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.
Victorian London
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.
Victims of Society
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.
‘Man-Woman’
Browsing through Lee Jackson’s “The Victorian Dictionary,” I found an article under Women’s Sexuality about a “Man-Woman”. The article, titled “Hatton Garden. Extraordinary Case – A Man-Woman,” was written and published in 1835 as an investigative report. The article, essentially, tries to investigate a transgendered woman who goes by the name, Bill Chapman. Bill Chapman dresses in male clothes, is a ballad singer, and lives with Isabella Watson whom are “considered to be man and wife.” Bill is arrested for tricking the inspector into believing Bill is a man (at least it is suggested). Just from the article title alone, the author seems amazed by such a person. It seems there wasn’t a word for “transgender” so the very concept seemed very confusing, the author acts as if he has come across an important discovery for which he calls a “creature” in the first sentence. The author does not seem to condemn Bill Chapman, but just seems very confused on how to react or call him which reflects the time’s slim understanding of transgender people.
The characters in the article dehumanizes Bill because they are unsure what to call him since they cannot accept his identified gender. As I mentioned before, the author calls Bill a “creature.” The inspector, Oakley, calls Bill a thing: “…although the thing before them, that called itself Bill Chapman, was attired in man’s apparel, he had ascertained that it was a woman.” Because there is no word for transgender, the author and characters of the article don’t even identify Bill as human with their mention of “it,” “creature,” and “thing.” They dehumanize Bill in their lack of accurate diction. Oakley then attaches the pronoun, she, to address Bill before revealing he’s known Bill for ten years. Oakley did not realize Bill was a woman until recently which (it is suggested) is what leads to his arrest.
Transgender people were not only neglected under any form of gender identification, they were also outside the law. Bill is arrested for “being a common cheat and impostor, and creating a disturbance.” When comparing this statement to Oakley’s long-belief that Bill is a man, it seems Bill is arrested because Oakley felt tricked. Yet, Bill did not break any law as Mr. Bennet states: “I know of no law to punish her for wearing male attire.” However, this does not mean society accepted transgender people. As Oakley points out, he would like to punish Bill, but he has no valid reason to do so. Bill and transgender people are so outside of society there is no law against their choice in attire.
To even make the reporter’s account of the story more unreliable, the author points out that the reporter got the height of Bill and Isabella wrong. This odd note at the bottom emphasizes how confused society was of transgender people.
Yet, we still have this confusion of transgender people today because the English language lacks gender-neutral pronouns. I found this piece very intriguing because of that correlation. Even take the last line of the article, “…although this strange being had lodged for a number of years at the house alluded to, it was never known it was a woman, though at the same time it was never supposed that the creature was a man.” I often find people calling a transgendered person a “he/she” because a gender-neutral pronoun is uncommon. The lack of inclusion of queer people in society is still very relevant today.
Work Cited
“Sinks of London Laid Open.” Victorian London Dictionary. Web. 13 February 2016.
http://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm
At the Ladies Club
After learning about the Gentleman’s Club in the “Victorian Period” game, I decided to look into the “Ladies Club” section of the Victorian Dictionary. There was only one article in the section, and it was by the satirical conservative newspaper Punch. However, through the mockery that they give to the idea, they expose exactly what they fear women obtaining. The Ladies Club did not even actually exist, but the piece speculates on what might occur if it did, and how it’s possible formation incites “fearful questions.” Their first question is if there will be a club committee, and if there is how many women will be allowed to speak at once. This betrays a fear of women organizing and having a voice completely outside the control of men. They then question whether there will be a smoking room, and if “cigars will suffer to be lighted” or, for fear of illness, only “the middlest cigarettes.” Not only does this show disgust at the idea of women adopting a symbol of masculinity for their own pleasure, but it doubts whether they will be able to do that, or if their delicate constitutions would prevent it. They then question what women will discuss. Whether it will be topics they feel appropriate, such as “the nursery” and “bonnets,” or if they will talk of more scandalous matters such as love, marriage, and even divorce. In this question they restrict the interests of women to the domestic life. They do not even consider that women may talk about politics, literature, science, or anything outside of marriage and children. They go on, continuing to trivialize women, and their interests, even suggesting that ballots will be represented by cotton balls instead of actual ballots. Perhaps paper is just too heavy. They predict a woman in the club scorning her husband and leaving him to take care of the children for a night, while she takes time for herself. This practice, which men a known to do, is seen as selfish in a woman because her first concern should be the family and not herself. The last point they make on behavior in the club gives a good insight into the male gaze of the period: “what a sensation would be caused on the street pavement, if the Club belles were to congregate about the Club beau-windows, and stare through their eye-glasses every handsome man who passed.” They are revealing an anxiety about being objectified the same way that they objectify women. The entire article shows a fear, not of equality, but of a world where women have power over men in the same way that men have power over women.
Works Cited
“The Ladies Club” Punch. Victorian London Dictionary. Web. 12 February 2016. http://www.victorianlondon.org/women/ladiesclub.htm