"A History of Sexuality" — Scarlett Beauvalet's Book on Sexual Norms and Practices in Early Modern France
A book by French historian Scarlett Beauvalet on sexuality in France from the 15th to 18th century.
“Histoire de la sexualité — À l’époque moderne, du XVe au XVIIIe siècle” (A History of Sexuality: The Early Modern Period, 15th–18th Centuries) is a book by French historian Scarlett Beauvalet, written in French and published by Armand Colin.
Scarlett Beauvalet-Boutouyrie is a professor of early modern history at the Université de Picardie Jules-Verne in Amiens. Her research focuses on the social history of France, covering the history of the family, women’s history, and the history of health in the early modern period. She previously taught at the Université Paris-Sorbonne.
The early modern period spans roughly from the 15th to the 18th century, a time when sexual norms in Europe were shaped primarily by Christian moral doctrine. The Church recognized only marriage and procreation as legitimate, and everything outside of that was classified as sin and often subject to legal prosecution.
The book traces how sexuality was perceived, regulated, and experienced in France over four centuries. It covers a wide range of practices — marital relations, prostitution, masturbation, adultery — as well as what the Church and courts classified as “sodomy.” Under the laws and religious practices of the time, sodomy encompassed male same-sex relations and was punishable by death. Beauvalet also addresses relations between women, which in this era were referred to as “sapphism.”
The book documents the legal and religious mechanisms through which early modern French society constructed the categories of “normal” and “criminal” in sexual life. In this respect, it serves as an important source for the history of the persecution of people with same-sex attraction in France.
