— Anonymous
One of the pieces that made me feel uncomfortable during the semester was “Juliette” By Marquis de Sade. When I read it the first time around, I couldn’t believe some of the things that Sade said. At first, it was a little hard to understand the story relative to the theme, so I had to reread it. The second time I read it I was able to analyze the story more, but the more and more I read the words, the more I felt uncomfortable. When we talked about the story in class, I felt uncomfortable as well. What I mean by uncomfortable is I find a lot of the detail in the story very controversial and not acceptable in my opinion.
To understand why I felt this I think its important to describe some of the actions Juliette part took in. Juliette is a character who has a desire to sexual gratify herself through committing crime. Sade describes how she masturbates about her riches and crimes she commits until she orgasms. I think this is extremely inappropriate and completely exaggerated way of getting an idea across. Sade says how she has multiple sexual partners and describes some of her sexual interactions in deep detail. He also goes on to show how Juliette feels no remorse or sympathy for human life because when she kills someone she feels excitement that ignites her. She even explains at one point to one of her lovers how to prepare to kill someone and “desensitize” themselves from any possible guilt they can have. I can go on and on about the some of the terrible acts and feelings of Juliette, but I think the point has been made. The main idea of this text was to describe how Juliette is really a free soul because no matter what she does she is happy. Yet, I don’t agree with this philosophy of feeling free and do whatever we want. Some may argue that she is truly enlightened with no restraints, but if we are killing other people and committing sins all the time are we really enlightened? I understand this is an intense example, but I don’t agree with the philosophy. I get that society’s rules and restrictions may make it hard for some to feel free and truly themselves, but I also believe that there is an objective morality or foundation of law all must follow no matter how we feel.
Overall, I didn’t agree with the position or ideology Sade has as well as the extremely explicit content. Not only was the content extremely explicit, but it was just sad that to read the pleasure and gratification Juliette got out of doing these ridiculously disgusting acts. It may be naïve to see the good in people, but it was awful to read this text and even try to relate it to a real-world situation. Overall, I don’t consider this text a great work in my opinion, even though there can be a strong debate around the main idea.
