SEX, MONEY, A

ND THE

PURSUIT OF LIB

ERTY

T HE Q

UE E R T E M

P OR A

L I T Y OF T H

E V I C T OR I A

N P R O

S T I T UT E

RETHINKING JENNY

So pure,--so fall'n! How dare to think Of the first common kindred link? Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn It seems that all things take their turn;

And who shall say but this fair tree May need, in changes that may be, Your children's children's charity? Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!

Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd Till in the end, the Day of Days, At Judgment, one of his own race, As frail and lost as you, shall rise,-- His daughter, with his mother's eyes?

- Excerpt from D. G. Rosetti ‘s “Jenny”

PRIMARY ARGUMENT

Because a Victorian woman could choose prostitution in an effort to avoid marriage, child-bearing, caretaking, and domesticity, making this life choice for that purpose is pursuing a queer temporality.

This life choice displays a level of agency we commonly remove from prostitutes in order to render them victims and remove all responsibility from their hands. In the Victorian period it is important to consider prostitution as a choice alongside the wretched working conditions found in mills and domestic service.

STRUCTURE

• Queer Time and the Prostitute’s Place

• The Potential for Gaiety and Agency in the Brothel

• The Othering Victorians

• Marriage and Celibacy Battle the Great Evil

• Queering Heterosexual Temporality

• Other Queer Victorians

• Limitations and Conclusions

QUEER TIME AND THE PROSTITUTE’S PLACE

Queer Temporality

• Developed by Judith Halberstam

• Implies that queer communities live by a different sense of time which focuses on present pleasures and does not emphasize reproduction or socially constructed life stages

• Key elements of a heterosexual temporality include courting, marriage, and child-rearing.

Prostitution (as it is focused in this paper)

• Working class

• Women

• Selected prostitution as an alternative to other occupations

• Avoided heterosexual temporality

THE POTENTIAL FOR GAIETY AND AGENCY IN THE BROTHEL

THE POTENTIAL FOR GAIETY AND AGENCY IN THE BROTHEL

THE POTENTIAL FOR GAIETY AND AGENCY IN THE BROTHEL

THE POTENTIAL FOR GAIETY AND AGENCY IN THE BROTHEL

MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY BATTLE THE GREAT EVIL

• The Daily Telegraph featured a column called “Marriage or Celibacy?”

• Published next to this recurring section was “The Great Social Evil”, a conspicuous third option.

• “Frugal Marriages” featured letters discussing how much money a woman required to marry and live comfortably

“Well, I am nineteen, and can only play the piano, and make a pudding, illuminate cards, and dust a room, waltz and mend my stockings, and should not hesitate a minute to marry a man I loved (he would be a man, though; not a “puppy”) with £150 a year; and there are many others the same as I am,

An Ordinary English Girl.” (Robson 140)

MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY BATTLE THE GREAT EVIL

OTHER QUEER VICTORIANS

Chosen “celibacy”• Pursuing a career (middle and upper classes)• Taking care of ill family members• Becoming an actress /performer in a pub (working

class)

OTHER QUEER VICTORIANS

The Clitheroe Case• Emily and Edmund Jackson were married in 1887• Never cohabited for any length of time• Refused to consummate the marriage• Courts upheld her refusal• Demonstrates agency within marriage• Subverts the expectations of married life within the

confines of marriage• The queerest of them all?

WORKS CITED

Anderson, Michael. British Population History: From the Black Death to the Present Day.

New York, NY: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print.

August, Andrew. The British Working Class, 1832-1940. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman,

2007. Print.

Delgado, Anne. “Scandals in Sodom: The Victorian City’s Queer Streets”.

Flanders, Judith. Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England.

New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. Print.

Frost, Ginger. “A Shock to Marriage?: the Clitheroe Case and the Victorians”. Disorder in the

Court: Trials and Sexual Conflict at the Turn of the Century. Ed. George Robb and Nancy Erber.

Linnane, Fergus. Madams: Bawds and Brothel-keepers of London. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2005.

Print.

WORKS CITED CONT.Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New

York: New York UP, 2005. Print.

Marcus, Sharon. Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England.

Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007. Print.

Norton, Rictor. Mother Clap's Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England, 1700-1830.

London: GMP, 1992. Print.

Robson, John M. Marriage or Celibacy?: The Daily Telegraph on a Victorian Dilemma.

Toronto: University of Toronto, 1995. Print.

Rosetti, D. G. “Jenny”. Victorian Poetry: An Annotated Anthology. Ed. Francis O’Gorman.

Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Print.

Richter, Alan. The Language of Sexuality. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1987. Print.

Walkowitz, Judith R. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980. Print.

CONTACT

Courtney King

Washington State University

Avery 378

Email: courtney.king@wsu.edu

Academic blog: http://courtneyelizabethking.wordpress.com