Everything about The Torture Garden Novel totally explained
The Torture Garden is a novel written by the French journalist, novelist and playwright
Octave Mirbeau and was first published in
1899, during the
Dreyfus Affair. The novel is ironically dedicated: "To the priests, the soldiers, the judges, to those people who educate, instruct and govern men, I dedicate these pages of Murder and Blood."
Plot summary
Published at the height of the
Dreyfus Affair, Mirbeau’s novel is a loosely assembled reworking of texts composed at different eras, featuring different styles, and showcasing different characters. Beginning with material stemming from articles on the 'Law of Murder' discussed in the "Frontispice" ("The Manuscript"), the novel continues with a
farcical critique of French politics as seen in "En Mission" : a French politicians' aide is sent on a pseudo-scientific expedition to China, while his presence at home would be compromising ("The Mission"). Then it moves on to an account of a visit to a Cantonese prison by a narrator accompanied by the sadist/hysteric Clara, who delights in witnessing flayings, crucifixions and numerous tortures, all done in beautifully laid out and groomed gardens, and explaining the beauty of torture to her companion. Finally she attains hysterical orgasm and passes out in exhaustion, only to begin again a few days later ("Le Jardin des supplices", "The Garden").
Commentary
There is an
allegory about the hypocrisy of European '
civilisation' and about the 'Law of Murder'. There is also a denunciation of bloody French and English
colonialism and a ferocious attack on what Mirbeau saw as the corrupt morality of
bourgeois capitalist society and the
state, which he believed were based on murder.
But Mirbeau’s multiple transgressions of the rules of
verisimilitude, his disregard for novelistic convention problematize the issue of the novel’s genre affiliation and leave open the question of the author’s moral message, leaving the readers of today in a state of wonderment, perplexity, and shock.
Further Information
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