December 10–17, 1998

book quarterly

Hurts So Good

The man who gave his name to sadism.

Reviewed by Robin Rice

At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life

By Francine du Plessix Gray

Simon & Schuster, 494 p., $27.50

If it weren't for Madame de Montreuil's unrelenting attempts to have her son-in-law, the Marquis de Sade, imprisoned, he would have never become a writer and would have remained just another "tedious debauchee." Francine du Plessix Gray marvels over this realization 310 pages into her literate biography of a man so renowned that he is remembered by the letter 'S' (at least when combined with the complementary initial 'M').

Gray's remark is a tacit admission that, as a personality, Sade is tiresome. He was vain, astonishingly selfish, and prone to irrational rages. Later on, she quietly acknowledges that (aside from his writing), he did almost nothing in his whole life which compels our admiration.

It must have fatigued a writer of Gray's sensibilities to compose over 400 pages about a man who's worse than bad—he's boring. Gray seems to have increased her own pleasure in the narrative by seeking worthy objects of admiration. These are the women with whom Sade was allied, especially his wife, but in focusing on them, she tends to distort the portrait of her central subject.

She also engages herself and her readers with a detailed anecdotal social history of the 18th century from the days of Louis XIV through the Revolution, the Terror, the Directoire, and into the 19th century. Though often a prisoner or outcast, Sade (1740-1814) was oddly close to the center of political events. Lively history is the true strength of this biography.

Viewed from today's milieu of talk shows and "Ask Isadora," Sade's tastes are not extraordinary. Thanks largely to his aforementioned in-law, he spent most of his life in prison or in an insane asylum. He'd probably have been too flighty to write if he'd not had the enforced leisure to compose novels like 120 Days of Sodom, Justine, Juliette, and Gray's favorite Philosophy in the Boudoir.

For someone with money, official confinement could be surprisingly agreeable. There were delicate viands (Sade's personal menus are preserved), pleasant companions (his closest woman friend took a nearby room in his insane asylum for awhile), handsome gardens for frequent, unsupervised strolls, and various pleasures (while in the Bastille, Sade had his wife obtain dildos for him, along with litters of eau de cologne, pounds of face powder, and an almost endless stream of finicky luxuries).

Outside prison, Sade's documented orgies have elements of fiasco. On one occasion he accidentally, but not fatally, poisoned some young women with Spanish fly which he hoped would cause flatulence, one of his pleasures.

He reserved his more outrageous experiments for people of the lowest class. It is well documented that Sade did not advocate killing people in real life, but, on occasion, he did detain individuals and terrorize and whip them. (One should remember in this context that public whipping was a regular part of the curriculum of his Jesuit education.) Sade found orgasm difficult, unusually intense and painful. Luckily, for him the pain (probably caused by venereal disease) was perhaps the best part. Sodomy was a favorite activity, either as an active or passive participant—preferably both simultaneously.

Like everyone of his time, the Marquis made clear distinctions about class. He would never treat upper-class women—including his wife Pélagie—as he did prostitutes. Still, Pélagie apparently enjoyed anal intercourse with her husband (Gray oddly always uses the less specific term "sodomy," a strategy which emphasizes its forbidden character). There's no record of what we would call "sado-masochistic" sex between them.

Pélagie abetted her husband's schemes. She hired young servants and transported them to the family's isolated estate at La Coste, where the Marquis planned to initiate them in his erotic activities. Another fiasco. Most returned to their homes in short order. None was detained.

Sade's "sadism" might suggest that Gray's biography is titillating. It is not. Nor is it tedious, in spite of the fact that not one of its major characters is estimable, charming or personally likable. What is fascinating is the pageant of history as it's illuminated by the self-aggrandizing, tireless, foolhardy and, ultimately, ridiculous Marquis.