Moving to Morvan, where families were supposed to raise foster families were supposed to raise children with religious rigor, Genet was one of thousands of Public Assistance children housed in the region (Barber, 18). Although Genet was far more privileged than other Public Assistance children and his excellence in school rendered him even more distinguished, he accentuated this distance by his predilection for theft (Barber, 19). Thanks to his descent into social evils at such a young age, Genet became more and more inspired by the things that society found base, repulsive, and obscene, influencing his plays and novels greatly.
Although there was no exact moment where he decided to become a thief, Genet’s consistent actions as a criminalistic child rendered him first sent to the Mettray Reformatory and later subject to multiple prison sentences. At Mettray, he began his venture towards degeneracy, in the eyes of society, by developing his sexual preference for men (Knapp, 18-19). Rather than being a disciplinary community, Mettray became a sexual fantasy for Genet where he had his first sexual experiences and the isolation of Mettray exhilarated him (Barber, 22). At the time period, in Genet’s opinion, he did not believe that “homosexuals have really ever had power – true power – in France or in the United States. Just the contrary, in the complete opposition to them, power has always been against them” (De Grazia and Genet, 313). At the time period, being homosexual was not seen in best light socially and attempting to continue to praise evil, Genet supported conduct of which society disapproves (Thody, 38). As a result, Genet included homosexuality in his works, especially in his novels (his autobiographical Journal du voleur [The Thief’s Journal] most openly), in order to express and breathe life into erotic, sexual fantasies (Thody, 38). Genet’s homosexual characters never outwardly express that their behavior is natural and Genet never explicitly presents a positive and justified case in favor of homosexuality; in his works, Genet depicts homosexuality or no sex at all because if his sexual activity was not considered normal or acceptable by society’s standards, then it was his job to make it so (Thody, 39). While having a sexual preference for men was one method through which he could embody the evils of society, Genet coupled his homosexual identity with another vice: ostrichiziung himself as a criminal.
Stemming from the alienation felt during his childhood, Genet was an outcast in society and the characters he presents in his work reflect that sentiment; he writes about people who society has an immense disdain and hatred towards such as criminals. At a young age, Genet was obsessed with uncovering why his mother abandoned left him, a would he would never recover from, and as a result, he became fascinated by an underworld of danger, traps, and temptations (Barber, 16). Adopting this darkness, Genet became a misfit and criminal which only intensified his inner solitude and wretchedness. The themes in his novels and plays concerning evil, hatred, and criminality all arose from his miserable and unfortunate childhood and upbringing; “abandoned by my family, I felt it was natural to aggravate this condition by a preference for boys, and this preference by theft, and theft by crime or a complacent attitude in regard to crime. Hence, I resolutely rejected a world which had rejected me” (Genet, 38).