Les Avariés
1901 French play by Eugène Brieux / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Les Avariés ([lɛ.z‿a.va.ʁje], "The Damaged Ones")[1] is a 1901 play written by French playwright Eugène Brieux.[2] Controversially, the play centred on the effect of syphilis on a marriage, at a time when sexually transmitted diseases were a taboo topic rarely openly discussed. For this reason, it was censored for some time in France and later in England.[3]
An English translation by John Pollock under the title Damaged Goods was published in 1911[4] and staged in the United States and Britain, including a run on Broadway in 1913 starring Richard Bennett.[5] It was later the subject of several film adaptations. The first, a 1914 silent film also starring Bennett, inspired a craze of subsequent "sex hygiene" films.
Brieux dedicated the play to Jean Alfred Fournier, Europe's leading syphilologist.[6]