A review by paulcowdell
The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History by Angela Carter
4.0
Sade, the monstrous and irredeemable, is a major part of my life, and reading this was long overdue. Carter offers a bracing, clear-eyed embrace of Sade, a feminist critique and defence of pornography, and a defiant exploitation of the intellectual and theoretical vistas opened by Sade. I'm trying not to say it's a seminal text, but it is - if you're coming to Sade for the first time I'd recommend Annie Le Brun's Sade: A Sudden Abyss https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/497007.Sade?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=6tTPVpHJpp&rank=1, but if you already have some familiarity with him this needs to be on the shelf.
One of the problems is that people read commentators on Sade more than they read Sade himself. (My advice: read Sade ...) Carter's book usefully outlines the plots of Justine, Juliette, and Philosophy in the Boudoir, but if you've read them you may question the need for that degree of explanation.
I did find myself a little disappointed that even Angela Carter succumbed to a tendency of cultural theorists & commentators not to feel any need for accuracy. They're only little things, but giving the wrong Marx Brothers film title (a capital crime in this household) and misquoting Some Like It Hot in a really interesting discussion of Marilyn Monroe and Justine is just unforgivably sloppy.
AND: at one point, Carter mentions Sade defining art as 'the perpetual immoral subversion of the existing order'. You'll find this all over the net, usually unattributed but where it is attributed, inevitably ascribed to Carter. The quotation is accurate, but it isn't about art, it's about legislation and manners. Artists have seized on the description as a good summary of what there is in Sade to inspire, and it looks like Carter (drawing from the inspiration the Surrealists found in Sade) enthusiastically took it in this direction, but it's not /quite/ what Sade said. Which matters, because Sade is always - but /always/ - precise.
I
One of the problems is that people read commentators on Sade more than they read Sade himself. (My advice: read Sade ...) Carter's book usefully outlines the plots of Justine, Juliette, and Philosophy in the Boudoir, but if you've read them you may question the need for that degree of explanation.
I did find myself a little disappointed that even Angela Carter succumbed to a tendency of cultural theorists & commentators not to feel any need for accuracy. They're only little things, but giving the wrong Marx Brothers film title (a capital crime in this household) and misquoting Some Like It Hot in a really interesting discussion of Marilyn Monroe and Justine is just unforgivably sloppy.
AND: at one point, Carter mentions Sade defining art as 'the perpetual immoral subversion of the existing order'. You'll find this all over the net, usually unattributed but where it is attributed, inevitably ascribed to Carter. The quotation is accurate, but it isn't about art, it's about legislation and manners. Artists have seized on the description as a good summary of what there is in Sade to inspire, and it looks like Carter (drawing from the inspiration the Surrealists found in Sade) enthusiastically took it in this direction, but it's not /quite/ what Sade said. Which matters, because Sade is always - but /always/ - precise.
I