The Respectful Prostitute

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The Respectful Prostitute is a short play by Jean-Paul Sartre, written in 1946, which observes a woman 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 of whom the blame is laid upon by the prejudiced law enforcers. What we come to realize is a white man instigated an attack, but it is in the interests of the law to preserve his future as a 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.