ABSTRACT
Rachilde's novel La Marquise de Sade is a contribution to the fin-de-siecle fear that single women were crazy and devious. The death-driven effects that Rachilde's heroine imposes on the men in her life present the enigmatic and destructive potential of the fatal woman. Saladin suggests that the female archetype necessarily causes gender struggles in the socio-cultural arena. In La Marquise de Sade, Rachilde reinvents a crucial figure in the history of patriarchal violence, the Marquis de Sade, yet incarnates that violence in her female heroine. The implications of sadism are evident in the title of the novel and, not surprisingly, the dominant theme in the text is the association between sexual power and pain. As is the case in Monsieur Venus, widowhood is virtually absent from the plot of La Marquise de Sade. The chapter attempts to determine what influences the female protagonist to become a sadistic, bloodthirsty femme fatale.
