Things On My Mind

The Marquis de Sade is not a misogynist.

The Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade in June 1740, is mostly known as a writer. Some notable works include The 120 Days of Sodom, Justine, and Juliette. He is the founder of sadism (gaining pleasure, especially in a sexual sense, by inflicting pain and/or humiliation onto someone else) and a barrier-breaker when it comes to literature. His claim to fame, as suggested above, was writing pornographical works. That's right; a married French nobleman was writing erotica in the late 1700's.

Because I am drawn to people that can't behave themselves, I constantly find myself wanting to read all I can about the Marquis. This has led me to find numerous articles claiming that de Sade was an avid misogynist. As someone who has read a portion of his works, which I read out of curiosity (if you're familiar with his works, you'll know how hard it is to actually find his writings arousing,but hey! to each his own-something I have learned from de Sade), I find it baffling that anyone could make such an accusation. The authors are clearly carrying out ad hominem attacks.

The assumption that de Sade had a bone to pick with women probably came from his writings being taken literally. De Sade was himself a Libertine, but he is different from the men he portrays in his fictitious pornography. No where does it suggest that he actually disliked women or viewed them as inferior. In fact, he was married to a woman of equal status to him (he knew this) and wrote her loving letters from prison in which he thanks and treasures the fact that she smuggled in stewed figs for him. The things he wrote were simply wild fantasies, like much of today's fan-fictions that involve "ships". He was just more in tune with himself and his desires and very up front about the possibilities in sex.

(Next, I will discuss the contents of his work. If you can't handle sexual details, then this next part isn't for you. You have been warned. I have read one person describing his work as "making 50 Shades of Gray look like a children's bedtime story"; I'll have to agree with that...)

The 120 Days of Sodom can be mistaken for a misogynistic piece, but I can't stress enough how far from the truth that is. There are four main characters who are all good friends. Despite them all being married to women, they prefer homosexual sex. However, they do sodomize females as well as males. In Juliette, de Sade writes of a girl who is taught the Libertine lifestyle and dominates every male in her way, including the Pope at the time. Justine was similar to Juliette, but the ideas of misogyny are more understandable than any other de Sade texts. However, the violence depicted against Justine is a reoccurring theme in all his writing which makes it evident that this is just his imagination running wild, as it so often does. The Marquis de Sade never writes a scene of some violent sexual act towards a woman that he hasn't written for a man. If one must falsely label him, it would be more logical to call him a misanthropist than a misogynist.

I firmly believe everyone has something they don't want to share with the world, like a dark fantasy. However, every now-and-again a person will put all their cards on the table (similar to de Sade) and share their entirety with the world. But as I suggested above, these were mere dark fantasies. A quick search on the Internet can tell you that these are "imagined situations that are near to impossible to achieve". Again, I express his works were radical fantasies, works of fiction that were created by a mind with brilliant capacity for imagination.

The Marquis de Sade, is not innocent by any means though. He had an affair with his wife's sister (the woman he wanted to marry, but their father said no and gave him the other daughter). He hired numerous prostitutes and employed males and females in his home with whom he had sexual relations. With a house keeper of his, he tore her clothes from her body, tied her up, whipped her, made small incisions on her body in which he poured hot candle wax. Many of his employees complained of sexual mistreatment. These accusations embarrassed his mother-in-law, so she sought out a particular letter they had in France; one that would allow an arrest to be made without cause or access to a court trail.

This was the first step in a stairway to numerous imprisonments and a stay at an asylum. He escaped a few times and even fled the country, with his wife's sister at one point. To which they responded by writing to him that his mother was ill. As a good son would do, de Sade returned to France to be with his ailing mother, but it was a ruse to imprison him once again.

His placement in prison was unjustified and unfair. I do not believe he should be jailed for his sexual deviation, but perhaps it would be more or less justified because of sexual harassment to the staff. The things he did are now done every day in porn. BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sadism, Masochism) is one of the most popular and thriving categories today.His belief was, as he stated, "Through pain one arrives at pleasure". That is how he arrived at pleasure and that's a damn hard thing to teach a person to get some other way. The way one gets pleasure is innate. You're born with it and it's near impossible to reprogram the brain against innate desires.

I'm not defending his outward sexuality, but I'm trying to explain that that's who he is and after being taught (his uncle introduced him to debauchery after de Sade got kicked out of school and had to stay with his uncle) a certain lifestyle at a young age, it's not likely for him to change even after being in prison. He never seriously hurt or killed anyone, he never hurt those people he was with sexually out of evil, and his rough sexuality was aimed at men just as much as women.

To close, I leave you with a quote of the Marquis from The 120 Days of Sodom, in hopes it will open someone's mind: "Six hundred different plates offer themselves to your appetite; are you going to eat them all? No, surely not, but this prodigious variety enlarges the bounds of your choice and, delighted by this increase of possibilities, it surely never occurs to you to scold the Amphitryon that regales you. Do likewise here: choose and let lie the rest without declaiming against that rest simply because it does not have the power to please you. Consider that it will enchant someone else, and be a philosopher."