ROUSSEAU, JEAN-JACQUES. (1712-1778). Swiss philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose works inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and artists of the Romantic Movement. With French Enlightenment author and salon host MADAME DUPIN (LOUISE-MARIE-MADELEINE GUILLAUME DE FONTAINE, 1706-1799). AMs. Unsigned. 2pp. 4to. N.p., N.d. Two manuscript pages on one sheet: Rousseau’s handwriting is in the right columns of each page and Dupin’s is on the left of the first page only. In addition to her column of writing, she has lightly edited Rousseau’s words adding a five-line conclusion. The text is from Article 43 (“Effets de l’education dans l’amour”) from Dupin’s incomplete history of women, Ouvrage sur les Femmes. Both sections express Madame Dupin’s thoughts – Rousseau either copied out his portion of the text or was taking dictation from Madame Dupin. At the bottom of the first page of Rousseau’s writing, Dupin has inserted a small vertical line to indicate where her own, handwritten text (from the left-hand column) was to be inserted. In French with translation.

Rousseau writes:

“We hardly dare to talk about the fate of a number of women that misery and corruption push into depravation. These miserable women are punished for their disorders by the vices of those with whom they commit them. Their condition and their behavior force them to hold a subordinate role in which all human respect is forgotten, so that they endure outrage and cruelty from all men they offer themselves to. Among the most reasonable persons, there are probably very few who can assert they have never seen any scene of this kind. This horrible abuse is a consequence of the feeling of inequality that we fight and of the liberties men take./Concerning the places where it happens, an opinion is commonly spread that is very comical: if it were not at least accepted, honest women would be victims of all kinds of accidents. But only nuns can be persuaded of this, because they think that at war you always have the sword in hand and that married men always caress their women. For other people who better know what to expect, this opinion is absolutely not conclusive [In Madame Dupin’s hand:] and does not allow to tolerate something we should try to destroy, even if there were no other reason than respect and humanity.”

Dupin’s own manuscript continues beginning with her sub-title:

“On abuses related to what seems to be love

Is it not strange that only women are imprisoned and punished for a crime that they have committed together with men and into which, most of the time, men drag them? There is generally, in a certain part of society, some kind of politeness that goes with vices. But in the lower category of people, where vice is free and nothing can stop it, you cannot even imagine the infamy of these crimes and the burden of vexation that women endure. They are usually denounced by angry, drunk or stingy men they have encountered, and if they did not fear being punished and were not ashamed of having suffered or deserved these punishments, they would not stop complaining and we would hear stories that would arouse pity and terror.”

After devoting himself to a musical career, Denis Diderot asked Rousseau to contribute to his famous Encyclopédie and, in 1750, he penned his first major work, A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts. Twelve years later he produced his most influential and enduring book, The Social Contract, which sought to explain social inequality by proposing that humankind was at first equal, but that society’s formation generated competition, which inevitably led to class differences and conflict. Rousseau’s writings earned him the condemnation of France’s Parliament, prompting him to seek refuge in England with David Hume before returning to France in 1767 to work on his Confessions.

Married to a wealthy tax collector, Dupin was renowned for her beauty and her salon at her iconic Loire valley Château de Chenonceau, which hosted European royalty and Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. In 1745, Dupin briefly engaged Rousseau to tutor her son and thereafter employed him until 1751 as a secretary and research assistant for her Ouvrage sur les Femmes. Together the pair generated research notes, drafts and fair copies, which eventually wound up selling at auction between 1951 and 1958. A large portion of these manuscripts were purchased by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. In 1963, Anicet Sénéchal’s bibliography published in the Annales de la Société J.-J. Rousseau, described the content of our manuscript including the sub-title, in a description of article 43 of Ouvrage sur les Femmes. It is also included in Frédéric Marty’s French edition of Dupin’s works. The Harry Ransom Center holds an incomplete, possibly earlier draft, of article 43. Several lines from our text are also found in article 38 “Du principe des moeurs.”

In his Confessions Rousseau names Dupin “as pivotal to his entrance into Parisian society, and as a brief love interest,” and he notes that during their working relationship Dupin “never used me except to write under her dictation, or in research of pure erudition,” (“The Unfinished Work on Louise Marie-Madeleine Dupin’s Unfinished Ouvrage sur les femmes,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Hunter).

The still unpublished drafts of Dupin’s “Ouvrage provide an important analysis of the physical and social experiences of women and of their historical subjugation. Dupin also addresses many of the important philosophical issues of the eighteenth century—justice, rights, nature—and locates her critiques in contexts that are still of concern in feminist theory today… Dupin also focuses on local gender-based regulations in various periods of Western history, such as laws concerning adultery,” as well as prostitution as detailed in our manuscript, (ibid.)

Neatly folded with some browning around the irregular edge. In very good condition. Our special thanks to Associate Professor Angela Hunter, from the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Pages of Rousseau with such lengthy handwritten contributions by Dupin are rare.