On the basis of Charrière's pamphlet entitled "Plainte et Défense de Thérèse Levasseur" (1789), the aim of this article is to understand why a sharply critical female writer such as she was made a point of maintaining intact her admiration for Rousseau. In spite of the last and problematic chapter of Émile, "Sophie ou la femme", Charrière recognized in Rousseau the inventor of a new concept of humanity defined by freedom and equality, who, with his Confessions, had coined a new style of writing to articulate it in literature.