Marquis de Sade was an eighteenth century french writer, his most notable work is 120 days. Marquis de Sade wrote this book on pieces of smuggled parchment while imprisoned in the Bastille. This wasn’t just the work of a depraved man wanting to get his rocks off, he was fully aware of the disgust his writing would bring.
Something I find extremely interesting about Marquis De Sade however, was his uncle. The Abbe De Sade – though I could find very little on him – was noted to be a Libertine and a Priest. This is extremely interesting to me because its kind of an oxymoron, especially for the time period: a priest is a man of god, who shouldn’t be tempted by things like physical pleasure, while a Libertine is someone who advocates for sexual freedom and believes that societal morals shouldn’t hold back physical pleasure. The Abbe De Sade, Paul Aldonse de Sade, took care of Marquis de Sade when he was 4 and a half and stayed with him at least partially until he was ten and sent off to school — according to what I could find in “Sade: A biography,” by Maurice Lever (1993), the Marquis’ father sent him there as he was spoiled by his aunts and grandmother, “He was a marvel, a miracle, an idol whose every whim was indulged. Knowing this, the apprentice tyrant asked for everything and got it, only to become more unbearable than ever” (page 52), and his father believed that the only way to control him would be for him to have a masculine authority figure. The Abbe also kept a library, of which he had a hidden collection of “licentious literature” (page 57) that the Marquis de Sade reportedly had found and taken interest in: including a book on Flagellation that also refered to “pleasure through suffering.” The Abbe was also reported to have had many supposed affairs even after becoming a priest, including but not limited to: a mother and daughter who lived with him, a maid, and a proprietress of a tavern – it is also mentioned that the Abbe was found with a prostitute in May 1762, who had the last name Dieu – which is very ironic given he was a priest (page 58).
It’s very clear that the behavior and paraphernalia of Marquis De Sade’s uncle heavily affect the way the Marquis thought growing up and while there are many other reasons as to why the Marquis turned out the way he did, I just found the influence of his Uncle to be very interesting and probably very crucial to his upbringing, especially given that he was so young when under the Abbe’s care.