The real history of his life is actually deeply fascinating and his actual harm caused was pretty tame, compared to his books. He was arrested by the monarchy because his family was constantly engaged in political intrigue against him. The revolutionaries hated him because he opposed the death penalty and so they accused him of "moderatism". Napoleon hated him because de Sade was a revolutionary who criticized Napoleon in his books. And his family was constantly manoeuvering to have him rearrested when he escaped or was released from prison, so he died in an asylum.
He was still a dick in a lot of ways and did do some shitty things. But if you think he's worse than anyone who imprisoned him, you don't know how vile French society was at the time. His books, whatever you think about his irl actions, were the fantastical and outrageous works of a man who was so thoroughly condemned that his motto may as well have been "I'll give you something to cry about".
I know this is a common argument, but Sade did worse than write mean books. He assaulted one sex worker - threatening to blow her brains out if she didn’t blaspheme God; he kidnapped and beat a serving girl within an inch of her life, forcing her to escape via bedsheets; he appears to have kidnapped several other young women around his estate, prompting at least one of their fathers to try and kill him.
Local brothel owners even got to the point where they would largely refuse Sade access to their workers. If he’s just as bad as every other aristocrat, why do brothel owners highlight him as being especially shitty?
He was more than a bit of a “dick,” I’m afraid.
And that’s off the top of my head, and what is documented. Who knows how often the aristocrat just boogied off Scot free. A man who points a gun at a woman’s head can be expected to fire. It would not shock me if he murdered at least one woman and simply never got investigated because who cares about a poor woman?
Yes, he was occasionally persecuted for BS like sodomy and blasphemy. And it’s true, other aristocrats may or may not have been doing equally bad or worse things. But I don’t know about them, that’s all speculation. I know about Sade. And he was, in fact, awful. He wasn’t just arrested for Thought Crimes that he decided to lean into in his writing.
I am fascinated by Sade, I read a lot of his works, I wrote a thesis on him.
But he was trash.
