this file. - Scot-Pep

Sex Work in Society
In Literature
Early portrayals of prostitution tended towards the overly romantic and/or pornographic, both in
the raucous . In the late 19th century, ‘naturalism’ became popular and books such as Emile
Zola’s Nana and Stephen Crane’s Maggie, a Girl of the Streets tried to portray the poverty and
grinding desperation of the inner city poor, concentrating on the circumstances that led women
into sex work rather than passing any moral judgement. Later, violence and destruction became
a recurring theme, the woman’s downfall usually linked with other “moral failings” such as
alcoholism or promiscuity.
Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724) - Daniel Defoe
Like Moll Flanders, Defoe’s other “fallen woman” tale, Roxana tells the story of a woman’s rise
and fall and rise through society, before winning her own freedom through becoming wealthy.
Roxana falls from wealth and security into prostitution when her husband abandons her and then
climbs and falls (and climbs again) the social ladder through a series of marriages and romances.
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) (1748) - John Cleland
Fanny Hill became notorious as one of the most banned and prosecuted books in history due to
its largely pornographic content. There is a story in there, about a girl, Fanny Hill, who comes to
London after her parents die and end up living in a brothel before becoming mistress to a series
of men and eventually finding true love. As well as her own sexual encounters, Fanny is fond of
sneaking about and peeping on others; the book is essentially a series of increasing bawdy sex
scenes linked with the minimum of plot. Bear in mind, though, that this was written in 1748:
“perfectly well turn’d and fashion’d, the proud stiffness of which distended its skin, whose
smooth polish and velvet softness might vie with that of the most delicate of our sex”.
La dame aux Camelias (The Lady of the Camellias) (1848) – Alexander Dumas fils
Dumas’ novel and later play has spawned numerous other works, most notably Verdi’s opera La
Traviatta. Marguerite, a beautiful and spoiled courtesan, falls in love with a young middle-class
man who can’t afford to keep her in the style to which she is accustomed. She chooses love over
her pampered lifestyle but then abandons him when his father persuades her that the scandal
will ruin his life. Verdi’s opera was one of the inspirations for Baz Luhrman’s film Moulin Rouge.
Nana (1880) - Emile Zola
Nana marks the second appearance of Zola’s character. In L’Assommoir Nana is the daughter of
abusive alcoholic parents who, at the end of the novel, runs away to Paris and begins a life on
the streets. Nana tells the story of Nana’s rise from street sex worker to stage star and
courtesan, and her destruction of every man who pursues her. Never one to shirk from moral
retribution, Zola has her die a horrendous death from smallpox, her beauty totally destroyed.
Sex Work in Society
In Literature
Boule de Suif (1884) - Guy de Maupassant
An interesting short story, Boule de Suif follows a group of French travellers trapped in an inn
by the Prussian invasion. Among them is the prostitute Boule de Suif (literally meaning ‘Ball of
Fat’), who the other travellers pointedly ignore until she shares her picnic with them. A Prussian
officer takes a fancy to her and refuses to let the group leave until she sleeps with him; being a
staunch patriot Boule de Suif refuses. The other travellers cajole, persuade and emotionally
blackmail her until she gives in; as soon as they are released they treat her with total contempt
and disgust, and refuse to share their own food.
Albertine (1886) - Christian Krohg
Unavailable in English, and immediately banned in Norway when it was published, Albertine is a
story of poverty and street prostitution in Oslo. A statue of Albertine, standing between two
men, is carved into a corner of Oslo’s City Hall.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) - Stephen Crane
Maggie is a sweet young girl from a desperately poor family who, upon ‘taking up’ with a nice
young man with prospects, is accused by her family and neighbours of being ‘loose’; she is
abandoned by her lover and rejected by her family. A lone woman, assumed to be Maggie, is
shown working on the streets before her family learns of her death and decide, too late, to
forgive her.
Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893) - George Bernard Shaw
Shaw’s play is based upon a short story by Guy de Maupassant (Yvette Samoris), the tale of a
brothel owner, Mrs. Warren (described as “on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old
blackguard of a woman”, and her daughter Vivie. Vivie is Cambridge-educated, thoroughly
modern, and horrified to discover that her mother’s considerable fortune was made managing
brothels. They briefly reconcile when Mrs. Warren tells Vivie about her poverty stricken
childhood and how she was led into prostitution, but Vivie walks out of her mother’s life when
she discovers that she is still working as a madam.
Josephine Mutzenbacher (1906) - Felix Salten (probably)
Written in the style of a memoir, the story is told from the point of view of an ageing Viennese
courtesan looking back on the sexual escapades of her childhood. The book begins when she is
five and ends when she is twelve, about to begin work in a brothel. Unashamedly pornographic,
the book covers a number of then and current taboos, including incest, homosexuality, group
sex, child prostitution and fellatio. It was the subject of a major court case in Germany in 1990,
when it was ruled to be both pornography and art. Interestingly, the presumed author (it was
published anonymously) also wrote Bambi, a Life in the Woods, later bought by Walt Disney and
turned into an animated classic film.
Sex Work in Society
In Literature
Belle de Jour (1928) - Joseph Kessel
More famous now for the Catherine Deneuve film and the blogger by the same name, Kessel’s
novel told the tale of a bored French housewife who begins moonlighting in a brothel.
We Are Looking at You, Agnes (1931) - Erskine Caldwell
A short story about a young woman, Agnes, who leaves home with $50 to become a
stenographer but decides to train as a manicurist instead. After a series of tawdry advances she
realises she can make more money as a sex worker and moves into a cheap hotel. The story is
told in a stream-of-consciousness style as Agnes is home for her annual Christmas visit. She is
convinced that her family know her guilty secret - because they never ask about her
stenography work - and wishes they would ask, so that they can fall out and she won’t have to
come home ever again. As it turns out, they do know, and her father cleans her chair with
running alcohol whenever she leaves the room, but they never bring it up, and the story ends
as it began, with the family staring silently at each other.
BUtterfield 8 (1935) - John O’Hara
In the film version Elizabeth Taylor played a model masquerading as an escort; in the novel
Gloria is a call girl, although both versions portray her as an alcoholic and a nymphomaniac.
O’Hara’s novel was inspired by the tragic life and death of Starr Faithful, whose body washed up
on Long Island.
My Gun Is Quick (1950) - Mickey Spillane
Pure fiction, Mickey Spillane’s hard-boiled detective Mike Hammer meets a redheaded hooker
with a heart of gold in a diner, gives her money to ‘get a real job’ and then discovers that she
died later that night, from an apparent hit and run. Unconvinced, he hunts down her killers and
exposes and destroys a prostitution ring in New York City.
East of Edin (1952) - John Steinbeck
Steinbeck thought this was his greatest novel. Really the tale of multiple generations of sibling
rivalry, prostitution features in the story as a plot device, in the form of a manipulative girl who
marries into the family and then abandons her children to run a brothel. The discovery that she
is still alive, and of her chosen profession, destroys both of her sons in very different ways. The
second half of the book was made into a film in 1955, starring James Dean.
Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964) - Hubert Selby, Jr.
A brutal look at life in working class Brooklyn, Selby’s novel became a cult classic almost
immediately. Made up of six separate stories, two explicitly deal with prostitution: The Queen is
Dead, about a transvestite prostitute who is thrown out of the family home, and Tralala, the
story of a young street sex worker who makes a living robbing drunken sailors. Despite the
violent and terrible things that happen, Selby is tender and affectionate towards his characters.
Sex Work in Society
In Literature
Midnight Cowboy (1965) - James Leo Herlihy
Made into an extremely faithful film adaptation in 1969 (starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon
Voight), Midnight Cowboy tells the story of Joe Buck, who moves from Texas to New York with
the dream of become a male prostitute with a rich, glamorous female clientele. When these
ladies fail to materialise, he ends up on the streets hustling gay men. The true story is one of
loneliness and loyalty, centring on his relationship with a streetwise boy named Ratso.
The Green House (1966) - Mario Vargas Llosa
A Peruvian novel centred around a brothel (called The Green House) in a small city in the
Peruvian desert, built by a mysterious stranger and later run by his daughter. The story lines
cover several decades of Peruvian history and hundreds of miles of geography, from the desert
to the Amazonian jungle.
Whoreson (1972) - Donald Goines
Donald Goines grew up in a rough neighbourhood in Detroit and, after a brief stint in the Air
Force, slipped into a life of drug addiction and crime. Whoreson is semi-autobiographical,
written while Goines was in prison, telling the story of the aptly-named Whoreson Jones, the
son of a beautiful prostitute who grows up to become a ruthless pimp. Goines and his wife were
shot to death in Detroit in 1974; their murder has never been solved. One theory is that a drug
deal went wrong; another that neighbourhood criminal were enraged by what they saw a
portrayals of themselves in his characters and story lines.
Leaving Las Vegas (1990) - John O’Brien
This was the only novel completed by O’Brien, who committed suicide shortly after learning that
it would be made into a film. His family say that the story is his suicide note, following two lost
souls, an alcoholic who moves to Las Vegas to drink himself to death, and a ‘hooker with a
heart of gold’ who tries to take care of him.
Junk (1996) - Melvin Burgess
Published in the wake of Trainspotting, Burgess’ novel deals with similar themes, following a
pair of runaway teenagers from their broken homes to a series of squats in Bristol. Befriended
by a group of anarchists and addicts, they become heroin addicts themselves, and Gemma
becomes a prostitute to fund their habits. Aimed at teenagers and ‘young adults’, Burgess won
several awards for this gritty novel, later re-released as Smack.
Cities of the Plain (1998) - Cormac McCarthy
The final novel in McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, Cities of the Plain brings together the protagonists of
the first two novels, working together on a cattle ranch in New Mexico in 1952. John Grady falls in
love with a young prostitute in a brothel in Mexico and tries to bring her to the United States to
be his wife. As in most of McCarthy’s novels, nothing ends well, but there is a fragment of hope.
Sex Work in Society
In Literature
The Last Madam: A Life In The New Orleans Underworld (2001) - Christine Wiltz
Using her own tape-recorded memoirs, this is the story of Norma Wallace, who arrived in New
Orleans in 1916, at the age of fifteen, and opened a brothel four years later that would go on to
spawn countless imitators and stereotypes. Discreet, opulent, protected by powerful political
allies, Norma Wallace worked as a “landlady” for over forty years, before retiring after her first
arrest in 1962.
The Dress Lodger (2001)
Set in Sunderland during a cholera outbreak in 1831, The Dress Lodger tells the story of
Gustine, a 15 year old potter’s assistant by day and prostitute by night, whose pimp sends her
out to work in an extravagant blue dress, in the hopes that it will attract a higher class of
clientele. Hoping to get help for her son, who has a heart condition, she enters into a pact with
a surgeon looking for cadavers for dissection.
The Crimson Petal and the White (2002) - Michael Faber
A story of rigid class systems in the Victorian era, The Crimson Petal and the White follows
several characters, but most notably Sugar, who moves from living and working in a brothel to
being a kept mistress and then, in an attempt to get closer to her lover, a nanny in his
household. A collection of short stories, The Apple, was published in 2006 and features
characters from the novel.
Brothel: Mustang Ranch and its Women (2002) - Alexa Albert
Alexa Albert spent six years preparing this study of the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada. Initially
working on a public-health study looking at condom use, Albert had worked with homeless
prostitutes in New York City and was interested in whether or not the brothel system offered a
less harmful model for the women involved. Over the six years Albert documented the stories of
the women, the owners, the clients and even the cleaners and ‘civilian’ workers at the Ranch.
Eleven Minutes (2003) - Paulo Coelho
Originally published in Portuguese, Eleven Minutes follows the fortunes of Maria, a young girl
from a remote village in Brazil who emigrates to Switzerland, where she moves from samba
dancing in restaurants to working in a brothel. Sadly the novel gets a little mushy, as Maria
documents her search for “sacred love” in her diary, but it’s extremely well written.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004) - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
On the night before his ninetieth birthday, an ageing journalist, who has never had sex with a
woman he didn’t pay, decides to celebrate by buying a night with a virgin. The fourteen year old
girl a local madam procures for him is beautiful, but so exhausted by caring for her younger
siblings, sewing buttons for money, and poverty itself, that all she does is sleep. The love story
that unfolds is intriguing.
Sex Work in Society
In Literature
The Lover (2004) - Laura Wilson
A fictionalised account of the real-life serial killer Gordon Cummins, a British airman who killed
prostitutes in London in 1940, known as the Blackout Ripper. The novel follows three stories,
that of a street sex worker with a young son who could become a victim herself, that of a young
woman who becomes obsessed with Cummins, and that of Cummins himself.
Sold (2006) - Patricia McCormick
Sold is the story of Lakshmi, a young Nepalese village girl sold into prostitution by her
stepfather, and her struggle to survive in, and triumph over, “Happiness House”.
Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul
(2007) - Karen Abbott
The Everleigh sisters, and the Everleigh Club brothel that they founded and ran in Chicago at
the beginning of the 20th century, became American folklore heroes, not the least because of
the outlandish stories they told about their own lives. At a time when most brothels were run by
an iron fist and women were treated as near-prisoners, the Everleigh sisters fed their workers
gourmet meals, dressed them in couture gowns, and had them tutored in literature to entertain
a celebrity clientele. This non-fiction work tells their story against the backdrop of growing
Puritan zeal and crusading reformers.
Grotesque (2007) - Natsuo Kirino
Grotesque follows an unnamed woman, who lives under the shadow of her beautiful and
popular sister Yuriko. She grows increasingly bitter and resentful of everyone around her, but is
particularly spiteful about Yuriko and one of her classmates, Kazue. When both become
prostitutes, and are murdered within a year of each other, by the same killer, the narrator
acquires both of their journals and begins a journey of self-discovery.