The Respectful Prostitute

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The Respectful Prostitute (French: La Putain respectueuse) is a French play by Jean-Paul Sartre, written in 1946, which observes a white woman, a prostitute, caught up in a racially tense period of American history. The audience understands that there has been an incident on a train with said woman involved, but also a black man on whom the blame is laid by the prejudiced law enforcers. What comes to the viewer's realisation is that a white man instigated an attack, but it is in the interests of the law to preserve the perception of the white person at the expense of the black "devil".

The tale takes a brief look at the loss of freedom inside a cruel world, a subject that dominates Sartre's literary career. The play premiered in November 1946 at the Théâtre Antoine-Simone Berriau in Paris. When the play was produced in the United States, Sartre was accused of anti-Americanism.^[2]

According to his partner Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre wrote the piece in only a few days to fill an entire evening at the theatre, because Morts sans sépulture [fr] alone was too short.^[3]

Sartre's play is believed to have been based on the infamous Scottsboro case, in which two white prostitutes accused nine black teenagers of rape on a train traveling through Alabama in 1931.^[4]

The play was adapted in the film twice: La Putain respectueuse^[5] (1952) directed by Marcello Pagliero and Den respektfulla skökan^[6] (1960) directed by Hans Abramson.