The Marquis de Sade

by Mistress Michelle Peters

DONATIEN, Alphonse Francois, Conte de Sade (otherwise known as the Marquis de Sade) is as misunderstood as the sexual practice which bears his name, "Sadism." Described as a "libertine, debaucher, pornographer and sadist" and "the greatest incarnation of evil that has ever lived," he spent at least half of his adult life in prisons and asylums in 18th century France.

The Marquis de Sade is generally considered to be one of the finest writers who touched pen to paper, but because he was one of the first to describe the role of the dominant male in a sexual relationship and was a firm believer in sexual freedom (he scandalized Paris high-society by attending orgies at most of the brothels there) he was hounded by the moral guardians of the time. The fact is, that only three scandals can be proven against him and they did not warrant the punishment he eventually received.

Little is really known of the life of the Marquis de Sade that can truly be called fact, so rampant were the rumors which circulated around Paris at the time. We do know that he was born in 1740. He attended the famous College de Louis Le Grand and was eventually commissioned as a coronet in the French army. It is with his marriage to the eldest daughter of one of the most powerful magisterial families in France, Renee Pelagri de Montreuil, that his problems in life really began.

He had married a refined, respectable woman of high rank and his occasional graphic language and personal habits began to scandalize the high society of the time. Only one month after his marriage he is said to have had a great orgy at one of the Paris brothels. The girls allegedly complained of "the brutalities and strange phantasies" of the Marquis on this night. He is also supposed to have "fed the company with chocolate pastilles made with Spanish fly." This last might be true, but the rest was probably concocted by his angry mother-in-law who swore to destroy de Sade for besmirching the family name. As a result, de Sade was imprisoned on a trumped up charge of poisoning the patrons and employees of the brothel.

It seems that throughout his youth and his years in the military, young de Sade had been accustomed to zealously attending the local brothels. In fact, the famous procuress Brissault is said to have refused to furnish him with one of her girls because of his "unspeakable actions" as she put it. The truth here is that de Sade made the mistake of offending the Madame and was later the victim of her gossip. The point is, the Marquis de Sade was just not able to make the adjustment from this carousing life he was used to and the new life he was embarking upon.

It seems that nothing can match the wrath of an angry mother-in-law, as the Marquis was about to find out. After he was out of prison for only one month he somehow became involved in a scandal with the famous dancer and courtesan, Beauvoisin. It was rumored that he had held a kind of mock court at Castle La Costa in Provence and invited the townsfolk to orgies in Beauvoisin's honor. Not satisifed with this, de Sade's venomous mother-in-law then concocted a story, together with witnesses (and finally her own judge and jury) which became known as the infamous "Keller affair."

According to this account, a young widow named Frau Keller was upon the streets asking for alms when the Marquis de Sade happened by. He took pity on her and suggested that she come to his home in Arcveil and be his housekeeper. He allegedly took her through the home showing her the duties of the house and all was in order until they reached a dark room at the top of the house. From here, the scholar Hardy (who claimed to have somehow witnessed this event) picks up the commentary in his own words. "As soon as they entered this room the Comte de Sade (a title he inherited after his father's death) doubly bolted the door and ordered her to denude herself completely.

Surprised and frightened, she refused. He drew out his sword and threatened to run it through her if she offered any resistance. But as he saw that these threats had no effect he suddenly threw her upon the bed and violently tore off all her clothes with the exception of her skirt, which he ordered her to take off. At her failure to do this, he tore it off in strips, from her body. Then he bound both her hands, placed a stick in her mouth so that she could not cry out, brought forth two thick bundles of whips from the chest and beat her soundly over the entire body.

"He then took from the cupboard a kind of pen-knife, a candle and Spanish wax and made incisions in the fleshiest parts of the body, carefully stretched each incision with his two spread fingers so that he could the more easily pour in the wax."

According to Hardy, the Marquis is then said to have locked her in this room and threatened her with death. Although de Sade was himself a gentleman and appears from his letters and other writings to be of a most gentle nature, his wife's family was somewhat more powerful than he was and this outlandish piece of testimony sent him to prison again in 1772 or thereabouts. When released, de Sade's hatred of his wife was so deep that he not only seduced, but abducted his wife's sister, Anne Prospere from a convent. He was seized in Piedmont and locked in the infamous prison, the Bastille, only to be freed in 1789 during the French revolution when the Bastille was set to the torch.

It was at this point in his life that de Sade came to his peak in terms of his literary powers. He wrote the famous Justine: ou, Les Malheurs de Ia Virtue at this time, as well as the first book attempting -. to study and categorize sexual behavior in human beings. It contained 600 different case studies and was published over a century before Masters and Johnson were even born! Among his writings were many political tracts, which called not only for the abolition of capital punishment, but also for equality of women, an idea not adopted in this country until over a hundred years later.

It was one of these political pamphlets, however, which later got de Sade into his most serious trouble. Not only did he speak out in favor of a more civilized society, but he incurred the wrath of Napoleon Bonaparte by writing against his iron hand. Although the tract was totally political, it was spoken of as "obscene denunciations" against Napoleon and his family. For the crime of speaking his mind, the revolutionary de Sade was thrown into prison for 3 years and later carted off to the insane asylum at Chareton.

It was in this asylum that the creative genius of the Marquis produced some of the greatest plays of the period. He not only wrote them, but the inmates of the asylum (mostly political heretics like himself) performed them to the dismay of the hospital's director, Rover Collard who wrote in pleading terms, "This man is not mentally ill... I firmly believe a strong fort would be better fitted for him than an asylum with its many opportunities for satisfying his degenerate desires." And so it was with the Marquis de Sade. A literary genius, a revolutionary thinker and an extreme advocate of sexual freedom. Almost 200 years ahead of his time, he died on December 8, 1814, in an asylum where he had no reason to be. His tastes for a dominant role in his sexual life were fogged by misunderstanding and political intrigues. And today, nearly two centuries later, that fog is just beginning to lift.