The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman

by Jules Janin, T.J. Hale (Editor), Jennie Gray (Editor)

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Genres: Fiction

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1829

About the author

Gabriel-Jules Janin était un écrivain et critique dramatique français.

Gabriel-Jules Janin was a French writer and critic.
Born in Saint-Étienne (Loire), Janin's father was a lawyer, and he was educated first at St. Étienne, and then at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He involved himself in journalism from an early date, and worked on the Figaro and the Quotidienne, among others, until in 1830 he became dramatic critic of the Journal des Débats. Long before, however, he had made a literary reputation for himself, publishing novels such as L'Âne mort et la Femme guillotinée ("The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman") (1829). La Confession (1830) followed, and then in Barnave (1831), he attacked the Orléans family. From the day, however, when Janin became the theatrical critic of the Débats, though he continued to write books, he was most notable in France as a dramatic critic. Janin authored the text for the song Le Chant des chemins de fer by Hector Berlioz, a fellow critic at the Débats. After many years of feuilleton writing he collected some of his articles in the work called Histoire de la littérature dramatique en France (1853-1858). In 1865 he made his first attempt upon the Academy, but was not successful till five years later. Meanwhile, he had not been content with his feuilletons, written persistently about all manner of things. No one was more in request with the Paris publishers for prefaces, letterpress to illustrated books and suchlike. He was accused of taking bribes for favourable reviews, reputedly earning 6,000 to 8,000 francs from fearful playwrights on a premier. Janin traveled (picking up in one of his journeys a country house at Lucca in a lottery), and wrote accounts of his travels; he wrote numerous tales and novels, and composed many other works, including Fin d'un monde et du neveu de Rameau (1861), in which, under the guise of a sequel to Diderot's work, he showed his familiarity with the late 18th century. He married in 1841. In the early part of his career he had many quarrels, notably one with Felix Pyat (1810-1889), whom he prosecuted successfully for defamation of character. For the most part his work was improvisation, noted for its light and vivid style. His Œuvres choisies (12 vols., 1875-1878) were edited by Albert Patin de La Fizelière. A study on Janin with a bibliography was published by Auguste Piédagnel in 1874. See also Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, ii. and v., and Gustave Planche, Portraits littéraires.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

These days The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman reads as a moral allegory of vices brought by civilization into society… At times the novel seems to be a little bit didactic and at times bitterly sentimental.
First time the narrator encounters a heroine as an innocent girl riding on her pet donkey free of any troubles and cares and he is filled with warm feelings to this adolescent lass. Next time when he accidentally sees her in the city, he notices that society is already at work corrupting girl’s innocence. He is full of empathy and starts observing the process of the girl’s unavoidable downfall. With every step, the girl gets lower and the indifferent and depraved society keeps pushing her down.

It was in vain that I tried to forget the double passion, the double study of my life – Henrietta and moral deformity. Nothing could turn me from this fatal study. Every day I was goaded on by I don’t know what fresh and frightful desire to dive deeper into the horrible, and to learn whether I could proceed still further, or whether, in fact, I should be vanquished in my researches. In my eyes, however, the horrible existed but with Henrietta, that false and unfeeling woman, a very abyss of egotism and weakness, a human being devoid of moral nature, a magnificent envelope, to complete whose perfection nothing but soul was needed.

The bitter end is inevitable and imminent…
The novel however ends on a rather cynical note so in a way the book turns into a forerunner of decadent literature.
Society tries to disguise and hide its vices but sometimes dams are prone to break and then the ulcers are bared…

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun traipse into horror. A little disjointed. Liked the ending. Henriette is the woman and Charlot is the donkey. The most startling thing maybe was the half re-animation of the drowned spurned lover.

Young men drowning themselves out of unrequited love—peau de chagrin, young werther, this

[M Clayton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh Charlot & Henrietta!

[Nikodem Janaszek · Rating 3 out of 5]

5,5/10⭐️
Ogólnie historia ciekawa.