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

had the authority to spend her money, which he did. The savageryof his life created the strange desperation of hers. The nightmare ofher life has been lost in the celebration of his.Repeat the syllablesuntil the lesson is pumped through the heart:Nicriven, accused of lasciviousness, burned IS69.Barbara Gobel, described by her jailorsas “the fairest maid in Wurzburgburned 1629, age nineteen.Frau Peller, raped by Inquisition torturersbecause her sister refusedthe witch-judge Franz Buirman, 1631.Maria Walburga Rung, tried at a secular courtin Manheim as a •witch,released as “merely a prostituteaccused again by the episcopal courtat Eichstadt, tortured into confession,and then burned alive, 1723, age twenty-two.What have they done to me?Robin Morgan,“The Network of the Imaginary Mother”Camus captured the essence of Sade’s legend when he wrote: “Hisdesperate demand for freedom led Sade into the kingdom ofservitude. . . ” 29 Throughout the literature on him, with somesmall qualifying asides, Sade is viewed as one whose voraciousappetite was for freedom; this appetite was cruelly punished by anunjust and repressive society. The notion is that Sade, called byApollinaire “that freest of spirits to have lived so far, ” ’0 was amonster as the word used to be defined: something unnaturallymarvelous. Sade’s violation of sexual and social boundaries, in hiswritings and in his life, is seen as inherently revolutionary. Theantisocial character of his sexuality is seen as a radical challenge to asociety deadly in its repressive sexual conventions. Sade is seen asan outlaw in the mythic sense, a grand figure of rebellion in action