Justine (Sade)
| Justine | |
| Author | The Marquis de Sade |
|---|---|
| Original title | Les Infortunes de la Vertu |
| Translator | Pieralessandro Casavini |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre(s) | Gothic Novel, Erotica, Classics |
| Publisher | J. V. Girouard |
| Publication date | 1791 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Followed by | ''Juliette'' |
Justine (or The Misfortunes of Virtue, or several other titles: see below) is a classic erotic novel by Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade.
There is no standard edition of this text in hardcover, having passed into the public domain. The text itself is often incorporated into various collections of De Sade's work.
Contents |
History of the work
Justine (original French title Les infortunes de la vertu) was an early work by the Marquis de Sade, written in two weeks in 1787 while imprisoned in the Bastille. It is a novella (187 pages) with relatively little of the obscenity which characterized his later writing as it was written in the classical style (which was fashionable at the time), with much verbose and metaphorical description.
A much extended and more graphic version, entitled Justine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu (1791) (English title: Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised or simply Justine) was the first of Sade's books to be published.
A further extended version La Nouvelle Justine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu was published in 1797. It was accompanied by a continuation, Juliette about Justine's sister. The two together formed 10 volumes of nearly 4000 pages in total; publication was completed in 1801. This final version, La Nouvelle Justine, departed from the first-person narrative of the previous two versions, and included around 100 engravings.
Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the arrest of the anonymous author of Justine and Juliette, and as a result Sade was incarcerated for the last 13 years of his life. Napoleon called Justine "the most abominable book ever engendered by the most depraved imagination".[citation needed]
A censored English translation was issued in the USA by the Risus Press in the early 1930s. The first unexpurgated English translation (by 'Pieralessandro Casavini', a pseudonym for Austryn Wainhouse) was published by the Olympia Press in 1953. Wainhouse later revised this translation for publication in the United States by Grove Press. Other versions currently in print, notably the Wordsworth edition, are abridged and heavily censored.
Plot introduction
Justine is set just before the French Revolution in France and tells the story of a young woman who goes under the name of Therese. Her story is recounted to Madame de Lorsagne while defending herself for her crimes, en route to punishment and death. She explains the series of misfortunes which have led her to be in her present situation.
Plot summary
The plot concerns Justine, a 12-year-old maiden ("As for Justine, aged as we have remarked, twelve"...) who sets off, impecunious, to make her way in France. It follows her until age 26, in her quest for virtue. At every turn she is presented with vice and abuse, hidden under a virtuous mask that lures her. The unfortunate situations include the time when she seeks refuge and confession in a monastery, but is forced to become a sex-slave to the monks, who subject her to countless orgies, rapes and other abuses. When helping a gentleman who is robbed in a field, he takes her back to his chateau with promises of a post caring for his wife, but she is then confined in a cave and subject to much the same punishment. These punishments are mostly the same throughout, even when she goes to a judge to beg for mercy in her case as an arsonist, and then finds herself openly humiliated in court, unable to defend herself.
These are, of course, described in true Sadean form. However, unlike some of his other works, the novel is not just a catalogue of sadism. Rather it purports to show, albeit in a hideously extreme way, an inversion of poetic justice: how those who live a life of vice prosper, whilst the virtuous suffer.
The story is told by "Therese" in an inn, to Madame de Lorsagne. It is finally revealed that Madame de Lorsagne is her long lost sister. The irony is that her sister submitted to a brief period of vice and found herself a comfortable existence where she could exercise good, while Justine refused to make concessions for the greater good and was plunged further into vice than those who would go willingly.
The story ends with Madame de Lorsagne relieving her from a life of vice and clearing her name. Strangely though, Justine quickly becomes introverted and morose, before finally being struck by a thunderbolt and killed instantly. Madame de Lorsagne joins a religious order.
Major themes
De Sade was strongly involved in both the development of his own philosophies (which later became many of the principles of sadism) and an investigation into the changing nature of his country. As, later in life, he became very involved in politics and became a member of the National Convention, we can see many of his ideas introduced in this, one of his earlier works.
Key philosophical ideas as follows:
- going against accepted tradition
- the subjectivity of virtue and vice
- the pursuit of desire and the consequences of it
- the evils of absolutism for either the purposes of good or evil
- Nature, as being the only true ruler of man
- The notion of Reason as dominating disinterested system
The more political ideas focus on:
- the hierarchy and inequalities within a class system
- the corruption of the church, the justice system and most major institutions
- the respective roles of the sexes
- the necessity of reliance upon others (appropriate as De Sade advocated a form of utopian socialism, at least later in life)
Additional Key Philosophical Ideas:
1. The pursuit of virtue, as well as that of vice, are both for the sake of pleasure, as pleasure is the ultimate goal of mankind and of life.
2. Pain is good, too, insofar as its removal results in pleasure; and even heightened pleasure.
3. Evil and crime are directly pleasurable in themselves, avoiding the sublimation and delayed gratification involved in acts of virtue. Of course, it is pleasure that the virtuous expect in the afterlife, after their life-long denial of the instinctual self-gratifications withheld them, either by their own will, or through the imposition of custom or law.
4. There is even a type of pleasure involved for the "just" in the punishments inflicted by law and society on those judged "guilty" of following nature's instincts, and this one is equally perverse.
5. The will to power is the will to pleasure, and all use of reason is ordered toward the attainment, in whatever be the immediately manifest form, of that end. Hence, virtue is always a kind of mask.
Quotation
A quotation from the last paragraph of the book:
"May you...be persuaded that true happiness lies in virtue alone and that, though God allows goodness to be persecuted on earth, it is with no other end than to prepare us for a better reward in heaven."
Contemporary reference
Justine was written around 30 years after Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, and the thematic influence is clear. The story is quite related in terms of the endless trials which face each heroine, but with the opposite results. While Pamela's unwavering dedication to virtue does force her to suffer the threat of some vices, and confinement similar to that which befalls Justine, she is eventually successful in reforming Mr B. and becoming his wife. She then leads a life of prosperity and happiness.
In 1793, the rival writer Rétif de la Bretonne published his Anti Justine.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
The story has been adapted for film several times, most notably in a 1969 international co-production directed by Jesus Franco and starring Jack Palance, Romina Power, and Klaus Kinski as the Marquis, titled Marquis de Sade: Justine. There has also been a graphic novel version by Guido Crepax.
In the motion picture Breaking the Waves, the director and script writer Lars Von Trier based the character of Bess McNeill upon the story of Justine.[citation needed]
See also
External links
- Justine or Good Conduct Well Chastised, 1791, online e-book.
- Complete text of the 1791 edition, in the original French.
- Full Russian translation of the final 1797 version.
- Justine (fr)
- Engravings from the 1789 Dutch edition
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