THE SELF AND ITS PLEASURES by Carolyn J. Dean

Author:Carolyn J. Dean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2016-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

Perceau’s account uses many different and by now familiar rhetorical strategies to diminish Sade’s criminal responsibility. Perceau portrays Keller as fundamentally complicitous and, in so doing, manages to accuse her, implicitly, of bad faith. He represents Sade’s behavior as so innocent and acceptable that it is not at all clear what Keller had to complain about.55 Finally, he dismisses Keller’s testimony on legal grounds, blaming not just Keller’s simplemindedness but the archaic legal system that supported and accepted her testimony.

Jean-Jacques Brousson’s novel, to which I have also alluded, effects perhaps the most remarkable transformation of the Keller story. In his account, Keller has completely ceased being a victim; indeed, she has actually become the perpetrator of the crime. AI-though Brousson does not mention her by name, it is clear that he is referring to Keller when he speaks of Sade’s most enthusiastic “disciple.” After being beaten by the marquis in circumstances resembling Keller’s, this woman discovers what pleasure really is and subsequently opens a couvent sadique both as a tribute to her master—calling it a convent of course indicates that it is a place of worship—and in order to have a secluded meeting place where the disciples of the sadistic “order” can indulge their most extraordinary fantasies (though it is never clear whether Keller’s inspirational first encounter with Sade is real or her own fantasy).56 The Keller figure later saves Sade from the guillotine and brings him back with her to the convent, expecting him to be delighted by her efforts, but remember that in this account it is Sade who is the unwilling participant, berated by Keller’s all-female entourage. Brousson’s book in this way absolves Sade of any crime (and emphasizes instead his sensitivity to the evil lurking in others) by portraying Sade as Keller’s victim.

This attitude toward Keller and toward Sade himself was perhaps most succinctly expressed by Maurice Heine. “Why all the fuss over a spanking?” he asked, not concealing some exasperation. In his typically cautious effort to be fair to everyone involved, Heine suggested that no one was to blame and pointed his finger instead at an archaic and repressive moral code; Sade, he argued, could not admit to the courts he went as far as he did, and Rose Keller could not admit her desire to go all the way with him. Sade could own up to his desires within certain limits, but if Keller had confessed her penchant for libertinism, she would surely have been put in a hospitaI.57 Heine was clearly not fond of double standards, and his skewed thinking about KeHer is all the more troubling because it makes explicit that she simply did not count in his (and others’) reevaluation of Sade.58

The cruelty of arranged marriages was used by Sade’s apologists to explain and to justify his hatred of women (and hence his crimes against them). Sade had been forced to marry a woman whom he did not love, and it tormented him all his life. Dr. Marciat (Claude Tournier) had

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