant, en m'instruisant, en me grondant, de meme qu'en me fa\orisant.
C'est Venus qui me subjugue par son aspect; c'est Armide qui me retient par
ses charmes; c'est la douce Sorel qui me fait tout oublier pour son amour. Elle
tient un sceptre & me commande: elle tient des fleurs & me couronne.
31
The Editor is identified as a male Reader, and the Text as a wo-
man, a woman who is sexually available, who gives the male Reader
pleasure, who seeks to allure and detain him by her charms, and
who, above all, seeks his gratification. Whereas the female Reader
is supposed to experience the Text as an act of male violence
which subjugates yet gratifies her, the male Reader, notwithstanding
the "galant" conceit of feminine superiority ("subjuguer," "retenir,"
"commander"), remains in control, able to enjoy the Text-Woman
on his terms. Moreover, whereas the female Reader's experience
is defined reductively in terms of surrender and passivity, allowing
no scope for 'Jouissance," no possibility that she could be an act-
ive Reader, the male Reader's is proposed in terms which suggest an
altogether richer and more diverse experience ("plaire," "amuser,"
"instruire") .
Men's experience in reading is thus proposed as fundamentally
different from that of women. So, inevitably, is the relationship of
male and female Reader to the Editor. This Editor identifies his read-
ing as male, and thereby invites a different response from the reader
(any real reader, that is). Whereas the description of the female
Reader's experience is given in the third person, and objectivizes
and distances this female Reader ("She reads so"), the more intim-
ate first-person enunciation which describes male reading ("I read
31 Octobre 1780, 1:15.
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786 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
so") invites a response to an implicit question: "How do You read?"
But this "You" can only be the male reader. In effect, the passage in
which the male Editor explains how he reads is part of a process of
negotiation. The male reader is being tacitly asked, "Don't you want
to be like me?" This invitation to the male reader to identify with
the Editor is an offer to enjoy the experience of reading as some-
how akin to that of enjoying the sexual attentions of a compliant
woman, and it is also an offer to enter into a relationship of com-
plicity. The Editor invites the male reader to identify with him in
enjoyment of the vVoman-Text, and to enter a complicitous relation-
ship ""hich will unite two men against a woman-against a woman
because this woman is proposed as the Text, or, in effect, the Cour-
tesan, whom they will share. In an exemplary fashion, a homosocial
bond is proposed between men, at the expense ofwomen.
32
The importance of this invitation to complicity becomes appar-
ent when we consider what probably constitutes the most important
claim to be made for the BUR, that it took prose fiction seriously,
and sought to present it to readers in a manner which would help
them understand the cultural context which gave rise to particular
works. This ambition is most apparent in the scope of its cover-
age of foreign prose fiction, and in particular of French literature
of the preclassical period. Such literature is often presented with
scholarly prefaces, footnotes, even glossaries, and, although this ap-
paratus may seem superficial to the modern reader, there is little
doubt that it reflected a serious intention. Nevertheless, such "ser-
iousness" carries a heavy ideological freight, especially in the case
of the old French material. In particular, the promotion of the old
French language and literature is almost invariably associated with
the denigration of contemporary French culture. Like other expres-
sions of cultural primitivism in the last decades of the eighteenth
century, the literary revivalism of the BUR is partly a manifestation
of the broader reaction against the rococo culture which dominated
the first part of the century, a reaction which persistently denigrates
this culture as one dominated by women.
33
And if modern culture
is condemned as effeminate, it is predictable that the old literature
32 See the introduction to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Litemllire and Male
/-lOll/asocial Desile (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
33 The context of this reaction is examined in Madelyn Gutwirth, The 7ivilighl of Ihe God-
desses: Wall/en and Re/Jresenlalion in the fi'ench Revolli/ionCll)' Em (New Brunswick, NJ: RlIlgers
niversity Press, 1992). See esp. chap. I, "Gendered Rococo as Political Provocation."
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BIBUOTHI,'QUJ,' UNIVLRSEI.U, DLS ROMANS 787
will be valued, in contrast, for its virility.3. Inevitably, such a contrast
has an impact upon the manner in which the Reader is construc-
ted: the female Reader is implicitly identified with a decadent and
frivolous present, a present which has lost any sense of the past, and
any sense of identity. True identity is associated with memory of the
past, mediated through the texts of the old literature. "Seriousness"
is associated ""ith masculinity, frivolity with femininity.
Conclusion
In the context of eighteenth-century discussions about the novel, it
is not surprising to find female frivolity contrasted with male seri-
ousness. What is distinctive about the gendering of the Reader in
the BUR is the way in which this and similar oppositions are de-
ployed to reposition male and female Reader in relation to prose
fiction. This is most glaringly obvious in the construction of the fe-
male Reader. Throughout most of the eighteenth century, the idea
of women reading novels remained a source of apprehension to the
largely male critical establishment. At best, the activity was deemed a
distraction from the proper tasks of the married woman or a source
of misinformation for the unmarried one. At worst, it was seen as an
incitement to sexual licence. In whichever case, we may surmise that
men suspected that they could not control what was going on in wo-
men's minds, and feared this dangerous unknown. The response was
repression. Censorship and even proscription of novels were regu-
larly proposed as solutions to the perceived problem. The traces of
this repressive attitude can still be found in the pages of the BUR,
but are challenged by another tactic, manifest in the representation
of the female Reader as the consenting victim of sexual aggression.
34 A typical example of the manner in which "virile" past is contrasted with "effeminate"
present can be found in the second issue ofJuly 1783 (pp. 5-6): "Si nous avions acraindre
qu'on nous reprochat de revenir trop souvent sur le genre heroique, nous craindrions
aussi d'etre obliges de repondre ce qu'il faudroit. Nous demanderions si cet heroisme,
qui n'est pas celui des fabuleuses epees, ne peut etre encore souffert comme pour faire
diversion a nos doux Romans galants & bourgeois; & s'il n'est pas possible que, tout en
aimant a I'adoration, un tendre Marquis dans une lecture, un Chevalier charmant ou un
duc de bien bonne pate, s'il n'est pas possible que la curiosite des Dames se reveille pour
jetter un coup-d'ceil sur ces terribles hommes du temps passe? Mais ils ne savent point
filer une conversation de sentiment; mais ils ne parlent que de tete, en mots superbes,
en grandes pensees; mais ils aiment trop energiquement! Ce sont la de grands dHauts,
auxquels on ne doit cependant pas refuset- quelqu'indulgence; car il seroit possible que
nous redevinssions grands, si la grandeur redevenoit un moyen de plaire."
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Rather than seeking to deny or repress the erotic dimension of fe-
male reading, this new tactic foregrounds it, and indeed proclaims
it the core of women's experience of reading fiction. However, this
recognition, far from constituting a liberating gesture, redoubles fe-
male servitude: women readers become bound by their sexuality and
dependent for their fulfilment on men.
This new construction of the female Reader can be related to
some of the underlying cultural developments characteristic of the
late eighteenth century. In particular, we should note that this fe-
male Reader, passive and dominated by the sexual need of male stim-
ulation, is the counterpart of the "virile" poet. As creativity in the late
eighteenth century comes to be viewed as an heroic, almost god-like,
and exclusively male endowment, and the novel promoted to the su-
preme expression of literary creativity, so the female Reader is made
the grateful recipient of male prepotency. Moreover, the definition
of the female Reader in terms of her sexuality constitutes a reinvig-
oration of old myths about women which were to become central
to nineteenth-century constructions of femaleness: 'Je suis femme,
Monsieur; vous devez connoitre mon sexe, puisque vous analysez les
Romans." Trapped between the virile Author and the savant Editor,
the female Reader is more effectively restrained than she could ever
have been by censorship.
The construction of the male Reader is also explained by the need
to reposition him in relation to prose fiction. Here, the problem fa-
cing the editors was bound up ",rith contemporary perceptions of the
status of the novel. Throughout most of the eighteenth century, crit-
ical and public opinion had largely shared a system of aesthetic val-
ues which undervalued fiction relative to history. History was aligned
with truth, fiction with untruth. By extension, history was serious, fic-
tion frivolous. And this series of oppositions was usually rounded off
by assigning frivolity to women, the "natural" readers of novels, and
seriousness to men. If the genre was to be marketed as fit for the ser-
ious (i.e., male) reader's attention, the demarcation line between
serious and frivolous had to be redrawn in such a way that prose fic-
tion was no longer consigned to the frivolous (and feminine) side
of the line. At the same time, there was little point in alienating that
part of the novel-reading public which sought enjoyment. As the Pro-
spectus makes clear, the editors sought to appeal to both categories
of reader:
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BIBLlOTH/:'QU/:' D/:'S ROMANS 789
cette entreprise [sera] agreable aI'homme du monde qui veut s'amuser; utile
aI'homme de Lettres qui veut s'instruire. Uuillet 1775, p.ll)
Through subsequent issues, the Reader is therefore offered the pos-
sibility of playing many roles, basically variants on this "homme de
lettres" "homme du monde" distinction. He may become the biblio-
phile invited to admire the binding of some obscure edition held in
a ducal library or the scholar asked to speculate on the provenance
of a manuscript found in the Vatican library. At the other extreme,
he may be invited to patronize the clumsiness of a German novel, or
be offered a piece of fiction stripped of its "difficult" philosophical
matter and reduced to its entertaining plot.
We need not, of course, suppose in these lines from the Prospectus
any definition of "homme" as the male by contrast to the female
of the species, but it is nevertheless evident that the substitution of
"femme du monde" and "femme de lettres" for the masculine forms
would be impossible here, or at least would give a quite different
sense. The male Reader is evoked simply as the Reader, in an elision
of maleness with humanness \"hich is familiar and predictable. This
elision is the point. While the female Reader is confined in an ex-
perience of reading circumscribed by her gender, the male Reader's
experience is universalized-the world of fiction is His oyster.
Just as it can be argued that the Enlightenment constructs human
identity as something universal and suprahistorical, while concealing
the historical and local reality to which it ultimately refers-universal
suffrage excludes women, and human rights are not extended to
non-whites-so, in the more limited context of reading, the BUR
constructs the universal reader as male. The merit of the BUR lies in
the fact that it "takes the novel seriously," and anticipates two of the
developments which remain to the present day characteristic of the
study of literature: the attempt to understand literary works in their
sociohistorical context, and their presentation with explanatory ap-
paratus. As with other aspects of the legacy of the Enlightenment,
the achievements which still stand as central to Western culture have
ambiguous ideological origins. The modern "serious" reader is cre-
ated in the BUR at the expense of the woman reader, reduced to a
caricatured femininity.
King's College, London
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