ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the term regression primarily in its Freudian sense: a psychological retreat from adulthood, or social reality and genital sexuality, into an earlier if not primary stage of development. It examines in successive chapters its manifestations in three novels: the Lettres d'une Peruvienne of Mme de Graffigny, Rousseau's Julie, ou La Nouvelle Heloise (1761), and Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1788). A more nuanced argument finds the oedipal drama to be universal, but suggests that certain kinds of social arrangement facilitate the transition to adulthood, while others make psychic development more difficult. Masturbation, the product of a corrupted social culture and an overheated individual imagination, will destroy one's physical and moral health for ever. The amorous retreat of childlike couples, in an innocent natural world, is framed by the social retreat — a mise-en-abyme of regression. Comedy distances the audience from the characters through satiric wit, and laughs at human and social (especially bourgeois) follies.
