In this chapter I am going to analyse a number of representations of the relationship between benefactor and beneficiary in Rousseau's work. I consider these first of all on Rousseau's terms to see how he uses the moral code as a standard against which interpersonal relationships can be judged. Second, I analyse them ‘against the grain’ in terms of sexual difference. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that wherever there is a hierarchy the tradition of western thought has somewhere added femininity to the characteristics loosely associated with the inferior party. Aristotle is – as I have indicated in Chapter 2 – a source for such oppositions; he associates activity with the strong and powerful benefactor, and passivity with the weak and lacking recipient. In the Aristotelian tradition it is clear that the beneficiary is less of a man than the benefactor – even though real women are usually not even considered as potential beneficiaries.

In Rousseau's confessional works, however, the situation is more complex: the young Rousseau is a feminised figure in a series of engagements with male and female individuals who variously act as benefactors, false benefactors, malefactors and lovers. He plays the coquette with the Curé de Pontverre who, an experienced seducer, makes him keep his promise to convert to Catholicism. He is the more or less helpless victim of sexual advances from older men and women.