Havelock Ellis’ Sexual Inversion was written long after, and obviously makes reference to, The Picture of Dorian Gray, but the imagery that Wilde uses is reflected in Ellis’ description of the sexually inverted boy. There are moments when the resonance in ideas and language is practically uncanny. The third paragraph in Chapter IX of Dorian Gray describes Dorian’s rising infamy in London as well as how that infamy is undermined by his beauty. In the excerpt from Ellis, he is interviewing H.C., a young male sex worker who goes by the name Dorian Gray. Ellis’ description of H.C. is eerily similar to how we read Dorian described early in the novel. The more encompassing connection however, is that for both of them, their outward beauty is a tool and a mask that allows them to commit many sins with seemingly little reproach. Despite his profession in the sex work industry, which even to this day is considered “sinful” and morally corrupt, H.C. is described by Ellis as having the “beauty of an angel” and his voice the “purity of a clarinet.” These kinds of descriptions are commonly reserved for people — particularly women, which connects this to some of the other readings about Urnings having a feminine spirit — who are considered morally and spiritually pure. Similarly, on page 91, Dorian is described as having “the look of one who kept himself unspotted from the world.” His beauty is so pure in fact, that “his mere presence seemed to recall to them the innocence they had tarnished.” These two young men are able to operate, somewhat, successfully as “sinners” because their outward “purity” makes their critics doubt themselves rather than doubt the beauty of the boys.
sex work
Prostitution in Victorian London
Flora Tristan’s account of prostitution in London, published in 1840, is remarkably sympathetic, filled with concern and even compassion for the sex workers of London. Tristan calls sex work “the most hideous of the afflictions produced by the unequal division of the world’s goods” and is very concerned by the “physical tortures” a sex worker faces daily in her occupation. Tristan takes a close look at the causes of women turning to sex work and criticizes societal inequities between men and women:
…let this monstrosity be attributed to our social state and let woman be absolved from it! As long as she is subject to the yoke of man or of prejudice, as long as she receives no profession education, as long as she is deprived of civil rights, there cannot exist a moral law for her! As long as she cannot obtain property only by the influence she has over men’s passions, as long as she has gained through her work or been given by her father, as long as she can have property and liberty only by leading a single life, there can be no moral law for her! And it can be positively stated that until the emancipation of woman has been achieved, prostitution will continue to increase.
Tristan blames men for the societal position of sex workers as well as their poor conditions and short lives. She writes about how disgusting the patrons are for torturing women by getting them really drunk and then giving them a concoction to drink that “almost always gives her horrible convulsions, and the jerkings and contortions of the unfortunate thing provoke laughter and infinitely amuse the honorable society.” Tristan targets the so-called classy English elite and criticizes them for their deplorable behavior and treatment of the women. Tristan brings up the fact that sex workers do not live very long for they are always obligated to drink alcohol with their patrons and they usually come down with pneumonia or contract sexually transmitted infections.
In Amy Levy’s poem “Magdalen,” Levy also addressed the issue of illness, disease, and sex work, however it is from the point of view of the sex worker herself. While Tristan’s piece is very sympathetic and calls for the emancipation of women to end the suffering of sex workers, Levy’s poem is even more sympathetic because the reader is listening directly to the voice of a sex worker. The woman is in a hospital designed for sex workers who have sexually transmitted infections to stay, locked away from the outside world in order to prevent the spread of disease, while the men, particularly the sailors, themselves were spreading disease. The speaker of the poem is shocked that she has contracted an illness from a man she slept with, the person to whom she is talking to throughout the poem. The hospital in which she is kept is miserable, where she hears other women cry at night:
At night, or when the daylight nears,
I hear the other women weep;
My own heart’s anguish lies too deep
For the soft rain and pain of tears.
The speaker of the poem also declares that she does not care to die because life has been so painful and death will finally be a time to rest. Like Tristan’s piece, Levy is bringing to light the physical and emotional hardships that sex workers deal with, however Levy’s “Magdalen” has her own autonomy. At the end she concludes that although this man has given her the disease that will end her life, in the end he does not define what her life was: “That all is done, that I am free; /That you, through all eternity, / Have neither part nor lot in me.”
Female Body as Commodity
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.