Patsy McGarry: In a word

He died 200 years ago last December and some of the practices he wrote about have, seemingly, become something of an overnight success after all that time. That is if you are to believe the mad rush by women of the western world into the arms of that strapping, whipping playboy Christian Grey whose various shades seem to have intoxicated so many of the fairer sex.

Who would have believed it only a short time ago? Or that said Mr Grey is the creation of EL James (52), a now very wealthy woman. He is into bondage, dominance, sadism/masochism (BDSM). He is a sadist, ie one who derives sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on others.

The word, however, is derived from the surname of French aristocrat Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, who wrote such material as would leave EL James and most of both sexes cowering in a corner.

For his pains, so-to-speak, the Marquis spent 32 of his 74 years in prison. His world believed him mad and bad. Ms James, on the other hand, is lionised and rewarded with immense riches. It’s called progress.

De Sade used prostitutes as well as employees of both sexes in his castle at Lacoste for his sexual gratification. His first major scandal occurred in 1763 when the 23-year-old Marquis locked a prostitute in a room and began screaming blasphemies while demanding that she whip him with a cat-o’-nine-tails. As you do.

Five years later he whipped a woman and dripped hot wax on her back. She escaped and contacted the police, but was paid off. There were other scandals of course, many of them. His major work was 100 Days of Sodomy, written in 1785. Narrated by four female brothel keepers, it is about four wealthy aristocrats who, in an effort to experience the ultimate in sexual gratification, seal themselves off in a castle with 46 young men and women whom they subject to increasingly intense sexual abuse and torture until it ends in their murder.

Clearly not for the faint of heart, it was not published until 1904, in Berlin, and by all accounts makes Fifty Shades of Grey seem like one of the lesser Grimm fairy tales.

Sadism from the French sadisme, itself derived from the name of Donatien Alphonse François Marquis de Sade. inaword@irishtimes.com