Graduation Year
2015
Document Type
Campus Only Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Gender and Women's Studies
Reader 1
Mary Ann Davis
Reader 2
Kimberly Drake
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2015 Lucy E. Blumberg
Abstract
The Marquis de Sade has a notorious reputation amongst academics as a continuous figure of fictional and cultural studies. His characters, stories, and writings carry weight in modern interpretations of gender dynamics, pornographic aesthetics, and the alternative fantastical. This thesis will explore the Marquis de Sade’s most famous characters, Justine and Juliette, as means to define the Marquis’ significance to 21st Century Western culture production, particularly in Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist and E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. Exploring the female protagonists (or main characters) of the separate works, the correlations of subjugation, constructed morality, and the constructs of femininity become important markers for understanding the Marquis’ dissemination of his philosophies on gender, violence, and indulgent sexuality that leads to conversations on pornographic aesthetics in our modern period. Despite being dead for nearly 200 years, the Marquis de Sade’s relevance parades on in ideologies regarding female identity and sexual desires of the extreme.
Recommended Citation
Blumberg, Lucy E., "A Tale of Two Sisters: An Exploration of the Marquis de Sade and 21st Century Western Cultural Production" (2015). Scripps Senior Theses. 717.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/717
This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.
