(Original Review, 1981-04-04)
Histoire de Juliette ou les Prospérités du Vice (Story of Juliette
or The Prosperities of Vice) by de Sade.
Profoundly disturbing - not only in its depiction of cold-hearted
indulgence, by way of a text nearly as long as War and Peace, in murder, rape,
robbery and more horrors besides, but also in its capability to beguile and
confuse readers of a feminist persuasion.
Angela Carter fell for it: "[Sade's] great women [characters in
Juliette], ... once they have tasted power, once they know how to use their
sexuality as an instrument of aggression, they use it to extract vengeance for
the humiliations they were forced to endure as the passive objects of the
sexual energy of others ...”
"Sade declares himself unequivocally for the right of women to
fuck - as if the period in which women fuck aggressively, tyrannously and
cruelly will be a necessary stage in the development of a general human
consciousness of the nature of fucking, that if it is not egalitarian, it is
unjust... Sade ... urges women to fuck as actively as they are able so that,
powered by their enormous and hitherto untapped sexual energy, they will then
be able to fuck their way into history and, in doing so, to change it...”
"... I would like to think that he put pornography in the
service of women, or, perhaps, allowed it to be invaded by an ideology not inimical
to women."
Both quotes from “The Sadeian Woman” by Angela Carter
Not so. Juliette, the young protagonist of the novel, might be a
great, potent criminal, risen from poverty, endowed with high intelligence,
dauntless daring and a sharp gift of the gab, seeming fit to set phallocracy
trembling and to show the way for new women of nerve, verve and organisation.
However, she operates always on a tether and on a precipice, always subject to
men even more steeped in crime and even more rich and powerful than she. The
narrative repeatedly re-introduces one of these overlords, with whom the male
reader may identify and who has all women, even the polymath-in-vice Juliette,
within his grasp. She has to refrain from any attack on any of the
arch-fiendish men who teach her, supervise her and employ her as director and
star turn of many bloody orgies.
Sade's vast novel is a sophisticated “aide
masturbatoire” for male (and some female) Reachers who want their lusty,
lusting, beautiful heroines always on the rein and the bridle, however gleaming
and gilded the leather and the steel, of a master. On the other hand, someone
could argue that my reading of Carter is far too dismissive and superficial. I
would even suggest that I may have "fallen for" the oft-rehearsed
position that sees Carter's analysis as resting on Juliette as a counterforce
to patriarchal dominance. It's worth looking more closely, at what she has to
say about Justine, for instance. In de Sade's day it was most unusual for
female characters to have their own distinctive voice, let alone agency. De
Sade has his 'heroines' do or experience horrible things, but they do have a
voice and we understand and care about what happens to them.
