Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

In September 1771 Sade began an affair with his wife’s youngersister, Anne-Prospere.In June 1772, Sade traveled to Marseilles with his valet, known asLatour. During the course of Sade’s brief stay there, Latourprocured five prostitutes for Sade. Sade (in varying combinations)beat, fucked, and forcibly sodomized the women, with his usualthreats of worse violence and death. He also had his valet sodomizeat least one of the women and himself. In Marseilles, Sade addedanother dimension to his sexual repertoire: he encouraged thewomen to eat candies that had been laced with drugs. T he womendid not know what they were eating. Sade’s defenders claim thatthe candies were treated with a harmless aphrodisiac and somethingto encourage flatulence, which Sade found particularly charming.Tw o of the women became violently ill from the candies, hadintense abdominal pain, vomited blood and black mucus. T hewomen believed that they had been poisoned, and there is littledoubt that had they consumed the quantities of the candy that Sadehad wanted them to eat, they would have become deadly ill. O ne ofthe women went to the police. An investigation of Sade’s brutalitywith the five prostitutes— the forced flagellation, the forced sodomy,the attempted poisoning—led to an order to arrest both Sadeand Latour. Sade, with Anne-Prospere as his lover and Latour ashis valet, fled to Italy to escape arrest.Sade and Latour were found guilty of poisoning and sodomy (acapital crime irrespective of force) in absentia. They were sentencedto death. In lieu of the death sentence that could not be carried out,the two men were burned in effigy.Sade’s mother-in-law, Madame de M ontreuil, faced with Sade’sincorrigibility, perhaps in an effort to separate Anne-Prospere fromSade, used her formidable political influence to have Sade imprisonedin Italy. For the next four months, Sade wrote letters tohigh officials in Italy and France in which he bemoaned theinjustice of his imprisonment and pleaded to be freed. At the end ofthe fourth month, he escaped. Shortly after his escape, Sade wrotehis mother-in-law several times to ask for money. W hen it was notforthcoming, Sade returned to Lacoste. O n his return to France,