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

esistance from “puritanical” or “repressed” women who areincapable of knowing or telling sexual truth. According to Gear, thepoisoned prostitutes in Marseilles had “upset stomachs and werenone the worse for their adventures. ” 22 According to Thomas, theMarseilles prostitutes, whom he acknowledges were poisoned, wentto the police because they “were only too anxious now to find avillain on whom all their ills and all official disapproval could beplaced. ” 23 According to Hay man, “it was obvious that the poisoningwas accidental. . . [Sade] had no conceivable motive forwanting to murder them . ” 24 To give credit where it is due: EdmundWilson, in 1952, reacting to the mindless defenses of Sade’s crimesamong the literati, asserted that “there is not a shred of evidence forassuming that [the candies] were not intended, if not to kill the girls[sic], at least to have painful results, and the, behavior of Sadehimself, as reported by one of the girls [sic], seems decidedly toshow that they were. ” 25 Once one has entered the realm of existingdiscourse on Sade, Wilson’s willingness to believe the testimony of“one of the girls” is almost shocking.The avenging wrath of Sadean sycophants is reserved, however,for Madame de Montreuil, Sade’s mother-in-law, the one womanwho during his lifetime tried to stop him. The critics’ strategy withthe unpropertied victims is to erase them. Madame de Montreuilcannot be erased. She was responsible for Sade’s imprisonment inItaly, for the issuance of several lettres de cachet against him. Shealso, at various stages of Sade’s life, tried to buy him out of trouble,to reconcile Sade to his marriage and to his wife. As an activewoman, a mother, one who took action to restrict the cruelindulgences of a male, Madame de Montreuil’s life monumentallyinsults Sade’s biographers. According to Gorer, “her one aim wasde Sade’s destruction. ” 26 He also speculates that she was jealous ofSade’s relationship with her younger daughter; this jealousy “droveher to attack and ruin him to the best of her ability during the nextthirty years. ” 27 According to the various biographers: Madame deMontreuil lusted for Sade but he refused her; had nothing to dowith her time and therefore turned to intrigues against her son-in-