At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life (Paperback)

~ (Author) "THE CHILD STOOD in the palace courtyard, shouting..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mme de Montreuil, Marquis de Sade, Comte de Sade (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Lending his name to the term sadism, and synonymous with pornography and sexual perversion, the infamous Marquis de Sade was inarguably mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But the very qualities that were repellent in the man make for fascinating reading in Francine du Plessix Gray's biography, At Home with the Marquis de Sade. The pitfalls of writing about such a scandalous subject are obvious: Sade is so completely associated in the modern mind with extremely degrading sexual escapades that any book about him risks being tarred with the same prurient brush--how does one discuss the Marquis without mentioning such loaded topics as whipping, sodomy, masturbation, blasphemy, or orgies, for example? The answer is, one doesn't; but Gray's focus in this biography is less on Sade's sexuality than on his relationship with the two most influential women in his life: his wife, Pélagie, and his mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil.

It seems even a sadist can love, and in his own way, the Marquis de Sade loved his wife. Even more remarkable is that Pélagie apparently returned his affection devotedly for many years, despite frequent scandals, jailings, and even an affair with her own sister. Gray draws extensively on letters written by Sade, his wife, and his mother-in-law to paint a vibrant picture of an unorthodox marriage, a period of great political upheaval, and a complicated bond between mother and daughter. Gray also places the Marquis's writing in a context that, while forthrightly characterizing it as "the crudest, most repellent fictional dystopia ever limned, the creation of a borderline psychotic whose scatological fantasies have grown all the more deranged in the solitude and rage of his jail cell," also acknowledges its "recklessness and daring" as well as its influence on later writers from Swinburne and Baudelaire to Octavio Paz and Luis Buñuel. Sex, art, religion, and politics--At Home with the Marquis de Sade addresses them all with the intelligence and insight one has come to expect from Francine du Plessix Gray. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The story of the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) is filled with drama, mystery, political survival, plot twists, unforgettable characters and bizarre eccentricities, sexual and otherwise. Novelist, essayist and biographer du Plessix Gray (Lovers and Tyrants) does a remarkable job in rendering that story in a way that engages both the emotions and the intellect. She separates myth from fact, and where there are gaps, she poses questions that let readers draw their own conclusions. She shows how someone like Sade could have been created: a distant mother, debauched father and cleric uncle, combined with a French society that rivaled the late Roman Empire in hedonism. Through letters, journals and official documents, she follows Sade from a lonely, isolated childhood to Jesuit school, the military, marriage, sexual scandals, financial hardship, media celebrity, outlaw status and incarceration. She also looks at the women who shaped his life: Ren?e-P?lagie, his fanatically loyal wife, and her mother, Madame de Montreuil, who tried her best to separate the couple. This biography is not some titillating list of transgressions but rather a complicated, contradictory life portrayed in full cultural, political and psychological context: Sade as debaucher and victim of French political unrest, libertine and moralizer, loving husband and manipulator, pornographer and chaste writer. Du Plessix Gray unearths the causes of Sade's fears, distrust, fetishes, psychoses and atheismAin short, the failings that made him human. Whether one sees Sade as the ultimate rebel hero or the ultimate monster, du Plessix Gray's thorough, riveting telling makes him irresistible.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (December 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140286772
• ISBN-13: 978-0140286779
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #459,551 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, October 23, 2000

By A Customer

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 delight, that Pélogie had hired an entire retune of beautiful young girls to live in the chateau at Lacoste and do the marquis' bidding. There followed six weeks of debauchery of the highest (or lowest) order, which only ended when the parents of the girls filed charges. This particular incident netted de Sade a thirteen-year prison term. Released after the fall of the Bastille, de Sade went on to hold a minor position in the National Assembly until Robespierre cast him unceremoniously into prison once again. Prison, however, wasn't all bad for de Sade, for it was there that he composed Justine and Juliette and many other now famous works. After the fall of Robespierre, de Sade was once again free, only to find himself committed (by Madame Montreuil) to the mental asylum at Charendon where he spent the remainder of his days, often conducting lavish theatrical productions that involved the other inmates.

This book is aptly named, for it brings de Sade to life through everyday details, many of them based on his letters to Pélogie. Although we know the marquis grew tremendously fat while incarcerated, most of us never knew why. When we read, in this book, his letters to Pélogie demanding goodies such as truffles, chocolates, jams, cakes "glazed on both sides" and other sweet treats, we not only understand de Sade's corpulence, we also feel a little sympathy for Pélogie, for although she tried to fulfill the marquis' demands, it wasn't an easy job; de Sade had bankrupted them, forcing Pélogie to live out her life in a convent.

Although this book is set against a rich historical background (the fall of Napoleon, the rise and fall of Robespierre), it is a detailed, "everyday" history that is portrayed as opposed to history on an epic scale. At Home With the Marquis de Sade is a well-researched, well-written and fascinating look at the everyday minutiae of a man who, although his name has become almost a household word, has heretofore been far too little understood.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling Blueprint of La Coste & The Marquis de Sade, December 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: At Home with the Marquis De Sade: A Life (Hardcover)

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.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Carefully Researched, Lucidly Written Life of de Sade, October 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: At Home with the Marquis De Sade: A Life (Hardcover)

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".