The narrative starts with Therese, sexually precocious in spite of herself, from solid bourgeois stock, being placed by her mother in a convent when she is 11 years old.

There she eventually becomes sick because her pleasure principle is not permitted to express itself, putting her body into disorder, and bringing her close to the grave until her mother finally yanks her out of the convent at age 23.

Eradice" are named after anagrams of Jean-Baptiste Girard and Catherine Cadière, who were involved in a highly publicized trial for the illicit relationship between priest and student in 1730.

(Abbé T. is clearly the same character as figures in another, eponymous, coming-of-age, soft-core libertine novel published that same year or possibly one year earlier: Ecclesiastical Laurels, or Abbot T.'s Campaigns with the Triumph of the Nuns, attributed to Jacques Rochette La Morlière; this latter novel is one of several titles listed towards the end of Therese the Philosopher as belonging to the library owned by the count, which library he loans to Therese as part of a bet.)

The book not only draws attention to the sexual repression of women at the time of the enlightenment, but also to the exploitation of religious authority through salacious acts.