The French historian of books and reading, Roger Chartier, spoke of the expansion, under the effect of various factors, of the production, distribution and reception of the novel in France from the seventeenth century, and then especially in the eighteenth century, and of the male concerns that the reading of novels by women gave rise to. As a frivolous seducer of consciences, the novel, widely distributed in France and Europe, became one of the suspicious attributes of women's intimacy from the 17th century onwards. Following the casuists of the Catholic Church, a new body of experts in the process of becoming professional and autonomous from other medical disciplines, i.e. doctors specialising in female nervous pathologies (Bienville, Tissot, etc.), investing the "model of the two sexes" - well analysed by the historian Thomas Laqueur - then seized upon the theme of the dangerousness of women's reading of novels in their treatises, with a view to serving disciplinary, corporatist as well as moral and political interests. Pathologising the phenomenon, they thus participated in the invention of a commonplace with multiple contents and uses: the 'lasciviousness' of women's reading, and its socially and politically subversive character. Promptly relayed by certain philosophers, the medical supervision of women inner world thus contributes to the stigmatisation of their reading of novels.