Marquesa de Sade

The Marquis de Sade, notorious for his obscene writings and sexual cruelty, married a pious woman. A wife who, despite her husband's constant infidelities and the fact that their union was based on the economic and social power of two families, loved him devotedly for thirty years, enduring betrayals, imprisonments, and political crises. Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil, Marquise de Sade, endured her chaotic marriage with an almost exasperating fortitude, bordering on masochism. She gave the writer three children and unconditional love, tolerated his unbridled behavior, edited his manuscripts, tried to help him escape from prison by legal and illegal means, and acted for decades as his only confidante and friend. Until she could bear it no longer. This marriage of opposites, which coincided with the death throes of the Old Regime and the outbreak of the French Revolution, comes to life thanks to the pen of Margaret Crosland, who shows how the Sades symbolized the decadence of the old aristocracy and reconstructs the struggle of a woman to conquer a piece of independence within the narrow limits of her social class.