ABSTRACT
In the novel Emmanuelle, men seduce the heroine on airplanes, women make love
to her in the jungle, and Thai men penetrate her in orgies. But this familiar soft-core
romp follows in the venerable tradition of French philosophical pornography; the
author decorates her steamy prose with quotes from Mallarmé, and calls for a sexual
utopia to liberate female sexual pleasure. The author called herself Emmanuelle
Arsan, but she was really Marayat Rollet-Andriane, the Eurasian wife of a French
diplomat. In 1959, the novel had to be published clandestinely, because the Gaullist
government prosecuted pornography, fearing it would contaminate the youth. By
1968 the sexual revolution had arrived and the book was finally published openly.
