At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life

by Francine du Plessix Gray

Book Overview

Much has been written about the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), the flamboyant aristocrat whose years indulging in sexual aberrations inspired his celebrated works 120 Days of Sodom and Justine -- and landed him in the Bastille. However, scant attention has been paid to the two women who were closest to him: Renee Pelagie de Sade, his adoring wife, and his powerful mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil.Francine du Plessix Gray draws on thousands of pages...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140286772
• ISBN13: 9780140286779
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Fair, focussed and informative.

Francine Gray has humanized Sade for us. The full description of his activities prior to his arrest,as given by Gray, confirms what Sade says of himself,"I am a libertine: I have conceived everything one can conceive in that genre, but I've surely not done all I've imagined and surely will never do it.." Sade was a visionery of cruel and convoluted sex. As regards the use of whips and Cat-'o'-nine tails and sodomy, he was only following the style of his contemporary aristocrats, a way of life which treated prostitites and the lower orders as captive booty, like the nubile black slave girls were treated in the South here till the Civil war.That way of life amongst the French Aristocracy .seems to have continued at least till the twenties of the last century- see Proust's portrayal of the proclivities of Baron Charlus in the last volume of his 'Remembrance of Things Past' ['In Search of last Time' in the recent Penguin Edition]. The description of the French Revolution by Madame Sade is an insider's account of the cataclysm. The black tid-bits about the leaders of the French Revolution, - Mirabeau [incest with his sister and writing erotica] and Danton, ['who read Justine to masturbate']are quite revealing and also raise the question how it is that lechers and the morally defecient become leaders of rabble or are chosen as such by the rabble.Francine could have analysed what exactly was the attraction Sade had for women of all types- the intellectual Milli Rousset, the beautiful Anne Launay,his sister-in-law, the uneducated Constance and others.The book is, on the whole, a great read. B.T.Sampath

A Compelling Blueprint of La Coste & The Marquis de Sade

With the release of the movie Quills starring Jeremy Irons, renewed interest in the infamous writer Marquis de Sade abounds. This tantalizing biography by Francine du Plessix Gray deftly guides us through a most twisted mind and details the idyllic estate in Provence where he created some of his most shocking work. The Marquis de Sade, who was born in 1740 and died in 1814, was a passionate gourmet, and especially loved baked apples and vanilla custards for dessert. He also fancied Provençal delicacies such as quail stuffed with grape leaves, very fresh cream of chard soups and chocolate cake. "I wish for a chocolate cake so dense," he once wrote his wife from one of his stints in jail, "that it is black, like the devil's a** is blackened by smoke." Sade, one of the few men in history whose names have spawned adjectives, was equally particular about matters of personal hygiene and liked to bathe every day -- a habit totally foreign to his 18th century contemporaries, who might have bathed twice a month at the most. He loved dogs, he loved children as long as they abided by his orders and he delighted in family games such as blind man's buff and musical chairs. But above all other material things, above all his many whimsies and caprices, the Marquis de Sade cherished a certain place in his native Provence, a little château in a small village called La Coste, which he had inherited from his father's family and on which he looked as his only home. La Coste was to Sade what Walden was to Henry David Thoreau, what Combray was to Marcel Proust, what Amherst was to Emily Dickinson -- the matrix of all inspiration and perhaps also of all delusions, the quintessential Site-as-Muse. There's a potential danger in this kind of domestic approach to the Marquis de Sade. Such domestic ironies, such pleasant trivia of Sade's life as his love of baked apples might defang him, and turn this borderline psychopath and woman-batterer into a pleasant fellow. It should not be forgotten that one of the most terrifying features of Sade's persona, as with many batterers of women, is the vast range of his behavior -- his occasional capacity for great tenderness and integrity, his considerably more frequent manipulativeness and brazen authoritarianism. Sade was a power freak if there ever was one. With detailed imagery, blueprints if you will, of La Coste; secret apartments, torturous rooms of enema bags, photo galleries rampant with pornography, Gray is an architect of an intriguing, well researched biography of a most disturbed, yet scintillating man.

Fascinating

Although few of us would choose the Marquis de Sade as a friend, there can be no doubt that he was one of history's most fascinating and colorful characters. This book eschews sensationalism and gives us a fascinating glimpse of the private world of the man who prompted psychiatrist, Kraft-Ebbing, in 1882, to coin the term "sadism." Interestingly, sadism played but a small part in the life of de Sade; he was as much a masochist as anything else.de Sade was born in Paris in 1740; his young mother was governess and lady-in-waiting to Prince Condé. At the age of four, de Sade threw one too many temper tantrums and was sent to the south of France, to his doting grandmother in Avignon. From Avignon, he was sent to various Jesuit schools where, at the time, flogging and sodomy were common practice. This, the author convincingly argues, provided the needed catalyst for the emergence of de Sade's true personality.de Sade married his only wife at an early age, the plain and ungraceful Pélagie Montreuil, daughter of the intelligent and ambitious Madame Montreuil. The Montreuil's had money but no familial link to the aristocracy. For a time Madame Montreuil excused the sexual forays of her new son-in-law, but eventually her forgiveness become too much for him to ask; she turned against de Sade with a bitterness, becoming not only his mother-in-law, but his lifelong nemesis as well.His marriage to Pélagie, however was a surprisingly good one. de Sade apparently awakened long-repressed passions in the young girl that remained until their separation many years later when she rejected him with much fervor.Eschewing Louis XV's court in Paris and in Versailles, de Sade preferred living on his estates in Provence, most particularly in the medieval hill village of Lacoste. In Lacoste, the marquis took full advantage of his feudal rights and looked upon the villagers as nothing more than serfs. While Madame Montreuil raised his three children in Paris, de Sade and Pélogie lived the high life in the chateau at Lacoste. de Sade, himself, made frequent trips to the Provençal capital of Marseilles where he maintained rented houses for prostitutes. His prostitutes, however, didn't especially care for the idea (or the actuality) of being whipped. They also found de Sade's sodomy and coprophilia perversions less than enticing. Depositions were soon filed and the frustrated pre-Republic parliament system, for whom the king was beyond reach, went after de Sade with fervor. As a result of his depravity, de Sade found himself in and out of prison for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was megalomania, perhaps it was simply uncontrollable depravity, but each time de Sade was released from prison, he immediately set off and got into trouble once again. In Marseilles, he fed Spanish fly covered with anise to two prostitutes and they became so ill they accused the marquis of attempted poisoning. Back he went to prison. Upon being released, he found, to his great d

Men behaving badly...

It's all too easy to recount legendary bad behavior - it is quite another thing to account for it and demonstrate how the imprint of a literary figure from long ago and far away has immediate relevance. Your reviewer from Lake Arrowhead doesn't appreciate the author's finesse in using only period sources to present a refreshing point of view on the Marquis. What's more, he doesn't see the new, far scarier, monster uncovered in this sad tale - the Mother-in-Law. It is true that if you are seeking thrills you should probably stick to the Marquis' writings or modern pornography. Nevertheless, if you are interested in the man himself, the period, the influences that shaped his oeuvre, and a superb human story, go get this book!