Women Surrealists and the Marquis de Sade: Feminism, Sexuality, and Transgression in the Post-War Era My dissertation seeks to intervene in the narrative of the Marquis de Sade’s legacy on avant-garde artists to examine specifically how the libertine author influenced the work of women Surrealists and their oeuvres. My research introduces three case studies, Bona de Mandiargues, Leonor Fini, and Dorothea Tanning. The work of these three artists destabilize patriarchal notions of femininity which is tied to their recreation of Sade. In this dissertation I take Sade’s texts as a theoretical framework to assert that one must consider the political and liberating ideology of his texts in addition to their explicit use of sex. Each of Sade’s novels challenged the conservative political environment of late eighteenth century France and challenged the traditional role of woman. I argue that it is precisely these political attributes that captivated women Surrealists working in the twentieth century.