- Bile Fascination: A rare, centuries long example of this trope. De Sade's controversial writings (if not the man himself) have made him the subject of both disgust and fascination by philosophers, writers and psychologists across the years, with entire books centered around analyzing him as both a writer and a person. In fact, the word "sadism" comes from his very name.
- Moral Event Horizon: The moment we know that Eugénie of Philosophy in the Bedroom has crossed this is when she rapes her own mother, Madame de Mistval, and sews her genitals shut after having her infected with syphilis.
- Nausea Fuel: Copious amounts of it. The 120 Days of Sodom is the most notorious in this regard, but almost all of Sade's works have content that can easily turn a reader's stomach.
- Nightmare Fuel: The 120 Days of Sodom: At first it's just Nausea Fuel. Then you get to the gorn. Which includes rape, torture, and killing of innocents in very brutal ways. What's worse, it was made into one of the most challenging films of all time, similar in notoriety to Cannibal Holocaust and Men Behind the Sun.
- The Woobie: The title character of Justine, a sweet, kind girl who just wants to be good. Unfortunately, she's in a Marquis de Sade novel, so she suffers utter hell because of it. Everyone that she meets who doesn't want to beat and/or rape her wants to do something even worse to her, and usually gets to do it. The high point of this story is Justine recounting how at the age of twelve, she asked for shelter in a man's house and was told that she could only stay if she would have sex with him. Poor Justine gets No Sympathy for this whatsoever because human decency doesn't seem to exist at all in Sade's Crapsack World — she gets screamed at by the person she talks about this to for being a "parasite" that wanted something for nothing. And it does not get better for her.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/MarquisDeSade
FollowingYMMV / Marquis de Sade
Go To
