Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712-1778). autograph... - Lot 231 - Métayer-Mermoz Maison de Ventes aux Enchères Moulins

Lot 231
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Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712-1778). autograph... - Lot 231 - Métayer-Mermoz Maison de Ventes aux Enchères Moulins
Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712-1778). autograph manuscript; 3 pages and a quarter in-4. The manuscript is related to the work on women that Rousseau undertook between 1746 and 1751 for his patron Mme DUPIN, and which never saw the light of day. Rousseau wrote on a column on the right side of the page; on a page, in the left margin, a long autograph note from Mme Dupin who wrote the title : Sur labus qu'on fait de ce qui ressemble a lamour. Rousseau evokes the fate of women dragged into libertinism, which puts them "in a subordination to which all human respects are forgotten. [These horrible excesses are a consequence of the feeling of equality that we fight against and of the license that men allow themselves". On the other hand, Mrs. Dupin is surprised that only women are punished, because it is "a crime which is not only common to men in which usually those cy drags them, there is in a certain number of people a kind of propriety which accompanies even their vices [] One cannot imagine the infamy of these men and the p. of the vexation which the f. endure" According to Rousseau: "One holds a very common, very comical talk, for the tolerance of the places where that is practised", but Mrs. Dupin finishes by saying that it is "to tolerate something which one should try to destroy". Rousseau does not accuse men "of having formed a system of abasement for the women" and he hopes that revolutions will come about on their subject, undoubtedly by chance: "One thing leads to another; one goes sometimes further than one believes, and one never goes so far as when one does not know where one goes"
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