“Pleasure, that was what we were discussing. Here we still have to distinguish the pleasure you sense from that which you think you bestow. Now, from Nature we obtain abundant information about ourselves, and precious little about others. About the woman you clasp in your arms, can you say with certainty that she does not feign pleasure? About the woman you mistreat, are you quite sure that from abuse she does not derive some obscure and lascivious satisfaction? Let us confine ourselves to simple evidence: through thoughtfulness, gentleness, concern for the feelings of others, we saddle your own pleasure with restrictions, and make this sacrifice to obtain a doubtful result. Rather, is it not normal for a man to prefer what he feels to what he does not feel? And we have ever felt a single impulse from Nature bidding us to give others a preference over ourselves.”
From the novel Justine.
“What evil do I do, what crime do I commit when upon meeting some lovely creature I say, ‘Avail me of that part of you which can give me a moment’s satisfaction and, if you wish, make full use of that part of mine which may prove agreeable to you?’”
The Marquise’s ‘Rights of Eroticism’
“In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.”
Marquise de Sade
There are very few individuals throughout the course of history who can lay claim to the fact their very existence and work have inspired a new word in the English lexicon—nor lay claim to as explosive a word as ‘sadism.’ Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, a.k.a. the Marquis de Sade (June 2, 1740—December 3, 1814) can. With such works as The 120 Days of Sodom, Justine, Juliette, and Philosophy in the Boudoir—all illegal works of fiction in their time—the Marquise has left an indelible impression on the world of erotic fiction.
The image of the Marquis today is one of a ravishing young French nobleman who takes great pleasure in torturing young maidens for his own sexual gratification. He stands poised, whip in hand, ready to strike a beautiful young woman who stands naked before him her hands tied above her head and her firm young flesh ready to take his punishment first before taking him second. And, the Marquis is not a lover of mutual consent, but uses his superiority and strength to take whatever he wants from whomever he wants, male of female, confident in the fact that individual is happy that a superior individual is willing to use them in such a way. Rape is not rape, but merely his right to take whatever he wants from an inferior individual.
The philosophy of the Marquis is accurate, the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, however, the image isn’t entirely correct. While the Marquis did engage in what was considered aberrant sexual behaviour in his day, he spent the majority of his life in prison. The Marquis’s most heinous crimes existed within his fertile imagination, which he committed to paper and snuck out of prisons to be illegally printed and distributed—his true legacy.
An Impressionable Young Mind
Born on June 2, 1740 to Jean Baptiste, Comte (Count) de Sade and Marie-Elonore de Maille de Carman, Comtesse de Sade, the young Marquis quickly established he was a handful. As a young boy, the Marquis’s mother served as a lady in waiting to the Princess de Conde and watched over her son, the Prince de Conde, the Marquis’s senior by four years. During one playtime skirmish, when the Prince tried to extract a toy from the 4-year-old Marquis, and by right of birth and rank should have been given the toy, the Marquis fought the older boy for it and pummeled his cousin in a fierce display of violence. Based on this incident, the Marquis was immediately shipped off by his mother to his grandmother.
His father, who at the time was an ambassador to the court of the Elector of Bavaria, wishing his son had a more masculine presence in his upbringing, bounced his son to live with is brother, Abbe Jacques-Francois de Sade, a noted scholar and author.
In that day and age throughout France and other European countries, clergymen, like the Abbe were expected to avail themselves of the pleasures of the flesh. It was not uncommon for orgies to be held between priests, nuns, prostitutes and nobles within the wall of abbeys and convents. Abbe engaged in a vast number of carnal activities, and it was within this environment that the Marquis lived his formative, development years. When not observing his Uncle’s activities, he had at his disposal various erotic tombs to peruse, such as The Book of Postures, Venus in the Cloister, Nun in Her Nightdress and John the Fucker Debauched.
At the age of 10, the Marquis was shipped off to Paris to continue his education at the College Louis-Le-Grand, a Jesuit prep school for young men of noble lineage. Noted scholars, the Jesuits were also known for their carnal pursuits with their young charges, which included sodomy and corporal punishment.
The Marquis survived four years at the College, before transferring to the military academy and entering the King’s light cavalry regiment as a sub-lieutenant in 1755.
Maintaining one’s Noble Heritage
As in today’s society, maintaining one’s lifestyle or rank in life was not a guarantee, and unfortunately for the Marquis, his father had aligned himself, placing his families fortunes, with the Prince de Conde, who became one of France’s most despised noblemen. With a poor protector to guarantee his standing in life, the Comte married a lady in waiting of a Princess from Germany and set about looking for a suitable wife of high standing for his young son.
In 1762, the Comte came to an arrangement with the parents of Renee-Pelagie de Montreuil, who were members of the bourgeoisie with powerful connections to the King’s court. Pelagie has been described as a homely woman, but this didn’t bother the Comte, as his son’s reputation for licentious behaviour had all ready destroyed the possibility for other marital pairings, which would have been equally beneficial for the Comte and his son.
The Marquis honoured the marriage, and for a brief time did his best to be the perfect son-in-law for his new father-in-law and mother-in-law, who had the title of the “Presidente” because her husband had been appointed to a prestigious judgeship and, upon his retirement, retained the honorary title of President. This didn’t last long—and little did he know that annoying Presidente was a crime that would one day seriously affect his personal freedom.
The First Sexual Crime
Despite marriage and station in life, the Marquis could not contain his unique sexual desires, which would prove his undoing. In October of 1763, the Marquis enlisted the aid of a young prostitute, Mademoiselle Jeanne Testard, leading to his first arrest for deviant sexual behaviour.
Upon bolting himself and Mlle. Testard in his room, the Marquis pelted the young woman with vile and degrading insults based on her beliefs in the Roman Catholic faith. He then engaged in such provocative and blasphemous acts as masturbating into a chalice, referring to God as a “motherfucker”, inserting communion hosts into her vagina before penetrating her himself, while screaming blasphemous statements, masturbating once again with a pair of crucifixes, and forcing her to repeat vulgar, blasphemous statements. The only activity Mlle. Testard managed to escape was allowing the Marquis to beat her with a cat-o-nine-tails and convincing her to beat him.
The following day, Mlle. Testard was taken to the local police commissioner where she related her experience. Ten days later, the Marquis was arrested by Paris Police Inspector Louis Marais, and imprisoned for acting in a lewd and debauched manner. This was merely the start of his crimes. Of course, at that time, based on his noble upbringing, the Marquis did not see why he should be held accountable for his actions—lewd and debauched behaviour amongst France’s noblemen and woman was not uncommon, even his father had partaken in such activity, with both men and women.
Imprisoned in the dungeon of Vincennes, a Parisian fortress, the Marquis pleaded for mercy, and through the influence of the de Montreuil family, was released after three weeks. The Presidente strived to keep her son-in-law’s activities from her daughter.
Continued Debauchery
Not having learned his lesson, the Marquis continued to explore his sexual appetites, developing an erotic relationship with an 18-year-old French actress Mlle. Colet and engaging in scandalous parties in the spring of 1765 at his ancestral estate of La Coste, just east of Avignon, with a woman and guests who were not his wife. What the Marquis didn’t know was the Presidente had hired Inspector Marais to keep him under official police surveillance.
Despite Pelagie giving birth to their son, Louis-Marie de Sade on August 27, 1767, the Marquis remained less than a dedicated husband and father.
On April 4, 1768, the Marquis victimized Rose Kellor, an unemployed cook and widow he hired for “domestic” services. Taking her to his cottage he immediately demanded that she disrobe, whereupon he threw her on the bed, face down and proceeded to whip her with his cat-o-nine-tails. She eventually managed to escape, find the authorities and turned her unfortunate experience into a scandal for the Marquis and his family. The Presidente could no longer keep this matter from her daughter, but instead of being enraged by her husband’s activities, upon hearing of them, Pelagie began arranging for her husband’s defense. Throughout the course of her life, Pelagie never turned her back on her husband, defending him to the death, but unable to loosen her mother’s iron grip on keeping him incarcerated. At this point, Pelagie’s defense of her husband landed him only four months in prison for the offense.
Despite this incident, in 1772, the Marquis, his valet, Latour, and four prostitutes engaged in a scandalous six-week orgy at La Coste, which included all manner of perversion and escalated to the point where the four prostitutes, frightened by the bizarre and brutal nature of the Marquis requests, begged to be let go.
The La Coste debauchery turned especially bad when he engaged the services of a new woman, Marguerite Coste. The Marquis had tried to sodomize the young lady, but she had refused. At that time in France, sodomy was a crime punishable by death. It was a crime to spill one’s seed in an orifice where the possibility of procreation wasn’t possible. When Marguerite became sick after consuming candies laced with Spanish Fly, her tale of the Marquis’s activities came to light. This, coupled with the testimony of the four other prostitutes resulted in an arrest warrant being issued for him and Latour.
The Marquis went on the lame for many months, roaming around Europe. All in all, despite being imprisoned in Miolans in France and escaping, the Marquis spent almost two years on the run before feeling confident enough to return to his wife in December 1774.
The Final Debauchery
The final straw for the Presidente’s was the Marquis’s next sexual escapade known as ‘The Little Girls’ Affair.’
Having turned his attention to younger and younger girls, the Marquis hired six teenage girls to work at La Coste during the winter months, and proceeded to torment, abuse and violate them. Daily activities included masturbation, fellatio, sodomy (both male-female and male-male), sodomy chains, and scourging (whipping). Six weeks of debauchery, and its eventual discovery, led to the Marquis’s final incarceration. Upset with the disgrace her son-in-law’s activities had brought onto her family’s good name, the Presidente arranged for his arrest and stay in prison—but not right away; although the Presidente arranged for the authorities to raid La Coste, the Marquis escaped and between 1775 and 1777, traveled back and forth between France and Italy.
When he finally decided to return to La Coste, he made the mistake of believing his mother-in-law had forgiven him. On February 13, 1777, the Marquis was arrested by Inspector Marais and incarcerated within the wall of the fortress of Vincennes in Cell 11.
A New Notoriety
This time the Marquis spent thirteen years in prison, moved to a variety of them, before ending up in the infamous Bastille. He was freed during the 1780s, during the French Revolution. During the time he spent in prison, his health deteriorating, the Marquis completed his life’s work, secretly penning the novels Juliette, Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, The 120 Days of Sodom, The Misfortunes of Virtue and other writings.
With descriptions of perversion and debauchery far exceeding what he’d committed as a free man, the Marquis’s writing was banned from publication. But like anything that is banned, it found its way to the masses and has survived to this day.
And, despite his vile ways, the Marquis’s work has found value, forcing scholars to deal with conflicting emotions when considering the man and his legacy. In a 1951 essay, Must We Burn Sade, Simone de Beauvoir identifies the Marquis as a forerunner of Freud, with an intuitive grasp of the nature of the human heart:
It is remarkable, for example, that in 1795 Sade wrote: “Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate, but in which they all unite.” Not only does Sade, in the first part of this text, anticipate what has been called the “pansexuality” of Freud, but also he makes eroticism the mainspring of human behaviour. In addition, he asserts that sexuality is charged with a significance that goes beyond it. Libido is everywhere, and it is always far more than itself. Sade certainly anticipated this great truth. He knew that the “perversions” that are vulgarly regarded as moral monstrosities or physiological defects actually envelop what would now be called an intentionality. He understood, too, that our tastes are motivated not by the intrinsic qualities of the object, but by the latter’s relationship with the subject. In a passage of La Nouvelle Justine he tries to explain coprophilia (arousal from playing with feces). His reply is faltering, but clumsily using the notion of imagination, he points out that the truth of a thing lies not in what it is but in the meaning it has taken on for us in the course of our individual experience. Intuitions such as these allow us to hail Sade as a precursor of psychoanalysis.
A Final Resting Place
The Marquis spent the last years of his life in Charenton, an insane asylum, where he died on December 3, 1814. For a man whose life was devoted to scandal and sensationalism, his final request was to be buried anonymously in a thicket, so that “all traces of my tomb will disappear from the face of the earth, just as I hope all trace of my memory will be erased from the memory of men.” He was buried in the cemetery at Charenton.
The Marquis’s memory lives on. And despite facing persecution in his lifetime, his works of fiction, which contain his philosophies, have lived on, giving his legacy value to scholars attempting to understand the nature of men and sexuality. ♥
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