Sadeian Women: Erotic Violence in the Surrealist Spectacle

This article explores how erotic violence is represented in the Surrealist movement as a feminist stratagem through close reference to Angela Carter’s 'The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History' (1979). Grounding my analysis in the fairy tales and visual narratives of Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning, I consider the ways in which a violent erotic aesthetic has been reclaimed for a distinctly feminist wing of artists and writers in the post-Surrealist pantheon in rebellion against the normalising narratives of bourgeois masculinity which many male Surrealist artists, writers and thinkers remained guilty of subscription. Ultimately, I propose that Tanning and Carrington no longer be labeled under the limited heading of ‘woman Surrealists’ but instead opt for Carter’s more embodied and liberating notion of ‘Sadeian Women.’