THE FEMALE "PHILOSOPHE" IN THE CLOSET: The Cabinet and the Senses in French Erotic Novels, 1740-1800

Many eighteenth-century erotic texts recount the coming of age of a young female narrator, an event that eventually motivates the capacity for philosophical reasoning. Sexual enlightenment in these texts tends to be triggered by a voyeuristic scene in which the narrator, hidden in a cabinet or behind a curtain, observes erotic activity. Using Thérèse philosophe (1748) as a model, this essay presents voyeurism as an extension of sensationist philosophy that offers literary embodiment to the "statue man" theories of Condillac and other French sensationists. The intricately described cabinet is shown to be a privileged site for both seduction and observation and, ultimately, for the making of pornography's female philosophe.