Flora Tristan blames Victorian London’s rampant prostitution on a number of factors, including an unequal distribution of wealth and society’s oppression of women. She discusses the prejudices which prevent women from achieving a high social status, such as their lack of professional education and their inability to own land. According to Tristan, if women were allowed the same education and to hold the same occupational positions as men, they would not be subject to the poverty and degradation that ultimately leads them to prostitution. She also states that women, since they are not treated as autonomous individuals, cannot be held accountable to any sort of “moral law”— in fact, they’re taught their whole life the “art of pleasing”, so how could they not, in desperation, turn to prostitution just to get by (Tristan)?

Tristan goes on to give a lengthy description of Waterloo Road, a dangerous area of London where prostitutes and pimps lurk while awaiting clients, and one of the “finishes”, a sort of cabaret/tavern where wealthy men engage in orgies with prostitutes. Tristan explains that these finishes are the “meeting places for high society where the elite of aristocracy assembles”, where these men can indulge in food, drink, and sex, committing all sorts of debauchery she describes as “ revolting and frightening”.

Tristan notes that most prostitutes succumb to disease within three or four years, if not in hospitals, where they are given last priority, then on the streets. In his poem, “The Bridge of Sighs”, Thomas Hood laments the loss of a young prostitute. While he calls upon the reader to mourn for the woman, “loving, not loathing” (14), and treat her body with tender care, he does not offer any sort of critique of society to mirror Tristan’s. Instead, he writes:

Make no deep scrutiny

Into her mutiny

Rash and undutiful:

Past all dishonor,

Death has left on her

Only the beautiful (21-26).

While Hood does ask the reader to forgive her for her crimes, he speaks of the prostitute as a rebel to society, a disgraceful and sinful person. Hood would probably argue Tristan’s point that women are not subject to a “moral law”, and in fact describes prostitution as “evil behavior” (104). He places the blame on the prostitute, not society. Yet the poem is not angry or damning; instead, it emits a sense of sympathy, or at least pity, for the prostitute’s plight. The prostitute is not a victim to society, but she is still a victim who has suffered at the hands of her own actions.