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Hi again, I thought I would just use this space to keep some of my thoughts on the story, and on Sade and Coulmier, because I can see the end, and it’s not pretty. It’s more or less a lot of opinionated tl;dr, but I can’t help it. This is what happens when I have to read a lot in order to research a story. I’ve written an essay on Sade and Coulmier, and who they were really, and to be fair the Quills film doesn’t do either of them any justice at all. I’m not going to reproduce that essay here, but it’s worth noting I have a lot of respect for the real Coulmier and I think it needs to be said. The inmates of Charenton Asylum were encouraged to be creative. He encouraged Sade to write. They had a theatre, and dinner parties, and most likely a million other little things that promoted mental well-being and stability. All this, in the middle of the eighteenth century. Coulmier was a man so far in advance of his time it beggars belief. He was usurped at Charenton by Royer-Collard, for political reasons, but he and Sade remained friends right up until the Marquis’ death. Coulmier also had disabilities of his own, and while Quills might have employed Joaquin Phoenix to portray him, the real man is referred to in at least one historical source as a hunchback dwarf, which makes his pioneering approach to treatment in the field of mental health all the more admirable. There’s evidence Sade felt that same admiration for him having struggled to overcome his own difficulties, and then to help others. As for Sade, I’ve already mentioned in one of my story’s author notes that he had a four year relationship with a laundry lass at Charenton before his death. Her name was Magdeleine. I know what a lot of people say about his writing, even those who’ve read it. So many people claim he had a poor attitude towards women, but I don’t believe that, and I’ve read the worst of it. He spent so long in prison, and he seems to have had an unusually high sex drive. All of that enforced isolation and celibacy (especially when he was younger, in the Bastille) must have made him a little mad. Honestly, there’s no wonder some of his ideas were so dark. But, had he not been incarcerated, then he might never have written anything of note, and he’d have passed into history, famous only for evading the guillotine during the Terror. I don’t see sexism in his work – I see feminism. When he urges his characters and readers to sexual freedom, he doesn’t stop with the men. Today women aren’t free like that, and I kind of think we should be. Regardless, to return to Magdeleine for a final thought. One of the last useful things Sade did was teach her, a common laundress, to read and write. A man who hated women wouldn’t have done that. Having read his essay to novel writers, I’m not sure he would have approved of fanfiction. But erotic fiction written by women, including and probably especially slash – he’d have got a real kick out of knowing about that. There end my useless ramblings. dafdes