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Different from these was Restif de la Bretonne, who applied Rousseau's theories with less worthy aims in his Paysan perverti and Monsieur Nicolas, ou Le Coeur humain devoile. If mention is made of him here, it is because he was a pioneer in the path of realism, which Balzac was to explore more thoroughly, and because the latter undoubtedly caught some of his grosser manner.
Restif was a neurotic subject, though not to an extreme degree, and his shoe-fetichism, though distinctly pronounced, was not pathological; that is to say, that the shoe was not itself an adequate gratification of the sexual impulse, but simply a highly important aid to tumescence, a prelude to the natural climax of detumescence; only occasionally, and faute de mieux, in the absence of the beloved person, was the shoe used as an adjunct to masturbation.
Foot-fetichism and Shoe-fetichism Wide Prevalence and Normal Basis Restif de la Bretonne The Foot a Normal Focus of Sexual Attraction Among Some Peoples The Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, etc.
The origin Restif here assigns to his shoe-fetichism may seem paradoxical; he admired the girls who were most clean and neat in their dress, he tells us, and, therefore, paid most attention to that part of their clothing which was least clean and neat. But, however paradoxical the remark may seem, it is psychologically sound.
Wide Prevalence and Normal Basis. Restif de la Bretonne. The Foot a Normal Focus of Sexual Attraction Among Some Peoples. The Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, etc. The Congenital Predisposition in Erotic Symbolism. The Influence of Early Association and Emotional Shock. Shoe-fetichism in Relation to Masochism. The Two Phenomena Independent Though Allied. The Desire to be Trodden On.
He was still a boy , she was the young and virtuous wife of the printer whose apprentice Restif was and in whose house he lived. Madame Parangon, a charming woman, as she is described, was not happily married, and she evidently felt a tender affection for the boy whose excessive love and reverence for her were not always successfully concealed.
That Bohemian man of letters, Restif de la Bretonne, whose unedifying novels the Parisians of 2440 would assuredly have rejected from their libraries, published in 1790 a heroic comedy representing how marriages would be arranged in "the year 2000," by which epoch he conceived that all social equalities would have disappeared in a fraternal society and twenty nations be allied to France under the wise supremacy of "our well-beloved monarch Louis Francois XXII." It was the Revolution that converted Restif to the conception of Progress, for hitherto his master had been Rousseau; but it can hardly be doubted that the motif and title of his play were suggested by the romance of Mercier.
Restif de la Bretonne frequently referred to this point, and he gave a number of reasons for the attractiveness of high heels: They are unlike men's boots and, therefore, have a sexual fascination; they make the leg and foot look more charming; they give a less bold and more sylph-like character to the walk; they keep the feet clean.
Yet Zola lives despite these predictions, as the above figures show, notwithstanding his loquacity in regard to themes that should be tacenda to every writer. But in this matter of forbidden subjects Zola is regarded by the present generation as a trifle old-fashioned. When alive he was grouped with Aretino and the Marquis de Sade, or with Restif de la Bretonne.
In 1777 Restif de la Bretonne proposed in his Gynographes that the communication of a venereal disease should itself be an adequate ground for divorce; this, however, is not at present generally accepted.
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