Line #50 Literature/Juliette


1	[[quoteright:310:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/juliette.jpg]]
2	''Juliette, [[EitherOrTitle or]] Vice Amply Rewarded'' is a novel written by the infamous Creator/MarquisDeSade around the UsefulNotes/FrenchRevolution. It's a companion piece to his previous novel, ''Justine''. While ''Justine'' focuses on a girl who is punished for being virtuous, ''Juliette'' focuses on her titular sister, who is rewarded for her vice.
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4	Set in the 1770 and 1780s, ''Juliette'' starts off as a young girl raised in a nunnery, but later joins a brothel in her teenage years. She becomes the most prestigious, sought-after prostitute among the French Aristocracy, and eventually falls in love with three elites, Saint-Fond, Noirceuil, and Clairwel, who collectively corrupt her into a murderous, nymphomaniacal noblewoman that goes on a decade-long misadventure of debauchery and degeneracy.
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6	To put into perspective how disturbing this story is, when UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte read it, he had de Sade arrested and imprisoned for the rest of his life.
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8	Received a film adaptation InNameOnly called ''Juliette de Sade (1969)''. However, bits and pieces of it are also more accurately adapted in ''Justine de Sade (1972)'' and ''Marquis de Sade's Justine (1969)''.
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10	!!The story provides examples of:
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12	* AbusiveParents: Every libertine that has children. Some of them try to groom children to become like them.
13	* AppeaseTheVolcanoGod: Juliette and Clairwil toss Princess Olympia Borghese into Mount Vesuvius as an experiment: if Nature hates them committing crimes, the volcano will smite them. The volcano ''does'' erupt, but they survive unscathed, which they treat as Nature's blessing.
14	* AristocratsAreEvil: The French Aristocracy (and all aristocracies for that matter, such as Naples and Tuscany) is depicted as being essentially a human trafficking syndicate.
15	* AnarchoTyranny: The libertine government allows actual criminals to roam free unpunished, raping and killing as they please, while also imprisoning and oppressing law-abiding citizens.
16	* AnarchyIsChaos: De Sade's philosophy on government and society is explored; he believes that law is unfair and lawlessness is fair because the law is one-sided (only the law has the power to persecute and not vice versa) while lawlessness allows everyone to victimize each other equally.
17	* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: Mid-way through the story, several chapters are told from the perspective of Borchamps, Clairwil's brother, and his misadventures in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Russia.
18	* AssholeVictim: Most of the libertines are eventually killed by their own treacherous, amoral lifestyle.
19	* AuthorAppeal: Like most of de Sade's works, practically every character is an out-and-out atheist if not anti-theist who despises the idea of the universe being a benevolent or fair place, much less one made by a benevolent deity. As the title makes clear, vice and hedonism are rewarded, torture, rape, murder, bestiality, pedophilia, necrophilia (and practically any other -philia you can think of) are commonplace, and every sociopathic prick is a KarmaHoudini. It's like if one took HumansAreBastards and HobbesWasRight as jerk-off material, which the author very well may have.
20	* AuthorFilibuster: The story is absolutely ''drenched'' in this. Almost every single character has at least one multi-paged monologue where they act as a mouthpiece for de Sade's philosophy on politics, society, religion, morality, and sexuality.
21	* BestialityIsDepraved: Juliette beds an entire menagerie of exotic animals... [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals before killing them all.]]
22	* BrotherSisterIncest: Clairwil is married to her brother, Borchamps, doubling as UnholyMatrimony and VillainousIncest.
23	* CardCarryingVillain: The libertines literally call themselves "the Sodality of The Friends of Crime" (a parody of the real-life Society of the Friends of the Constitution).
24	* TheChainOfHarm: While they do not feel bad about what happened to them, all the libertines in the novel became the way they are, due to an older mentor or relative teaching them how to be perverted and evil.
25	* CorruptChurch: All clergymen in the book, from Jesuit monks to archbishops to the Pope himself, are all treated as atheist libertines who simply use the Bible as a tool to legitimize their tyranny.
26	* CorruptPolitician: Saint-Fond is a member of France's Council of Ministers. His exact office isn't specified, but he seems to be a treasurer or justice minister of some sort. He uses his powers to induce a famine and falsely imprison innocent people. Noirceuil eventually poisons him and usurps his position.
27	* DepravedBisexual: Nearly every single libertine
28	* DepravedHomosexual: Lots of them, including the lesbian sisters Juliette meets in the Sodality of the Friends of Crime club, who are disgusted by the very sight of men
29	* DirtyCoward: The libertines are all proudly cowards, sobbing and begging whenever the tables are turned and their lives are threatened. [[EvilCannotComprehendGood They believe that to be brave is to hate life]], and to be a coward is to love life.
30	* DoesNotLikeMen: Clairwil makes many long-winded monologues about how much she hates men and seeks to avenge the eternity of female oppression by sadistically butchering little boys and grown men alike. She isn't, however, opposed to carving up females either.
31	* ExtremeLibido: A libertine's nymphomania defies possibility in this world. There's a scene where an Italian nobleman has sex with ''thousands'' of men in a ''single day'', which literally isn't even logistically possible.
32	* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Purposely averted. The libertines do show a fondness for each other, but they always make sure to specify that they're in love with their ''[[InLoveWithYourCarnage depravity]]'', not them. They murder and betray each other without hesitation.
33	* EvenEvilHasStandards: Juliette tries so hard to not have anything resembling standards, but even ''she'' is shaken by Saint-Fond's plan to cause a genocidal famine. Her momentary hesitation is enough for Saint-Fond to exile her from France for decades.
34	* EveryoneIsBi: Seems to be an AuthorFilibuster by Marquis De Sade. Just about every libertine Juliette comes across, is a bisexual nymphomaniac who is also a ruthless serial killer that despises religion and any sort of morality. The odds of finding bisexual libertines who are interested in every sort of fetish, in the 18th century, may seem low, but it's upon the reader's credulousness.
35	* EvilIsPetty: Even though Saint-Fond doesn't believe in religion, he still can't stand the thought of his victims going to Heaven after he kills them. So he performs a Satanic pact to doom them to Hell, just to be safe.
36	* EvilMentor: Noirceuil is Juliette's most recurring and overarching libertine friend. He's the one who grooms her into the sociopath she is today, and at no point do they have a disagreement.
37	* EvilSorceress: Durand, a Parisian poison master who dabbles in dark magic. But, being an atheist, she insists her magic tricks are all smoke and mirrors.
38	* ExtremeOmnisexual: Juliette fucks everything under the sun. Men, women, children, animals...
39	* FrenchJerk: Every single French aristocrat is depicted as a hedonistic psychopath. They also tend to be French nationalists, making their behavior all the more pompous. However, to be fair, in de Sade's world ''all'' aristocracies are evil, whether they be French, Italian, Russian, Dutch, or Swedish.
40	* FromNobodyToNightmare: The story follows Juliette's 20-year journey, where she goes from a young orphan girl in a nunnery to the biggest menace in Europe.
41	* GovernmentConspiracy: Yes, this trope is OlderThanRadio. This story subscribes to the real-life "Pacte de Famine" conspiracy theory, which alleges that the French government orchestrated a series of famines throughout the 18th century to cull the population. This was one of the biggest fuels for the Revolution.
42	* HollywoodAtheist: The libertines do not simply just disbelieve in God, but absolutely abhor the concept of religion, plus they're all depraved murderers, rapists and torturers whose pastime is sadism (along with their philosophy).
43	* HistoricalDomainCharacter: UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat, Pope Pius VI, and Cardinal de Bernis make an appearance. Naturally, they get a HistoricalVillainUpgrade. And according to Website/{{Wikipedia}}, Princess Sophia is supposed to be the real-life Princess Wilhelmina with the names changed.
44	* KarmaHoudini: The central theme of the story. The more depraved and destructive Juliette gets, the richer and more successful she becomes.
45	* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: The author says at the very end that Juliette died 10 years after the book's ending, without giving details. Since the book takes place a few years before the French Revolution, this could possibly imply that Juliette was one of the many aristocrats guillotined by crazed revolutionaries, or purged by Napoleon's regime like de Sade himself was.
46	* ILoveTheDead: Juliette molests the corpse of her sister at the end.
47	* ImAHumanitarian: The libertines all engage in indulgent cannibalism. The most avid of which is Minski, an ogre-like Russian.
48	* MaliciousMisnaming: Juliette refers to Pius VI by his birth name, Braschi, to show that she spitefully refuses to recognize his authority as Pope.
49	* MoneyFetish: Juliette is the richest woman in Europe, and she hardly even spends any of it. She simply likes hoarding money and conning millions from people for the sake of it, aroused by the idea of poor people getting even poorer.
50	* NunTooHoly: Juliette was raised by a convent of nuns, who taught her to hate God and engage in sadistic orgies.
51	* OmnicidalManiac: Saint-Fond hates the lower class so much that he orchestrates a ''genocide'' on them by causing a catastrophic famine. Clairwil also says that, if she had the ability to kill every human on earth, she'd be sad she didn't have more worlds to exterminate.
52	* ParentalIncest: Juliette has this both ways; she has sex with her father and rapes her daughter.
53	* {{Sadist}}: The book condenses sadism in one sentence: enjoy oneself at the expense of anyone and everyone.
54	* SmokyGentlemensClub: The Sodality of The Friends of Crime is a private social club that all of France's libertines are secretly members of. Only the wealthiest can get in since it demands an extremely high membership fee.
55	* StrawNihilist: The libertines believe that morality, love, and religion are all nonsense and that the only "right" thing to do is to appease Mother Nature by obeying your basest and most primal urges, which will inevitably include sex and violence.
56	* TooKinkyToTorture: The thing about the libertines is that there is no torture or humiliation they commit that they wouldn't gladly accept themselves. Juliette literally swallows the feces of her male servants for the fun of it, and Durand isn't fazed by the idea of getting skinned alive.
57	* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: At the end, the author breaks character to insist that all characters and events really did happen, just with the names changed. More specifically, Juliette's tour of Italy is based on de Sade's, where he claims to have participated in blood orgies with the King and Queen of Naples, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the Pope... Dubious.
58	* VillainProtagonist: Most of the characters in the novel who are not victims. Contrary to her sister Justine, Juliette is extremely cruel and sado-masochistic, willing to go to any length to gain pleasure; be it [[spoiler:poisoning an entire town or betraying her fellow libertines.]]
59	* WickedCultured: Juliette is very well-versed in historical and mythological figures associated with depravity and hedonism, like Tiberius, UsefulNotes/{{Nero}}, Messalina, Empress Theodora, [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Aphrodite (or Venus, as she calls her), and Dionysus (or Bacchus, as she calls him)]].
60	* WouldHurtAChild: There is no cruelty Juliette wouldn't inflict on children, including her own 7-year-old daughter.

Context Literature / Juliette