She expelled people from their old selves. But those she harmed most she made fruitful. Certainly she was bad in many ways, but they were all small ways. Her gift was misapplied in being directed towards love. There are forms of greatness, you know, which when not applied in art or religion make havoc of ordinary life. This is why Nessim thinks he is noble in his perception of Justine by informing Darley, “It will puzzle you when I tell you that I thought Justine great, in a sort of way. And though there are those that claim to truly love her, like her husband, Nessim, the well-to-do man she cheats on with Darley, they see her as an ideal, some sort of archetype of the “free-spirited” woman to be glorified and then inevitably disappointed by somehow. Justine, because she has affairs and is alluring is described as a tragic figure, in many senses, with Darley noting, “There are some characters in this world who are marked for self-destruction, and to these no amount of rational argument can appeal.” Well, maybe Justine doesn’t see her behavior as self-destructive, maybe she’s just living her fucking life and hoping someone can love her as she is. Yes, Justine is nonetheless a “master” work, but with the passage of time, Darley really doesn’t hold up all that well, nor do Durrell’s obvious prejudices toward a woman of a “whorish” nature.

This is, in many ways, why Lawrence Durrell’s 1961 commencement to The Alexandria Quartet is so prescient, even if it is, more often than not, an extremely cynical view of love, and its recyclability–a polite word for disposability.ĭurrell’s protagonist, an Irishman who becomes referred to as Darley in subsequent novels of the quartet, is someone whose “evolved” view of love might have been impressive and avant-garde in its time, but now just comes across as garden variety fuckboy doublespeak. It’s a world that prides its bottom line on “the self”–improving it, bettering it, concerning one self with it. In the era that is now, it’s easy to be jaded about love.

Justine is a novel that, in addition to being a part of a larger tableau–specifically The Alexandria Quartet–defies what most enthusiasts of literature have come to rely upon in depictions of love: that it lasts forever, that it can’t be broken or altered by what Days of Our Lives calls the sands of time.

Justine book durrell