How did Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie change European ideas about love?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie; or, The New Heloise (1761) was a transformative work that established the modern novel of sensibility and profoundly reshaped European ideas about love and emotion.12

By depicting an impossible, doomed romance between a young aristocrat and her tutor, the novel moved away from the rationalistic and social conventions of the time, instead prioritizing the free expression of intense, authentic emotion. Its impact on the spirit of the age was immense, as it:13

• Validated Personal Feeling: It championed the capacity for deep, spontaneous feeling over the cold, meretricious reason often prized by contemporary philosophers.12
• Elevated Domestic Life: It shifted the focus of human happiness from public life and the state to the private sphere of the family and domestic intimacy.3
• Influenced Romanticism: Through its extreme sensibility and focus on the internal life, the novel became a seminal influence on the Romantic movement, encouraging a new culture of introspection and sincerity.123

Ultimately, the work’s success among the reading public helped legitimize a mode of experience where values were authenticated by one's own conscience and desires rather than external social authority.12