This book of critical essays about de Sade’s writing from a feminist point of view starts off extremely strong with “Polemical Preface: Pornography in the service of women” which offers such provocative ideas as revolutionary pornographers, and that romantic notions of mother goddesses are a mystification of women’s actual situation in the world (and thus keep us from an honest analysis that might lead to liberation).

The next two essays analyze the diptych works of Justine and Juliette and offer detailed textual analysis that expands on the ideas introduced in the polemic.

The third essay, “The School of Love: The education of a female Oedipus” analyzes de Sade’s short story “Philosophy in the Bedroom” through Freud’s Oedipal theory. This essay is weakened by its nearly complete reliance on Freud and seemingly unquestioning acceptance of the Freudian model as scientifically accurate. That’s ironic given a central premise from which other ideas arise in “Philosophy in the Bedroom” is the primacy of the father as the generative parent - sperm as humunculi and the mother as womb only, with no concept of ova - a completely discredited notion of reproduction that was in its time viewed as scientific. In other words, the short story based on dated science is analyzed using dated psychoanalytic concepts. Nonetheless it has moments of interesting insight, dealing with the potential for an actual annihilation of the symbolic order of the family and paternal tyranny, which de Sade dare not face.

The final essay is the weakest and uses as its turning point the ambiguous meaning of the word “flesh”.

In short the first three essays are fantastic, the third is dated, and the fourth is weak. Nonetheless, the book is very much worth reading for anyone interested in de Sade or the role of pornography as feminist analysis.