Fanchette's Pretty Little Foot: The French Orphan Girl

Fanchetteʼs Pretty Little Foot (originally Le Pied de Fanchette in French), a novel by Restif de la Bretonne, was first published in 1769. The story is a cross between the fairytale Cinderella, from 1697, and Samuel Richardsonʼs moral story (actually libertine novel) Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, from 1740. Now, Cinderella, or The Little Glass Slipper was originally a folktale dating back at least 2000 years ago to a similar tale from Greece or Egypt, but it was made famous in the modern era (at least for Western audiences) with the 17th-century publication of French writer Charles Perraultʼs version of the tale, and more recently still by the 20th-century release of Walt Disneyʼs animated movie.

But one does not have to be a scholar of French fairytales, Hollywood movies, or 18th-century English libertine novels to appreciate this simple, but delightful tale about a young and virtuous bourgeois girl, the daughter of a wealthy fabric merchant, whose parents die while sheʼs still a teenager, leaving her to fateʼs fortune in then-naughty Paris. She is pretty as a belle sic] and even more virtuous, but it is her prettier little foot in especial that gets her into all kinds of trouble. Who would have thought that a girlʼs foot, embellished by a rich slipper, could be so attractive and seductive? Leave it to the French to capitalize on that. Or leave it to Restif de la Bretonne in this charming story, which is really a comedy, to bring it front and center. Interestingly, this novel was the first to give a name to a sensual preference called shoe fetishism, or "retifism" in French (after the authorʼs name).