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Title: At Home With the Marquis De Sade: A Life by Francine Du Plessix Gray ISBN: 0-14-028677-2 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.64 (14 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Carefully Researched, Lucidly Written Life of de Sade
Comment: It often seems difficult for anyone reading a biography of the Marquis de Sade to approach the task objectively for the simple reason that his life and writings precede him in a way unlike most writers and historical figures. Thus, the noun precedes him--"sadist"-and the adjective-"sadistic"-our language itself fixing the man's transgressions before the fact of his biography, making the biography appear superfluous in light of the enormity of the man's crimes. But there was, indeed, a real human being behind the noun and the adjective--Donatien Alphonse Francois, Marquis de Sade--and Francine du Plessix Gray's "At Home With the Marquis de Sade" provides an insightful, sympathetic, well written picture of that human being in all his complexity.
Gray's biography concentrates largely on the relationship de Sade had with two women-his first wife, Renee-Pelagie de Sade, and his indomitable mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil. De Sade's wife remained a constant companion to the erstwhile Marquis for more than a quarter century, suffering his sexual excesses (including dalliances with her younger sister, Anne-Prospere), the ensuing scandals and, ultimately, the many years of imprisonment. His mother-in-law, a social climbing women of fierce and irrepressible will who at first found the Marquis charming, ultimately became his worst oppressor, driven like the Eumenides to avenge de Sade's seduction of her virginal younger daughter, Anne-Prospere. She was, in Gray's characterization, a woman who exemplified "primitive female fury, a rage that is unquestioning in its self-righteousness." And it was Madame de Montreuil who unstintingly worked to keep the Marquis imprisoned for over thirteen years, freedom coming only with the fall of the Bastille in 1789, when the Marquis was forty-nine years old.
Gray deftly uses correspondence and other contemporary historical documents to illuminate de Sade's life, including his prominent involvement as "Citizen Louis Sade" in the Revolutionary government of France, his role in saving his hated mother-in-law from the guillotine in 1793, and his subsequent incarceration in the Charenton asylum from 1799 until his death in 1814, where he carried on as an author and director of numerous theatrical productions staged by the inmates of the asylum and by professional actors. Gray also puts de Sade's early life and sexual excesses in context, showing how his actions, while transgressive and freely chosen, were also the product of a society and an upbringing which allowed libertinism to flourish among the pre-Revolutionary French nobility and clergy. Finally, Gray provides illuminating, albeit brief, discussions of de Sade's literary works, putting his writings in historical context and showing that the excesses of the man's life did not attain the excesses of his imagination.
"At Home With the Marquis de Sade" is, in short, a carefully researched, lucidly written life of the historical figure who has come to symbolize sexual transgression, a biography that eludes the imprisonment of culturally fixed meanings to get at the real life behind the "Sadist".
Rating: 4
Summary: Carefully Researched, Lucidly Written Life of de Sade
Comment: It often seems difficult for anyone reading a biography of the Marquis de Sade to approach the task objectively for the simple reason that his life and writings precede him in a way unlike most writers and historical figures. Thus, the noun precedes him--"sadist"-and the adjective-"sadistic"-our language itself fixing the man's transgressions before the fact of his biography, making the biography appear superfluous in light of the enormity of the man's crimes. But there was, indeed, a real human being behind the noun and the adjective--Donatien Alphonse Francois, Marquis de Sade--and Francine du Plessix Gray's "At Home With the Marquis de Sade" provides an insightful, sympathetic, well written picture of that human being in all his complexity.
Gray's biography concentrates largely on the relationship de Sade had with two women-his first wife, Renee-Pelagie de Sade, and his indomitable mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil. De Sade's wife remained a constant companion to the erstwhile Marquis for more than a quarter century, suffering his sexual excesses (including dalliances with her younger sister, Anne-Prospere), the ensuing scandals and, ultimately, the many years of imprisonment. His mother-in-law, a social climbing women of fierce and irrepressible will who at first found the Marquis charming, ultimately became his worst oppressor, driven like the Eumenides to avenge de Sade's seduction of her virginal younger daughter, Anne-Prospere. She was, in Gray's characterization, a woman who exemplified "primitive female fury, a rage that is unquestioning in its self-righteousness." And it was Madame de Montreuil who unstintingly worked to keep the Marquis imprisoned for over thirteen years, freedom coming only with the fall of the Bastille in 1789, when the Marquis was forty-nine years old.
Gray deftly uses correspondence and other contemporary historical documents to illuminate de Sade's life, including his prominent involvement as "Citizen Louis Sade" in the Revolutionary government of France, his role in saving his hated mother-in-law from the guillotine in 1793, and his subsequent incarceration in the Charenton asylum from 1799 until his death in 1814, where he carried on as an author and director of numerous theatrical productions staged by the inmates of the asylum and by professional actors. Gray also puts de Sade's early life and sexual excesses in context, showing how his actions, while transgressive and freely chosen, were also the product of a society and an upbringing which allowed libertinism to flourish among the pre-Revolutionary French nobility and clergy. Finally, Gray provides illuminating, albeit brief, discussions of de Sade's literary works, putting his writings in historical context and showing that the excesses of the man's life did not attain the excesses of his imagination.
"At Home With the Marquis de Sade" is, in short, a carefully researched, lucidly written life of the historical figure who has come to symbolize sexual transgression, a biography that eludes the imprisonment of culturally fixed meanings to get at the real life behind the "Sadist".
Rating: 3
Summary: Sade and sex as theatre
Comment: In reading At Home with Sade, it's important to bear in mind that for a rather significant period of his life, Sade's home was prison, including the Bastille. Accordingly, much of this book concentrates on Sade's life behind bars. That can make even the life of this world-class reprobate somewhat tedious reading. Sade's philosophy, such as it was, extolled a life driven by the baser emotions. Yet, Sade himself could be remarkably prudish; he remained very much an advocate of double-standards -- drawing a distinction between the tolerant attitude he expected authorities to assume toward the nobility, and the much less lenient posture he expected those same authorities to take toward the "sins" of ordinary men. Sade indeed demanded a level of moral probity from his first wife that he never applied to his own behavior. In fact, Sade's real-life experiments in sexuality depended for their efficacy on a wider-societal moral framework that would find his choreographed sexual antics reprehensible and shocking. Yet, it is at once important and difficult not to allow one's opinion of Sade to obscure one's view of Gray's work. There is no denying that we are fortunate to have a biography this lucid in English.
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Title: Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings by Marquis De Sade, Marquis De Sade, Austryn Wainhouse ISBN: 0802132189 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: October, 1990 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
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Title: The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings by Marquis Sade, Richard Seaver, Austryn Wainhouse ISBN: 0802130127 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: November, 1987 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Marquis De Sade: A Life by Neil Schaeffer ISBN: 0674003926 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: 15 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Juliette by Marquis De Sade, Austryn Wainhouse, Sade ISBN: 0802130852 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: September, 1988 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Letters From Prison by Marquis De Sade ISBN: 155970411X Publisher: Arcade Books Pub. Date: 27 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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