The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography

The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (U.S.A.)
The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (UK)

Cover of the first American edition
Author	Angela Carter
Language	English
Subject	Marquis de Sade
Publisher	Pantheon Books (U.S.A.) Virago Press (UK)
Publication date	1978 (U.S.A.) 1979 (UK)
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print
Pages	154 pp.
ISBN	0-394-50575-1
OCLC	4495463
Dewey Decimal	843.6
LC Class	PQ2063.S3

The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography is the American title of a 1978 non-fiction book by Angela Carter, an English writer who primarily wrote fiction novels.^[1] British publication was delayed until 1979, when the book appeared as The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History.

Carter discovered the work of the Marquis de Sade while living in Japan in the early 1970s. She was inspired by "the Japanese experience of reading pornographic comic books alongside the works of de Sade" and wrote The Sadeian Woman in the years after she moved back to England.^[2]

The Marquis de Sade, a French writer from the late 18th century, is well known for his controversial pornography.^[3]

The book is a feminist re-appraisal of the work of the Marquis de Sade, consisting of a collection of essays analyzing his literature. Carter argues that "Sade remains a monstrous and daunting cultural edifice; yet [she] would like to think that he put pornography in the service of women, or, perhaps, allowed it to be invaded by an ideology not inimical to women."^[4] Carter's critical analysis of the Marquis de Sade's fiction focuses on, among other topics, what can be revealed by the distribution of sexual, social, and economic power between the sexes in late eighteenth-century Europe and how this is different from and similar to the distribution of power between the sexes at the time Carter was writing her book.^[5]

Carter argues that Marquis de Sade was a "moral pornographer," one that analyzed the relation between the sexes within his work.^[4] She argues that Marquis "would not be the enemy of women," as she views his works as contradicting patriarchal notions of sex and femininity.^[4]

The Sadeian Woman received a variety of reviews. Some critics disagreed with her argument that de Sade was a "moral pornographer."^[6] In an interview in 1988, Carter reflects that "moral pornographer was a phrase that got [her] into a lot of trouble with the sisters, some of the sisters."^[7]

Her work was criticized by the radical feminist and anti-porn theorist Andrea Dworkin in her 1981 book Pornography: Men Possessing Women.^[8] Unlike Dworkin, Carter sees de Sade as being the first writer to see women as more than mere breeding machines, as more than just their biology and, as such, finds him liberating.^[9]

The Marquis de Sade’s pornography went on to influence Carter's fictional work. In The Bloody Chamber, a collection of short stories published the following year, the opening story follows a young, unnamed French woman who is groomed into sex and, subsequently, marriage by the scopophiliac Marquis.^[10]

• "Biography". Angela Carter. The Estate of Angela Carter. 2014.

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