The Perverted Peasant

The Perverted Peasant, or The Dangers of the City, Parts 1 and 2 (of 8) by Restif de la Bretonne is the story of a young man from the countryside, from a family of tenant farmers, who moves to the city to learn his trade (painting). He is handsome, virtuous, charming, intelligent, and by all accounts someone who will make his way in the world and a name for himself.

He is not so much perverted (although he is, for this is Restif de la Bretonne after all), as corrupted by the ways of the city. The title may have a humorous ring to it, but this is not a comedy, so much as a tragedy. It is a moral tale, told in good epistolary fashion, and in the libertine tradition of Richardson's Pamela, or possibly Clarissa, except that the hero is male and the mores are decidedly French.

This novel was so well received after it came out in France (as Le Paysan perverti) in 1775, that it was followed up a few years later by the The Perverted Peasant Girl.