written more thoughts, paradoxes, aphorisms, treatises, physiologies, and books both thin and thick on the Parisienne than they ever have about any other woman on earth. Thanks to the Parisienne, for all artists and lovers, streets in Paris turn into a magical Eden of sudden desires, of lightning acts of worship, and strange adventures… The man who has learnt how to gape long and lovingly can, at any stage of life, refresh himself just by looking, admiring, approaching, and overhearing these pretty female walkers with their lively glances and well-scrubbed faces. His enamoured spirit constantly serenades these graceful daughters of Eve, whom he may never get to know, and his senses remain pleasantly aroused long past manhood’s curfew and twilight hour.
Jean-Baptiste Huet, c. 1780. Sanguine engraving.
Jean-Baptiste Huet, c. 1780. Sanguine engraving.
Just as Venus emerged from the waves, so the Parisienne was created from the enamoured spirit of visitors to Paris. Through her, man discovers his unfulfilled desires; a revelation about what he wants. Even though he will probably never meet her, she nevertheless exists within him as a stimulating fantasy. Uzanne quotes Bonaparte: “A beautiful woman appeals to the eye, a happy one the spirit, a good one the heart.” He continues:
Say what you will, the Parisienne most obviously combines all three qualities. Her beauty, or – to be more exact – her grace is piquant enough to arouse love; her energetic, rarely vulgar, always picturesque sense of fun is, as it were, the blossom and fragrance of our mental health; her profound, unselfish, unspoilt goodness awakens every kind of flattering devotion, all forms of heroism, all manner of sublime enslavement.
More than any other woman, the chimera of the Parisienne evokes an impossible trinity: she is mother, whore, and mistress in the one and same figure. A foreign writer once said of the Parisienne:
As a mistress she is adorable; as a spouse, frequently impossible; as a friend, perfection itself. Adorable as a mistress – it is mainly in this that her total superiority lies, for no matter what her social class, she represents the whole gamut of a woman in love. She is catlike in her use of flattery and childish ideas, as well as in her sudden acts of betrayal with the sudden unsheathing of her claws and sulking by the hearth. Her whims and wilfulness, her untameable peculiarities directed at anyone who wants only to possess her but fails to capture her heart, make her a luxury creature whom no-one but the chosen master, the conqueror, the loved-one can subjugate, dominate, and make happy at his pleasure.
Uzanne paints the portrait of a narcissistic creature who, as a fantasy figure, is simultaneously a collective product. The Parisienne flatters one’s own narcissism. The visitor to Paris who encounters his own erotic desires and vices in this fantasy figure is threatened everywhere by his subconscious – in the form of the prostitute.
The subconscious is wide-ranging and many-sided! It so unsettles a visitor to Paris that his glance verges on the paranoid: “The secret prostitute appears all over Paris,” notes Uzanne, “it surrounds men whatever they do – in the hotel, the restaurant, shops and department stores, in bus offices, in the Louvre and Luxembourg Museums where she dons the disguise of a tourist guide. We encounter her in certain circles – even official ones – where she makes her appearance in a discreet, disguised, almost impenetrable manner… She manifests every kind of pliancy and takes advantage of any disguise, gradually letting her mask slip and – wisely – only reveals herself at the best possible moment.”
“Le promenade… est’il tres amusante!”,from the series Femme du monde, 1940. Watercolour.
Mystères de Paris (Mysteries of Paris), c. 1850. Lithograph.
“Other secret sex-workers visit the art exhibitions, the art auctions at the Hôtel Drouot, lecture-halls, the reading rooms at Bon Marché and the Louvre, and the National Library – so familiar to those who work with their minds. In such places they sight serious men, pretending that they are themselves interested in art, sport, literature, and all intellectual pursuits. These are often the most astute – they are the most educated and can converse best.”
Not even in the Bibliothèque nationale are you safe – from your own fantasies! Needless to say, “depravity” is only ever an aspect of femaleness, upon which male lust is then projected.
Subconsciously Uzanne uses a special metaphor, which reveals how strongly a male glance at a Parisienne is affected by fantasies of prostitution. He describes women as “living coins”. It is in fact coins that determine sexual transactions.
Alongside this image of women as a venal “work of art”, however, stands the “artifice” of prostitutes. Metamorphosis and disillusion complement each other: “The prostitute is a child of misery and vice. Her distinguishing mark is artificiality.” For Uzanne, does the “common prostitute” not project merely a negative image of all the qualities he praises in the Parisienne? “She (the common prostitute) wears an apron, fills in her wrinkles with brick-dust, blackens her eyebrows with a burnt matchstick, and sleeks back her greying hair with jasmine or pomade of roses, at two sous [pennies] a box.”
The visitor to Paris awakens from his dream of an erotic Eldorado with crass realism. Intoxication is followed by a sober disenchantment: “The [prostitutes’] main stamping ground is the boulevard. In the cafés to which they have access, they have a better chance of meeting a prosperous gentleman – even if it were only a foreigner of the type who frequent these places because they have a worldwide reputation for sensual opportunities. Furthermore, this reputation is remarkably proper and artificial. Nothing is more monotonous than whoredom; the so-called “pleasure establishments” of Paris bear a fatal similarity to those of all other European metropolises – they are in no respect more fun. Prostitutes everywhere are stupid, mercenary, as bored as they are boring; only when they are drunk will they do anything debauched, and then their sense of fun is even sadder and more depressing than their usual apathy. You’ve got to be quite an optimist to derive any pleasure from following how they move, or what they say and do. A prostitute is a cowed, often starving beast – and she practises a ghastly trade.”
In this way, our image of the Parisienne fluctuates between a transfigured image of a potential mistress always ready for passion and the disenchanted picture of a depraved whore. The two are as closely linked as fantasies are to the real world.
The Parisienne is a phantasm who colours the whole city: Paris itself becomes a female city – desired and disparaged both at once. The fact that this city was able to establish itself throughout Europe and the whole world as being the focus of erotic desires has its reasons in the city’s historical foundations.
Roberty, c. 1890. Watercolour.
Roberty, c. 1890. Watercolour.
Paris could only grow into a topos of erotic fantasy by combining these two developments. By the end of the Middle Ages, Paris was already a city with “metropolitan” forms of life, meaning that a lot of what was later called “Parisian” was in fact simply metropolitan. Moreover, Paris was heavily influenced by a royal Court whose way of life was determined by a dissipated and dissolute life of luxury, and which set an example of licentious morals that invited emulation. The 18th century, in particular, which was also the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution, was largely responsible for the freedom of morals. These historical experiences continue to this very day in our collective subconscious – and also have an effect on the
