The Marquis De Sades Attitude Towards Women Essay -- essays research p

The Marquis de de Sades Attitude Towards WomenThe Marquis de Sade was an author in France in the late 1700s. His workswere infamous in their time, giving Sade a reputation as an adulterer, adebaucher, and a sodomite. One of the more common misrepresentationsconcerning Sade was his attitude toward women. His attitude was shown in hisway of life and in deuce of his literary characters, Justine and Julliette.The Marquis de Sade was said to be the first and only philosopher of vicebecause of his atheistic and sadistic activities. He held the common fair sex in abject regard. He believed that women dressed provocatively because they fearedmen would take no notice of them if they were naked. He cared little forforced sex. Rape is not a crime, he explained, and is in fact less thanrobbery, for you get what is used back after the deed is done (Bloch 108).Opinions about the Marquis de Sades attitude towards sexual forgivedom forwomen varies from author to author. A prevalent one, the one h eld by Carter,suggests Sades work concerns sexual freedom and the nature of such,significant because of his "refusal to see fe virile sexuality in relation to a productive function."Sade justified his beliefs through graffiti, playing psychologist onvandalsIn the stylization of graffiti, the prick isalways presented erect, as an alert attitude.It points upward, asserts. The hole is open, asan inert space, as a mouth, waiting to be filled.This iconography could be derived from themetaphysical sexual differences man aspires,woman serves no function but existence, waiting.Between her thighs is zero, the symbol of nothingness, that only attainssomethingness when male principle fills it with meaning (Carter 4).The Marquis de Sades way of thought is probably best symbolized in themissionary position. The missionary position represents the mythicrelationship between partners. The woman represents the passive receptiveness,the fertility, and the richness of soil. This relationship m ythicizes andelevates intercourse to an unrealistic proportion. In a more realistic view,Sade compares married women with prostitutes, saying that prostitutes werebetter paid and that they had few delusions (Carter 9).Most of Sades opinions of women were geared towards the present, in whatthey were in his time. He held different opinions, however, for how heenvisioned w... ...ries felt. Bypunishing Justine in his novels, he isnt punishing woman, simply the innocencethat woman represents.While Sade believed that the woman with which he was copulating was simplythere to serve his needs, he also felt it could (and should) work the other wayaround. It is as if he is saying, "Just because I use you, it doesnt meanyou cant use me." Sade couldnt be a sexist in the modern sense, simplybecause he advocated free sexuality so much.He byword the women of his time and was troubled by it. In turn, he wroteabout these women, represented in Justine. The woman he saw in the future werea bolder, free-spirited kind, represented in Juliette. It was the promise ofthis new genre of women he looked forward to and was enlightened by.In short, Sade disliked crush women and liked empowered women. Heliked women closer to his own persona. Sade was probably the firstpornographer, and as such, caused quite an uproar. Most of the judgements madeabout Sade by critics were reflexes, made without taking in the full spectrumof what he was, what he wrote, and what he did. The judgement of Sade by thepopulus, therefore is one more weighty than it should be.