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

degree, is authentic because a man experienced it (Sade in beingimprisoned, the writers in morbid contemplation of a man broughtdown). N o woman’s life has ever been so adored; no woman’ssuffering has ever been so mourned; no woman’s ethic, action, orobsession has been so hallowed in the male search for the meaningof freedom. *T he essential content of Sade’s legend was created by Sadehimself, especially in his prison letters and in the ramblingphilosophical discourses that permeate his fiction. Maurice Heine, aLeft libertarian, and his disciple Gilbert L£ly, the first so-calledSade scholars, rewrote Sade’s elaborate self-justifications, in theprocess transmuting them into accepted fact. Sade wrote his ownlegend; Heine and Lely resurrected it; subsequent writers paraphrased,defended, and embellished it.In the letters, Sade is militant, with the pride of one martyred inrighteousness: “Misfortune will never debase me. . . , ” he wrote toRenee-Pelagie from Vincennes in 1781. “Nor will / ever take aslave’s heart. Were these wretched chains to lead me to the grave,you will always see me the same. I have the misfortune to havereceived from Heaven a resolute soul which has never been able toyield and will never do so. I have absolutely no fear of offendinganyone. ” 31It was Sade who painted the picture of Madame de Montreuilthat his biographers now turn out, without the master’s touch, bythe dozens. As Sade wrote: “This terrible torture is not enoughaccording to this horrible creature: it has to be increased further byeverything her imagination can devise to redouble its horror. Youwill admit there is only one monster capable of taking vengeance tosuch a point. ” 32Sade’s defense of everything he ever did is very simple: he neverdid anything wrong. This defense has two distinct parts. First, hedid not do anything he was accused of doing that might warrant* “[And] no woman’s crime” wrote Robin Morgan to me in a letter, July 20,1979, “for that matter, has (sure as hell) ever been so justified, excused,romanticized, glamorized. ”