It is a novella (187 pages) with relatively little of the obscenity that characterised his later writing, as it was written in the classical style (which was fashionable at the time), with much verbose and metaphorical description.

Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the arrest of the anonymous author of Justine and Juliette, and as a result Sade was incarcerated for the last 13 years of his life.

The unfortunate situations include the time when she seeks refuge and confession in a monastery, but is forced to become a sex slave to the monks, who subject her to countless orgies, rapes and similar rigours and the time when, helping a gentleman who is robbed in a field, he takes her back to his château with promises of a post caring for his wife, but she is then confined in a cave and subject to much the same punishment.

These punishments are mostly the same throughout, even when she goes to a judge to beg for mercy in her case as an arsonist and then finds herself openly humiliated in court, unable to defend herself.

The man, Monsieur de Noirseuil, in the interest of revenge, pretended to be his friend, made sure he became bankrupt and eventually poisoned him, leaving the girls orphans.

In her search for work and shelter Justine constantly fell into the hands of rogues who would ravish and torture her and the people she makes friends with.

She argues that, beyond the scandalous element, Sade uses Justine to reconcile individual pleasure with societal existence and to explore an ethical dimension to libertine philosophy.

One scholar commented:[1] The libertines derive as much satisfaction from defeating their opponents intellectually as they do from subduing and abusing them physically, while the victims themselves (and Justine offers the best example of this) rise admirably to the challenge with equally forceful and reasoned replies.James Fowler writes that "her piety offers her the most intense pleasure she can experience in life" and describes her responses to the libertine Marquis de Bressac as "pious hedonism".

In Lars von Trier's 2011 film Melancholia, the main character, played by Kirsten Dunst, is named after de Sade's Justine.

A retelling in contemporary terms is The Turkish Bath, a 1969 novel published by Olympia Press, allegedly by Justine and Juliette Lemercier in an autobiographical format.

In 1973, the Japanese director Tatsumi Kumashiro filmed an adaptation of Justine as part of Nikkatsu's Roman Porno series.

The film was titled Woman Hell: Woods are Wet (女地獄　森は濡れた, Onna Jigoku: Mori wa Nureta).