The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [332]
Fanny Hill was so obviously written as pornography that it was soon banned, and was to remain suppressed in Britain for more than 200 years. A similar fate was to befall an altogether darker tale written 40 years later, in a Paris prison, by a 47-year old French aristocrat who had narrowly escaped capital punishment for attempting to poison four Marseilles prostitutes with aphrodisiac drugs. The Marquis de Sade had spent most of his adult life on the run, either from the authorities or from enraged fathers, for his callous, violent and perverted treatment of a long succession of women. Having finally had his death sentence for the incident in Marseilles commuted to an indefinite term in prison, he was in the Bastille when, in two weeks in 1787, he dashed off a short novel entitled The Misfortunes of Virtue, later revised as Justine.
The story begins almost like a folk tale, when the death of their parents leaves two teenage girls, Juliette and Justine, orphaned and penniless. The two could not be more contrasted. Juliette, the worldly one, at once embarks on a life of prostitution. After she has been sold to clients as a virgin 80 times, she happily submits to `criminal refinements, loathsome pleasures, secret, filthy debauches, bizarre tastes, humiliating fancies', all to serve her ruthless desire for worldly advancement. Having ruined three lovers, she marries and murders another to win his title and his fortune. As a rich widow, she plays the role of a fashionable Parisian hostess, while continuing her secret life as an expensive courtesan. She murders two more men for their money and has a string of abortions to keep her figure, until she finally so takes the fancy of one rich 50-year old lover that he takes her on as his wife in all but name. They are just on their way to visit an estate he has bought her in the country when, stopping overnight at an inn, they see a beautiful but poorly dressed girl stepping out of a coach, her hands tied and under police guard. They are so struck by her appearance that they invite her in to explain how she came to be in such a sorry plight.
The girl, who passes under the name of `Sophie, unfolds a tale of unremitting horror. Having been orphaned in her teens, devout and upright in every way, she had been determined to find honest employment, however lowly. Her first prospective employer, a seemingly respectable man, had offered her a place in his house so long as she was prepared to sleep with highly-placed churchmen. Having turned this down in horror, she is then taken on by an old miser to perform the most menial household tasks, while being treated appallingly, until he orders her to commit a robbery on the man living in the flat above him. When she refuses, the miser hides a diamond in her mattress and summons the police to arrest her for stealing it. She is sentenced to death, and only avoids hanging in the nick of time when a fellow-prisoner, Dubois, an older woman similarly facing execution, sets fire to the prison, allowing them both to escape into a forest. Here Dubois, a hardened criminal, introduces Sophie to her four villainous male accomplices. She offers the innocent young girl a choice. Either she persists in her foolish, doomed desire to live a virtuous life, or she joins the gang. The four drunken ruffians decide to rape Sophie, but fall to blows over who should be first, giving her the chance to make a second escape in the darkness. After sleeping in the undergrowth, she is awakened by the sound of two men nearby, and secretly watches in revulsion while they engage in homosexual intercourse. Of course they then see her, and one, a brutal and vicious young Marquis, threatens to flog her before hanging her from a tree. He eventually relents and takes her home to the chateau where he lives with his mother, a still beautiful Marquise.
Madame de Bressac stands out as one of the few people in the story who is not portrayed as cruel, treacherous and utterly egocentric. She listens to Sophie's awful story, treats her kindly and takes her on as a companion. But this