Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade ( SA(H)D; French: [dɔnasjɛ̃ alfɔ̃s fʁɑ̃swa maʁki də sad]; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814) was a French writer, libertine, political activist, and nobleman best known for his libertine novels and imprisonment for sex crimes, blasphemy, and pornography. His works include novels, short stories, plays, dialogues, and political tracts. Some of these were published under his own name during his lifetime, but most appeared anonymously or posthumously.
Born into a noble family dating back to the 13th century, Sade served as an officer in the Seven Years' War before a series of sex scandals led to his detention in various prisons and insane asylums for most of his adult life. During his first extended imprisonment from 1777 to 1790, he wrote a series of novels and other works, some of which his wife smuggled out of prison. On his release during the French Revolution, he pursued a literary career and became politically active, first as a constitutional monarchist then as a radical republican. During the Reign of Terror, he was imprisoned for moderatism and narrowly escaped the guillotine. He was re-arrested in 1801 for his pornographic novels and was eventually incarcerated in the Charenton insane asylum, where he died in 1814.
His major works include The 120 Days of Sodom, Justine, Juliette and Philosophy in the Bedroom, which combine graphic descriptions of sex acts, rape, torture, murder, and child abuse with discourses on religion, politics, sexuality, and philosophy. The word sadism derives from his fictional characters who take pleasure in inflicting pain on others.
There is debate over the extent to which Sade's behavior was criminal and sadistic. Peter Marshall states that Sade's "known behaviour (which includes only the beating of a housemaid and an orgy with several prostitutes) departs greatly from the clinical picture of active sadism". Andrea Dworkin, however, argues that the issue is whether one believes Sade or the women who accused him of sexual assault.
Interest in his work increased in the 20th century, with various authors considering him a precursor to Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, surrealism, totalitarianism, and anarchism. Many prominent intellectuals, including Angela Carter, Simone de Beauvoir, and Roland Barthes, published studies of his work, and numerous biographies have also been produced. Cultural depictions of his life and work include the play Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss and the film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Dworkin and Roger Shattuck have criticized the rehabilitation of Sade's reputation, arguing that it promotes violent pornography likely to cause harm to women, the young and "unformed minds".
Early life, education and marriage (1740–1763)
Sade was born on 2 June 1740, in the Hôtel de Condé, Paris, the only surviving child of Jean-Baptiste François Joseph, Comte de Sade, and Marie-Éléonore de Maillé de Carman. The Sade family was of the provincial nobility dating to the 13th century. Sade's mother was from a junior branch of the house of Bourbon-Condé and therefore Sade was related to the King of France by blood.
Sade's father was a captain of dragoons who was entrusted with diplomatic missions to the Russian Empire, Britain and the Elector of Cologne. His mother was lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Condé and, for his first four years, Sade lived in the Hôtel de Condé. The infant Sade was spoilt, haughty, and prone to violent rages. In 1744, he was sent to live with his grandmother in Avignon, probably because he had fought with his playmate, Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, who was four years his senior.
The following year, Sade was placed in the care of his paternal uncle, the Abbé de Sade, a priest and libertine who lived in the château de Saumane in the Vaucluse region. The Abbé d'Amblet was appointed as Sade's tutor and the young marquis grew to respect him greatly. Meanwhile, the Count de Sade had lost favor with the king and had been recalled from his post in Germany. His career was now in ruins and his wife eventually left him to live in a Carmelite convent in Paris.
In the autumn of 1750, ten-year-old Sade was sent to the Jesuit college Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he was taught Latin, Greek and rhetoric, and also participated in the school's theatrical productions. Sade's father was now heavily in debt and could not afford to enroll his son as a residential student, so Sade probably lived in private accommodation with Amblet. Residential students were discouraged from mixing with external students, and this might have isolated Sade from his aristocratic peers. Biographers and historians are divided on whether or not Sade experienced caning (or other forms of corporal punishment), sexual abuse or sodomy while at school, and whether or not this influenced his sexual development.
Sade spent his summer holidays with Madame de Raimond, one of his father's former lovers, at the château de Longeville in the Champagne region. There, he met Madame de Saint-Germain, for whom he would hold a life-long affection. Both women became mother-figures for Sade.In 1754, Sade was sent to the Chevaux-légers military academy. After twenty months of training, on 14 December 1755, aged 15, Sade was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in the King's Foot Guard. He soon went to battle at the onset of the Seven Years' War. After thirteen months as a sub-lieutenant, he was commissioned to the rank of cornet in the Brigade de Saint-André of the Comte de Provence's Carbine Regiment on 14 January 1757, and again promoted to the rank of captain in the Burgundian Cavalry on 21 April 1759. Despite this, Sade generally refused to ingratiate himself with his superiors, and "disdained making friends with his peers". He frequently infuriated his father with his gambling and womanizing.
By 1761, Sade had gained a reputation as a good soldier, but a gambler, spendthrift and libertine, all of which damaged any prospects of further promotion. In February 1763, the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years' War, and Sade was discharged. Back in Paris, he lived a life of pleasure, while his ill and seriously indebted father contemplated retiring to a monastery to avoid "having to welcome my son, with whom I am unhappy".
Sade's father was also negotiating with the Montreuil family for his son to marry their eldest daughter, Renée-Pélagie. Although the Montreuils were of bourgeois origin, and had only been ennobled in the 17th century, they were wealthy and had influential contacts, both at court and in legal circles. The count considered his son a financial burden with a poor character: "As for me, what makes up my mind is that I will be rid of the boy, who has not one good quality and all the bad ones".
Meanwhile, Sade had fallen in love with a nobleman's daughter named Laure de Lauris, but was abruptly rejected after two months of courtship. He was enraged, and threatened to blackmail Lauris by blaming his venereal disease on her to the next young man she courted. Sade, who proclaimed that he would "only marry for love", resisted the arranged marriage with the "plain and charmless" Renée-Pélagie, and did not attend court when, on 1 May 1763, the king and members of the royal family endorsed the marriage contract. Sade finally relented, and the two families signed the contract on 15 May. The wedding took place two days later.
Sade and Renée-Pélagie moved into rooms provided by her parents in the Hôtel de Montreuil in Paris. Sade was initially pleased with his new, strictly Catholic bride, writing to his uncle, "I don't know how to praise her enough". Two years later, however, he told the Abbé that she was "too cold and too devout". She gave birth to two sons and a daughter, and later became an accomplice to his alleged crimes with adolescents.
Scandals and imprisonment (1763–1790)
Four months after his wedding, Sade was accused of blasphemy and incitement to sacrilege, which were capital offenses. He had rented a property in Paris which he used for sexual encounters. On 18 October 1763, Sade hired a prostitute named Jeanne Testard. Testard stated to the police that Sade had locked her in a bedroom before asking whether she believed in God. When she said that she did, Sade said there was no God and shouted obscenities concerning Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Sade then masturbated with a chalice and crucifix while shouting obscenities and blasphemies. He asked her to beat him with a cane and an iron scourge which had been heated by fire, but she refused. Sade then threatened her with pistols and a sword, telling her he would kill her if she did not trample on a crucifix and exclaim obscene blasphemies. She reluctantly complied. She spent the night with Sade, who read her irreligious poetry. He asked her for sodomy (another capital offense) but she refused. The following morning, Testard reported Sade to the authorities. On 29 October, following a police investigation, Sade was arrested on the personal orders of the king and jailed in Vincennes prison. Sade wrote several contrite letters to the authorities in which he expressed remorse and asked to see a priest. After Sade's father begged Louis XV for clemency, the king ordered Sade's release on 13 November.