The erotic works of the Marquis de Sade have been controversial for their sexually explicit nature since they were originally published. While Sade’s works have often had their detractors, they have also had many fans. Among these fans are a variety of feminist writers, such as Simone de Beauvoir and Angela Carter, who are appreciative of Sade because of how he portrays female sexuality. The typical novelist of the time would portray female sexuality as practically nonexistent, as being present only for the purposes of reproduction. Sade, however, acknowledges the sexual desire as well as the sexual oppression of women. Because of Sade’s view of the world, that being an entirely sexual one as reflected in his life and literature, sexuality permeates everything in his work. Therefore, women and men are treated as equally sexual beings, capable of both sexually exploiting and being sexually exploited. Sade recognizes the potential humanity and inhumanity in the male and female sexes.
By no means am I or any other of the writers mentioned in this essay saying that the Marquis de Sade was an intentionally feminist writer ahead of his time, recognizing the inarguable humanity of the female sex. Rather, it is an exploration of how his writings may have been unusual for their time in their claims about female sexuality, and may still even be odd in terms of representation of women in erotic fiction. The unusual way in which Sade goes about asserting the sexuality and power of women in his fiction is a topic worthy of exploration. In this essay, I explore the surprising slightly feminist themes that are contained within Sade’s work as well as the literature about them. Some of my sources for this paper are Simone de Beauvoir’s essay, Must We Burn Sade?, Angela Carter’s essay, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography, as well as analysis’ of these texts and the writings of the Marquis de Sade.