The Paradox of Love

1. Victor Hugo, Choses vues, 1849–1885, Paris: Gallimard, 1972, p. 410.

2. Ibid., p. 112.

3. The irony is that in July 1845, Victor Hugo, who had just been made a Pair de France by King Louis-Philippe, was caught in the act of adultery with Léonie Biard. The young lady was imprisoned at the command of her husband, an official painter, but Hugo escaped going to prison because of his status as a French peer. What happened next is even stranger: Adèle Hugo, the poet’s legitimate wife—who was herself rather unfaithful and sought to take revenge on Juliette Drouet, her husband’s old mistress—succeeded in getting Léonie Biard released, and a few months later received her in her salon.

4. Cited in Mona Ozouf, L’Homme régénéré, Paris: Gallimard, 1989, p. 142.

5. J. J. Rousseau, Émile, Paris: Flammarion, Book I, pp. 48–49. On the connections among the practice of mothers nursing their babies, which was new, and Europe, conjugal love, and concern about babies, see the remarkable study by Edward Shorter, Naissance de la famille moderne, Paris: Le Seuil, 1977, pp. 227–229. For Shorter, Rousseau is here only repeating ideas that had already long been in circulation.

6. In addition to Shorter’s study already cited, see Philippe Ariès, L’Enfant et la famille sous l’Ancien Régime, Paris: Plon, 1960.

7. In Jean-Claude Bologne, Histoire du marriage en Occident, Paris: Hachette, 2005, pp. 392–393.

8. Wilhelm Reich, La Révolution sexuelle, Copenhagen: Sexpol Verlag, 1936; Paris: Plon, 1968.

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