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The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History
"Sexuality is power," wrote the Marquis de Sade. His virtuous Justine kept to the rules laid down by men, her reward rape and humiliation; his Juliette, Justine's triumphantly monstrous antithesis, viciously exploited her sexuality. This is a world where all tenderness is false, and all beds are minefields. But now Sade has met his match. With invention and geniu...more
Paperback, 181 pages
Published
October 1st 2006
by Virago UK
(first published 1978)
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This book's primary thesis is that the Marquis De Sade is the father of modern feminism. For the uninitiated, De Sade's works are infamous for their depictions of sexual humiliation and cruelty. We get the term 'sadism' from the sex practices he fearlessly explored.
Against all expectation, Carter supports this seemingly absurd thesis in a way that is lucid, reasonable, insightful, and even amusing. It seems there is a gift for women in Donatien's mad sensual rebellion, after all.
...more
Against all expectation, Carter supports this seemingly absurd thesis in a way that is lucid, reasonable, insightful, and even amusing. It seems there is a gift for women in Donatien's mad sensual rebellion, after all.
...more
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This was the opening salvo in my two-pronged attack on reading a work of De Sade (Philosophy in the Boudoir: Or, The Immoral Mentors) - the second prong will be Sade: A Sudden Abyss. I chose this because I love Angela Carter's short fiction and know here as imaginative writer and clear thinker.
And that's what you get here. Carter tackles the notorious figure and finds interesting and amazing things to tease out, all while floating a larger concept of what pornography is. The primar...more
And that's what you get here. Carter tackles the notorious figure and finds interesting and amazing things to tease out, all while floating a larger concept of what pornography is. The primar...more
From Alan Moore:
It’s like when you’ve got people like Angela Carter who, in her book The Sadeian Women, she admitted that there was the possibility she could imagine a form of pornography that was benign, that was imaginative, was beautiful, and which didn’t have the problems that she saw in a lot of other pornography. I think even Andrea Dworkin said the same thing. She said it a bit more grudgingly, but she said that conceivably there was, there could be, a benign form of pornograp...more
It’s like when you’ve got people like Angela Carter who, in her book The Sadeian Women, she admitted that there was the possibility she could imagine a form of pornography that was benign, that was imaginative, was beautiful, and which didn’t have the problems that she saw in a lot of other pornography. I think even Andrea Dworkin said the same thing. She said it a bit more grudgingly, but she said that conceivably there was, there could be, a benign form of pornograp...more
Madeeha Maqbool
added it
You need strong nerves and dispassion to read this one. I wouldn't have been able to manage it a few years ago but found myself appreciating and devouring it now. It reveals a great deal about the discourse that goes into "making" women what they are. I especially loved Carter's psychoanalysis and feminist deconstruction of Sade's women and the things that set him apart from other men writing at the time.
(But an older version I can't find right now,softcover w/a picture of a woman in black leather w/a whip.) Maybe it just spoke to me particularly well, but I was definitely a victim of a cruel, godless world at the time, and yearning in a way to turn the tables and use what I had to my advantage. In any case, I felt it empowering; balm on my freshly minted yet deeply scarred personality.
Sarah
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Recommends it for:
Angela Carter and Marquis de Sade Enthusiasts
Shelves:
english-class
I read this for a paper that I was doing on Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber". It points out a few interesting ideas, and is brutally honest. She is able to get her point across without losing her audience's attention which I believe is very important.
Let me give full disclosure and say I absolutely, completely loathe the Marquis de Sade and his writing. Can. Not. Stand. It. That being said, this is one of the smartest (and most accessible) non-fiction considerations of feminism, pornography, and the power of the body. I'm almost inspired to go re-read the Marquis... (though not quite... it's like reading the paper version of a snuff film... just, ew). But still, Carter's treatise is as compelling as it is revolutionary (still! and she wr...more
A very useful guide if you want to learn about pornography, sex & sadism... She gives every single detail and makes easier to understand these term's psychological depth...
Shannon gave this to me eight million years ago because I really wanted to reeeeead it.
A really great book shows us how everything is great and worth to die for
On my list thanks to a great review by Keely.
The MArguis de Sade was a feminist.
Important necessary book.
Ostentatious.
Brief, razor-edged, pithy and brutal: Angela Carter dismantles entrenched sexuality and its self-consciously constructed counterparts using de Sade as a perfectly ground lens. Her critiques of Sade are familiar (this was first published in 1978) but her uses of them are radical and inspiring.
Her authorial voice reminds me of Camille Paglia, though the two women have wildly different conclusions from their material.
Her authorial voice reminds me of Camille Paglia, though the two women have wildly different conclusions from their material.
Love the polemical preface to this book! While The Sadeian Woman (originally published in 1979) may be something of a historical text these days, it's still a bracing read. Carter deconstructs the silly Ur-goddess myths of feminism with verve, glee and intelligence. You don't need to be a post-modern anything to enjoy it: any "outsider" will warm to her passion.
Interesting analysis of the Marquis de Sade's work as a satirist, cross-referenced to the societal views of his time and today. Interesting reading, if you can stomach the material.
The Sadeian Woman by Angela Carter (1988)
One of the better cultural critics out there, who knew? I disagree with her concepts of femininity and agency at times, but the razor of her brain pitted with Sade is a beautiful thing to behold. It's a sordid vicious brainiac cage match. I wrote reams of timy notes in the margins.
I can't say Angela Carter's book persuaded me to read de Sade---in fact, I might avoid his work entirely for the rest of my life---but it did help me think through some of the more complicated power dynamics behind female sexual subjectivity.
blowing my mind.
5 stars just for the chapter on Justine and her legacy, which is a tour de force. the rest, i'd say 4 stars. overall, just a terrific book - angela carter is an amazing writer of fiction and nonfiction.
5 stars just for the chapter on Justine and her legacy, which is a tour de force. the rest, i'd say 4 stars. overall, just a terrific book - angela carter is an amazing writer of fiction and nonfiction.
I need to read this again. I do love the way Carter can write on such a topic--rather than academy-speak, her language remains round and volumptious as in her novels.
Too much essentialism & summarization of the texts to be truly great but her thesis is something that is so up my alley that it's in my house. More like 3.5
"Justine" is the only Sade I've read, so I skipped about a quarter of the book relating only to others of his texts. She is funny, smart, and my fave.
This book on hold until I can get it from inter library loan again.
I swear when I got this it was purely for literary purposes.
couldn't have loved this book more!
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From Wikipedia: Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature.
She married twice, firs...more
More about Angela Carter...
She married twice, firs...more
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“If women allow themselves to be consoled for their culturally determined lack of access to the modes of intellectual debate by the invocation of hypothetical great goddesses, they are simply flattering themselves into submission (a technique often used on them by men). All the mythic versions of women, from the myth of the redeeming purity of the virgin to that of the healing, reconciliatory mother, are consolatory nonsenses; and consolatory nonsense seems to me a fair definition of myth, anyway. Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths gives women emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place.”
—
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