Class Blog

Female Body as Commodity

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Tristan begins her chapter on sex workers of London in the Victorian Period with an explanation of why they exist in the first place. Her argument is that all sex work is survival sex work. She says that their existence stems from the inequality of the sexes, particularly in England. The culture that places stigma on pre-marital sex for women, but does not instill that stigma for men invites this job as a remedy. It means that men can seduce or abuse young women with no risk to themselves, but at the cost of destroying those women’s lives. A woman must marry in order to assure a living for herself , because she is not allowed the same “occupations and professions” that allow for a living wage. However, in doing so she gives up her existence. Tristan describes this as choosing “between oppression and infamy.”

Tristan also blames the materialism and capitalism of an industrialized England. The more money accumulated by the upper classes, the poorer the poorer classes get. The more money these men get, the more they have to spend on the sex workers that they are creating by exploiting the poor classes that they come from. She describes seeing in a “finish” a beautiful Irish girl, who later that night she saw on the floor, her dress ruined, because people kept throwing drinks on her. She also describes seeing men create orgies in these finishes, in clear view of others, because they paid so much money that they should have that right. Tristan is describing a market of women’s bodies; where, rich men use them as things to consume and throw away, a growing symptom of the wastefulness of the industrial age. The actual humanity of these women do not matter, and is in fact ignored. When a sex worker is found struggling for breath after a john abuses her for allegedly giving him a disease, the man is not charged with any crimes towards the woman, but rather a crime for disturbing the peace of the neighborhood.
Hood’s poem, describing the body of a sex worker who committed suicide by jumping into the river, takes a stance on the “purity” of this woman. The speaker says to think “Not of the stains of her, / All that remains of her / Now is pure womanly.” And in the final stanza says “Owning her weakness, / Her evil behaviour, / And leaving, with meekness, /Her sins to her Saviour!” The implication of these words is that only through death could this woman receive any kind of forgiveness. She has done the noble thing by taking herself out of this world and placing her soul in the hands of God. Tristan says in her essay “To brave death is nothing; but what a death faces a prostitute! […] moral death all the time, and scorn for herself! I repeat: there is something sublime in it, or else it is madness!” The poem sees something sublime in her death, but sees her life as pitiful. It demands respect for her dead body that she would not have been given in life.

Developing An Understanding

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Flora Tristan believes that prostitution, though it can be physically deadly to women, killing them usually in three to four years (eight if they’re lucky), definitely kills their soul.

It is the oppression of women, forced to constrain to the social acceptance of what men want, that leads women into the life of prostitution. They are required to choose an oppressed life as a wife with an unbreakable marriage or be a social reject in which the only way to make money is to use the only property given in this world: their own bodies.

Tristan then discusses the economical distress many women are forced into purely because of their gender, with male heirs receiving most inheritance, while “girls have only small dowries unless they have no brothers”(2 Tristan). This is another reason she offers as to why women would be forced into the occupation. Poverty and hunger are also key players in Tristan’s understanding for why women would enter into prostitution.

After discussing her beliefs for possible cause of prostitutes, Flora continues on to describe her own experience at a tavern on Waterloo Road where many women converged with pimps and customers, her shock and disbelief at the “revolting” occurrences amongst the aristocrats that visit such places and the “diabolical debauchery” forced onto the women, such as their dresses becoming covered in random stains (4 Tristan).

Thomas Hood has a sympathetic attitude throughout his poem “The Bridge of Sighs” towards the prostitute that kills herself in the poem, throwing herself into the Thames River; a very common death amongst the prostitutes of London. Throughout the poem he speaks of the woman with tender words, “Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care”, repeated in lines 5-6 and 80-81 for emphasis. He treats the woman with the respect she was not given in her life, “loving, not loathing” (14). He wants to make us aware of her pain and suffering, to not dismiss her as she was in life, “Picture it—think of it, Dissolute Man! Lave in it, drink of it,”, Hood forces us to pay her that attention, painting for us the image of her dripping wet, with blindly staring eyes (76-78).

In the fifth stanza, we are able to surmise her life occupation, discussing her “rash and undutiful” acts that are “past all dishonour” (23-24). Instead, in her death, she is free of all of those ugly acts, leaving behind nothing but her young beauty, taken too soon. The last stanza also references “Her evil behaviour” that she leaves behind by entering the afterlife (104).

I think the poem represents the struggle of prostitution from the women’s perspective better than Flora Tristan tries to in her article because her opinion remains too strong throughout her account. Though she is trying to come to an understanding in a world she herself is not apart of, her opinion of the “horrible” situation remains, showing her true feelings though she is trying to bypass her prejudice opinions, comprehending how these women could possibly find themselves in this situation, willing to give so much of themselves for only money. Hood however treats the poor woman with a tender care, her life’s actions having no affect on his opinion. Before line 67 he discusses her standing in the March wind before the flowing river, trembling not from fear of death but merely the cold, “Mad from life’s history, Glad to death’s mystery,” (67-68). We get an insight into her mind, her desperation but at the same time her acceptance in what her life was and the happiness to be rid of it. There’s no undertone of disgust in Hood’s poem, as there is throughout Tristan piece, though she does attempt to understand the act of prostitution in a way hood bypasses, focusing entirely on the woman herself and forgoing the sinful acts in her life.

It is not the act of prostitution, however, that causes the woman to kill herself, at least not entirely. If I’m reading the poem correctly on line 52 “Love, by harsh evidence,” means she has become pregnant such as the harsh evidence pregnancy would provide, though it could also be some sort of disease I guess. You could say it was a man’s fault for her death, but I do not think the poem is intentionally blaming men, not in the way Tristan does throughout her critique.

Lazo’s Thoughts on Prostitution

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Tristan blames the existence of prostitution on society, specifically the inequality that existed between men and women during the Victorian era. She states, “…let this monstrosity be attributed to our social state and let women by absolved from it!” Tristen points out that had women been afforded the same opportunities as men, the need to engage in prostitution would not have been nearly as bad as it was during the Victoria era.

“Magdalen” by Amy Levy is a poem that takes the point of view of a woman who lives as a prostitute. Her life is cold and sad; she was forced into prostitution because of a man she thought loved her. By the end of the poem, the narrator dies of some unnamed disease. Tristan gives an account of the prostitutes she happened to encounter. Many of them were “half-dressed, [and] bare to the waist, they were shocking and disgusting…” (Tristan). The end of Levy’s poem really puts into perspective what Tristan meant when she wrote, “when a dog dies he is watched by his master, whereas the prostitute ends on a street corner without anyone’s throwing her a glance of pity.” Levy’s poem is full of lonliness, the narrator stops caring about her life in the end and is ready to move on. Tristan pointed out in her article that many women who go into prostitution usually do not make it past 4 years.

Personally, I blame the men of the Victorian period. They judged women who went into prostitution, but it was really the men who left the women with no other options. Also, prostitution would not have been a good alternative for these women if sex selling weren’t so popular. Obviously there were men who were willing to pay or there wouldn’t have been “80,000 to 100,000 girls” (Tristan) living by prostitution. Prostitution was by no means an easier life for these women, but it was a way for them to try to take back their lives. For many of them, it was the last thing standing between feeding themselves or starving to death.

Victorian Views of Prostitution

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Flora Tristan’s article not only sympathizes with prostitutes, but it outright and shamelessly condemns English society for forcing unmarried, entailed, and/or impoverished women to resort to a “job” that risks their health, safety, and sense of well-being. She sees the desperate act most clearly as a result from an unjust society, claiming, “…this revolting degradation is brought about by the disastrous effects of prejudices, poverty, and slavery” (2). Tristan also comments on the lack of options for women to support themselves, “Girls born in the poor class are pushed to prostitution by hunger. Women are excluded by work in the fields, and when they are not employed in factories, their only resource is domestic service or prostitution!” (2) Tristan also talks about the conditions in the whorehouses where women are played cruel tricks on when they’re drunk, such as being forced to drink a nasty mixture or glasses of all different kinds of beverages thrown on them when they are drunk. Tristan shows that the “fall” into the role of prostitute is not the worst part about being one, which leads me to think about Thomas Hood’s poem, “The Bridge of Sighs.”
Tristan wrote about the horrors of prostitution. Hood’s poem portrays a different perspective. While the poem is about the suicide of prostitutes, I feel that Hood, while sympathetic in some parts, does not quite grasp the whole reality that a prostitute is forced to live in and how she is ultimately, driven to her death. The first three lines of the third stanza show a sense of sympathy: “Touch her not scornfully;/Think of her mournfully/Gently and humanly;” Observing these lines, one might think that Hood holds a deep feeling of compassion towards the prostitute, and there is no doubt a sense of compassion is there, however, just as quick as Hood seems to be able to show this sympathy for these “fallen women”, he also condemns them, implying them as “One of Eve’s family” (1) and “Owning her weakness/Her evil behavior,/And leaving with meekness,/ Her sins to her Saviour!” My first question with these lines is, what weakness? It almost seems as if Hood is suggesting this woman wanted to be a prostitute for lustful reasons or something other than the sheer necessity of trying to survive as a lone woman in this world as is stated in Tristan’s article. The next part of this stanza, which states her “evil behavior,” once again condemns the woman and the woman alone. What about the men who used prostitutes? They were not condemned like this. Was their behavior not thought of as evil? As in Tristan’s article, they most certainly were.
Overall, Hood seems to try to sympathize with prostitutes, but more so for the sake of Christian forgiveness (still blaming the woman for her fall) rather than sheer empathy and compassion. Whereas, Tristan’s view completely understands and sympathizes with the prostitutes and condemns societal structures.

Victorian Prostitution

~ Christine Fahnestock ~ Leave a comment

Flora Tristan argues that many prostitutes were forced into the business because of hunger and lack of wealth; at the end of the day these women needed to do whatever they could to put food on the table and keep themselves from starving.  Tristian even goes to the London streets one evening to observe the prostitutes.  Most of Tristan’s argument implies that men perpetuate the role of the prostitute in this society, because women are treated lower than men, and thus roles like this exist for them.  Tristan also says that “three or four years is the life period of half of the London prostitutes” because they’re made to drink alcohol and live a life deprived of nourishment, proper medicine and medical care, and the normal cares that life would provide for them.  Towards the end of her argument, Tristan says that men are ideally the cause of prostitution, as they destroy family affections, and allow love to take no part in their lives.

Magdalen by Amy Levy supports the arguments that Flora Tristan makes in her article; Levy does not put blame on the prostitute herself, but rather on the man (and society as a whole) that have put her into the position she is in.  The speaker in the poem is speaking to a man, one that has gotten her ill, and reveals at the end of the poem “the doctor says that I shall die. / It may be so, yet what care I? / Endless reposing from the strife, / Death do I trust no more than life” (Levy).  It is here the audience sees the speaker trusts death no more than life; life being one that has let her down and led her to prostitution, a life that has allowed her to become ill with no medical treatment or care to recover.  The viewpoint of the poem as well as the events that unfold and where the blame is placed all point towards Amy Levy agreeing with Flora Tristan—that society is to blame for the position these women are in.

 

Victorian Prostitution

~ Kyle Hoehne ~ Leave a comment

An interesting aspect of Flora Tristan’s discussion about Victoria prostitution was her own involvement in the story that she wrote. Instead of simply speaking with prostitutes, she goes a step further and explores late-night, underground London, entrenching herself within an environment that becomes openly hostile towards her. I found it depressing that she had to be accompanied by two men “armed with canes” in order to feel remotely safe, and even then the trio was still berated. It must have taken an impressive amount of courage to willingly submit herself to the things that she saw in the “finishes”, and her account is all the more powerful because of it. Instead of hearing stories told from others, we get a first-hand tale of wild masochism and debauchery fueled by an economic rift between classes. The oppressive male gaze is dominant throughout the entire article, and I think that this relates towards Thomas Hood’s “The Bridge of Sighs”, in which his gaze is so prominently focused on.

Hood’s poem however has a different overall tone to it. The men in Tristan’s critique all exert their power over women, while Hood uses his gaze as a way of imagining what the object, a young dead woman, of his poem’s life was like before her death. While he focuses specifically on her body, he also imagines her family life in a way that seeks to humanize rather than sexualize her. Like Tristan, he laments the fate of the prostitute and considers the situation that has caused her to kill herself. Instead of blaming prostitutes, Tristan and Hood blame the society that has effectively forced these women into their profession without choice. Both the article and the poem critique the societal double standard as they relate to men and women (specifically lower-class women) and try to humanize those whose actions have been impressed on them by a ruling, male majority.

Prostitution and Blame in Victorian London

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Flora Tristan views prostitution in England during the Victorian Period as something like a disease, a “diabolical debauchery” that women were forced into by economic necessity, hunger, and inequality between the genders.

Tristan uses forceful language to express her disgust at the way prostitutes conduct their daily business and are forced to live their lives, as well as the lack of “commiseration for victims of vice” through the church or society. She also blames England’s greed (primarily the growing market economy/ public sphere) and corruption alongside rigid gender expectations. With growing poverty came a need for women to provide for themselves in any way they could. The “love of money” breaking down the young man’s wants for domestic affection or compassion further aggravated treating the women like animals. Overall, Tristan does not blame the women for their profession, saying that they are “driven to” it, placing her ire toward English society.

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Victims of Society

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Tristan sees prostitutes as victims of the patriarchal society of Victorian London. She says, “…if chastity had not been imposed on the woman for the sake of virtue without the man’s being subjected to the same thing, she would not be pushed from society from yielding to the sentiments of her heart…” (Tristan, 2). Tristan describes how the unfair balance of virtue and sexuality affects women: they would be seduced by men, usually wealthy men, and end up giving up their virginity. The men would then turn on them, having played their game, and move onto the next girl. With women’s sexuality being so closely tied to their identity, they would be disgraced and turned out by the strongly opinionated society. As a result, they have no choice but to turn to prostitution as a source of income. The poem Magdalen supports this idea. It tells the story of a girl who is seduced by a man, she falls in love, and then she is left cold. Without anywhere else to turn, she becomes a prostitute and finds out that she is going to die from some disease. This supports Tristan’s statements. The poem blames society as a whole rather than men or women. The speaker says, “…And there is nothing false nor true; // But in a hideous masquerade // All things dance on, the ages through. // And good is evil, evil good; // Nothing is known or understood // Save only pain” (Levy, 800). The lines speak about the “masquerade” which is the false faces that people wear. They follow the flow of society because that is the system that has been set in place by those in power. Even if it is not “known or understood” it is the lifestyle that the population has become accustomed to. The poem definitely takes a sympathetic tone for the prostitutes who are victims of their society. It is also not quick to cast judgment on those who wrong them either. It offers a more objective look on the affairs that go on.

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and the Victorian Position of Governess

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The position of governess in Victorian society is an awkward one. The author of “Hints on the Modern Governess System” views the governess system as problematic for both governesses and the families they serve. The author writes:

Whether it be right or wrong, as a general rule, for mothers to delegate their most sacred trust to hired strangers, we are not here to discuss. The fact exists. Is the system carried out fairly for all parties? Is there any question astir as to its abuse? Philanthropic eyes are scanning many social evils. (570)

The author is particularly concerned with the plight of the governess. They are concerned that governesses are not paid enough, that they are not viewed as an equal to the mother of the children they govern, that they must deal with rambunctious and insolent children, and that they are going insane and living in asylums–a fact that is misleading, since, as the editor notes, many governesses without families and between positions would stay in asylums because it was a cheap and somewhat respectable place to stay (“Hints on the Modern Governess System” 571).

However good the author’s intentions may be, they come off as slightly patronizing when this article is juxtaposed with the text of Jane Eyre.  While the author believes that being a governess is mentally exhausting for a governess must deal with child intellect all day:

Hour after hour she has bent down her mind, and raised the children’s to given points, which, however interesting, are exhausting. A young thing, perhaps, still herself, ready to spring up again at one kindly touch. Do not even fond mothers, who teach their own children, feel that after the labors of the day they need some interchange of mind? (573)

this opinion is never expressed in Jane Eyre by Jane or any other character. On the contrary, Jane is very fond of teaching and caring for Adele. After Mr. Rochester speaks of Adele’s unfortunate and disgraceful family situation, Jane defends the orphan, “I have a regard for her, and now that I know she is, in a sense, parentless — forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir, — I shall cling closer to her than before” (Brontë 218).  Jane’s affection for Adele isn’t based solely on the orphan connection. Jane is fond of Adele’s character: “Still she [Adele] had her merits; and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost” (218).

The author of “Hints on the Modern Governess System” takes issue with the lower class distinction that a governess holds. The author believes that there is no “greater anomaly than that which makes a woman responsible for children, and their exemplar in all things, whose mother treats her as if she were unfit to associate herself and her guests” (571). Brontë portrays this negative and classist view of governesses in Victorian society in the scenes where Mr. Rochester’s guests mock Jane right in front of her face. In one instance, Blanche Ingram says:

You should hear mama on the chapter of governesses: Mary and I have had, I should think, a dozen at least in our day; half of them detestable and the rest ridiculous, and all incubi – were they not mama? (254)

However, Brontë is making the case for governesses as being equals to their employers, as Mr. Rochester insists that Jane continue to be present when his guests are over (259). In this regard, the author of “Hints on the Modern Governess System” and the author of Jane Eyre are in agreement.

Works Cited

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard Nemesvari. Toronto: Broadview Press. 1999. Print

“Hints on the Modern Governess System.” Fraser’s Magazine. 1844. Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard Nemesvari. Toronto: Broadview Press. 1999. 567-577. Print.

Women and Liberty

~ Autumn H ~ 6 Comments

“Hints on the Modern Governess System” describes the role as a governess as an opportunity for lower class woman, but an opportunity for loneliness. The beginning suggests that the role of a governess would suit women because women were born for a quest for knowledge. The author refers to Genesis and the fall as women’s first documented quest for knowledge. It from this quest that men have punished women for suppressing women’s natural thirst, but this issue is slowly turning when more women remain single rather than get married (568). The increase in single women ignited the governess system because “Women must have bread as well as men…They found, if they would not sink in the scale, they must work with their heads, and not with their hands” (569). The role of the governess simultaneously for a task that allowed single, poor women to leave the home, while keeping wealthier women in the home to learn and eventually become wives. The idea of middle class women being able to learn from home was admired by the author. The author seemed to appreciate the governess role for that regard, but deemed the governess as a lonely job.

Charlotte Bronte seems to be playing with this scenario at extremely exaggerated levels to stress the importance for women to leave the home in Jane Eyre. Jane is happy to be able to. She becomes the governess to Adele in the Thornfield estate. Jane feels like she has a purpose and thus does not feel lonely nor misses ‘a home’ which she reveals to Mr. Rochester when he catches her walking the grounds at night and he says to her: “I should think you ought to be at home yourself” (183). Jane likes being away from home which is contrasted to the screams she hears from the attic. As the novel goes on, and the Mrs. Rochester is still missing, the screams suggest the wife’s desperation to escape the home. This idea opposes the argument in Fraser’s Magazine. Women like to be away from home and if they are not able to, they will feel trapped and are held as prisoner. Society wants women to remain in the home, but women do not feel the same.

 

Works Cited

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard Nemesvari. Toronto: Broadview, 1999. Print.

“Hints on the Modern Governess System.” Fraser’s Magazine November 1844: 567-577. Print