Justine - Marquis de Sade

Justine (1787)
By
Marquis de Sade (1740 - 1814)


Whereas Juliette was Sade's dear baby doll, Justine was the dummy in which he stuck all his needles. She chooses the "right path" which is for Sade the wrong thing to do in a corrupt world. He calls his novel(la) Justine OR Good Conduct Well Chastised, and in it the heroine refuses to become a sinner, so everybody takes advantage of her. Of course, now ...
...is that although JULIETTE and JUSTINE have the same ending, yet in each book it is told from a different point of view to suit the purpose of becoming either a happy or a tragic ending story. Needless to say, this is definitely both a smart and a cruel strategy on the part of Sade who gives you an ending to sympathize with in JUSTINE, then snatches it from you devilishly in JULIETTE, and, obviously, the clever reader should choose to believe the ... more

Justine (1787)
By
Marquis de Sade (1740 - 1814)

Whereas Juliette was Sade's dear baby doll, Justine was the dummy in which he stuck all his needles. She chooses the "right path" which is for Sade the wrong thing to do in a corrupt world. He calls his novel(la) Justine OR Good Conduct Well Chastised, and in it the heroine refuses to become a sinner, so everybody takes advantage of her. Of course, now you think you know how the book will end, but believe me Sade always manages to shock or at least surprise you. Another significant note here is that although JULIETTE and JUSTINE have the same ending, yet in each book it is told from a different point of view to suit the purpose of becoming either a happy or a tragic ending story. Needless to say, this is definitely both a smart and a cruel strategy on the part of Sade who gives you an ending to sympathize with in JUSTINE, then snatches it from you devilishly in JULIETTE, and, obviously, the clever reader should choose to believe the latter.

When you study a tragedy, you look for the flaw that leads to the protagonist's downfall; in the case of Justine there are numerous flaws. To start with, Justine is definitely passive; she begs and pleads instead of being the aggressor or simply taking any form of action. This is the position in life she assumes hoping that people won't blame her for the ill-fated cruelties that happened to her, since she was not in fact a part of them. The problem is that feminist critics are not impressed by Justine's naïveté, and they notice, like everybody else except for the heroine herself, that her passivity is her main flaw for it makes her what sadist call a perfect victim. Every time she cries and asks for mercy narrating how miserable her life was and how she lost her family, she arouses her torturers instead of managing to address the goodness in them.

This is the attitude that Justine assumed when she went to the monastery in which she was hoping to find mercy, but, as usual, found nothing but torture and rape by the saintly ecclesiastics themselves. This is, I believe, one of the most important scenes in the book and can be considered as an example of a pattern that will be repeated many times but with different people and in different places. The priests, as well as most of Justine's "masters", explain to the girl how the world, in which domination seems to be the main feature, operates. Sade's logic is based mostly, but not solely, on the assumption that Nature itself wills us to commit violent acts; if it wanted us to be otherwise, it would have stopped us. This part of the book contains prolonged acts of sacrilegious nature, and having read The 120 Days of Sodom, I admired Sade for his complete understanding of this issue. He argues that those people who enjoy defiling the sacred pretend to be atheists but they are not so in reality, because if they were, religion and everything that is related to it would have meant nothing to them.

One of the most memorable moments, which Angela Carter discusses as well, is when Justine is given the chance to kill her one of her torturers, and yet, obedient as she is, she fails to do it; indeed she never thinks of it. Carter argues that this is one of the [many] moments in which Sade defeats his prude readers who yell: go on kill him, what are you waiting for? The scene itself is worth examining at first. Justine's master instructs her saying:

"You will do to me everything I did to you; I'll strip; I'll mount the stool, you'll adjust the rope, I'll excite myself for a moment, then, as soon as you see things assume a certain consistency, you'll jerk the stool free and I'll remain hanging; you'll leave me there until you either discern my semen's emission or symptoms of death's throes; in the latter case, you'll cut me down at once; in the other, you'll allow Nature to take her course and you'll not detach me until afterward. You observe, Therese [Justine], I'm putting my life in your hands; your freedom, your fortune will be your good conduct's reward."

If Juliette, the heroine's sister, was given this chance, she would have killed the man, speculated the scene for some time till she was satisfied sexually, and enjoyed the man's wealth. Oddly enough, Justine did not see killing the man who tortured her as an option even; according to how she commented on the situation: he was after all her master and she had to obey him. And, needless to say, the "sadist" master did not live up to his promise and he punished Justine for her good deed.

But it is easy to assume a feminist position and condemn some women, isn't it? Defending Justine I would say, we all become vulnerable when we reveal our weaknesses and we all tend to do that sometimes. The problem is that this is not the only mistake that the heroine commits; the other more dangerous one is that she never learns from her mistakes. She went from place to place telling rapists how she was raped and tortured earlier and how she is lonely and has no friend in the world. She was like a female Candide, assuming that everybody is kind-hearted deep down and never consenting to believe the opposite even when the world around her is falling apart. Almost every single one of Justine's torturers takes the time to explain to her the ways of the world and the cruelty of desire, but she simply never learns anything.

To prove to us that Justine's life is as insipid and meaningless as her morals, Sade makes us doubt her judgment, even more, by letting her fall in love with a homosexual man who is planning to kill his kind-hearted aunt. Anyway, the meek are promised to inherit the earth in which they were wronged, and I have always thought that the more prestigious prizes are kept for those who actually take action instead of just watching meekly.

<<< Recommended? >>>

It's an erotic book of a moderate size and psychological depth to it, so why not take a look, of course if you don't mind the "blasphemes" and violet scenes.

<<< Adaptations >>>

The only adaptation of the novel that I watched majestically occupies the position of the worst movie I have ever watched in my life. It is a French film called JUSTINE DE SADE (1972) with Claude Pierson as director and Alice Arno as heroine. It is so unprofessional in terms of production, acting, and even dubbing that it makes you laugh at Justine instead of sympathizing with her or at least taking her seriously, yet it is erotic. However, I should warn you here that the scene in which the priests rape Justine and torture her is very stressed in this film, in case you don't prefer to watch this.

<<< Reading Experience >>>

No need to elaborate much on this section; suffice it to say that the book has the same average size of the more "normal" novels.

<<< Price and Book Info >>>

Price: £4.50
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd; New Ed edition (Sep 1996)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1853266353
ISBN-13: 978-1853266355
Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 12.7 x 0.8 cm

Summary: An early book from Sade that is violent but less extreme than his later works. 

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