Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Rosenthal (Broadview, 2008)

ENGL 8900: Memory and Writing
Nightwalkers discussion

Feb 13 & 21: Online Classes

Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century, ed. Laura Rosenthal (Petersborough, Ont; New York: Broadview Press, 2008)

Laura Rosenthal’s introduction highlights both the centrality to the period of so-called prostitute narratives and their problematic nature.  As she concludes, the “possibility of truly reconstructing such a perspective may lie beyond our capacity” (xi). 

None of the prostitutes’ stories supplied here are written by the historical figures themselves although historical women inspired their stories.  As Rosenthal also points out, the kind of woman with whom James Boswell had sex in the street for sixpence remained silent, consigned to the shadows of history. 

The issues of morality, social mobility, and sexual freedom that dominate these memoirs, moreover, are the ones that are also at the heart of the novels and plays many of the techniques of which the memoirs assume as well.  Rosenthal draws attention to the heroines of the epistolary novel (Samuel Richardson’s, Charlotte Lenox’s, and Frances Burney’s) as well as the character of Millwood in Lillo’s The London Merchant (1731).  All of these women characters reveal different social anxieties and curiosities, the popularity of the texts they inhabit indicating just how present the historical figures were in the consciousness of the period. 

We can see too the simultaneously marginal and central social roles of women who were fictional yet carried an historical authenticity in female characters of Restoration comedies like Behn’s The Rover, Wycherley’s The Country Wife, and Congreve’s The Way of the World.  We see them too in the heroines of Defoe: Moll Flanders and Roxana. 

As you read your Nightwalker text think careful about genre, social contexts, and the way the subject’s perspective is presented.

Each of you is assigned to ONE of the following chapter sections.  Read Rosenthal’s “Introduction” to Nightwalkers and her introductions to each of the chapters.  Then choose ONE or TWO of the prompts under your assigned chapter and respond in 500 words.  Either post it on the blog or send it to me for posting if you are having difficulty.  If you want to include questions to inspire further discussion, feel free to do that.  If you want to deviate from the prompt or adapt it, that is completely fine; I would like for your response to be coherent as a whole and for it to consider the notions at the heart of the class—the construction of self and identity individually and socially.  Don’t summarize the texts.

CHAPTER ONE

Captain Charles Walker, Authentick Memoirs of the Life, Intrigues, and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury

1)   Having read Rosenthal’s introductions to the volume and to this memoir and considered the importance of Sally Salisbury life as a document of the early eighteenth century, write your own critical introduction to Captain Walker’s Authentick Memoirs.

2)   If Sally Salibsury were telling her own story, how do you think it would differ from the one presented here?

3)   What impact do the literary techniques that frame Captain Walker’s Authentick Memoirs have on those memoirs? To help you think about this, you might take a look at a couple of seminal eighteenth-century novels: Frances Burney’s Evelina, Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Behn’s Oroonoko.  Think about the title, the prefatory materials, the epistolary format, the classical references, the language used to describe the subject and her life.

CHAPTER TWO

Anon., The Juvenile Adventures of Miss Kitty F[isher] (1759)

1)   We know nothing about the author of this mid-century text, which is presented both as memoirs and in the literary mode of the young woman who falls.  What, as a whole, do you feel the purpose of this writer is?  Do you have a sense of an historical woman behind here or is does the text read like the author is dabbling in literary genres?  Is the purpose primarily didactic or for entertainment?

2)   Look at John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749), John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester’s Restoration poems, and some of the other texts referenced in the notes here as well as “prostitute” or “ladies of pleasure” texts that you find in the database Eighteenth-Century Collection Online (ECCO in our A-Z library databases).  To what extent, after skimming some of these, do you feel that this author is working in this genre: Are the Juvenile Adventures no more than a pastiche of motifs?  Are there any major differences or similarities that stand out?  Is this a “good” Nightwalker Memoir?

CHAPTERS THREE AND FOUR

Anon, The Histories of some of the Penitents in the Magdalen House as Supposed to be Related by Themselves & An Account of the Death of F. S. Who Died April 1763, Aged Twenty-Six Years.  In a LETTER to a FRIEND.

1)   Michel Foucault viewed sex as an instrument of social control.  He claimed of the eighteenth century that by then “sex became a ‘police’ matter—in the full and strict sense given the term at the time: not the repression of disorder, but an ordered maximization of collective and individual forces….” Foucault elaborates that one “of the great innovations of power in the eighteenth century was the emergence of ‘population’ as an economic problem: population as wealth, population as manpower or labor capacity, population balanced between its own growth and the resources it commanded …. At the heart of this economic and political problem of population was sex: it was necessary to analyze the birth rate, the age of marriage, the legitimate and illegitimate births, the precocity and frequency of sexual relations, the ways of making them fertile and sterile, the effects of unmarried life or of the prohibitions, the impact of contraceptive practices—or those notorious ‘deadly secrets’ which demographers on the even of the Revolution knew were already familiar to the inhabitants of the country” (“The Repressive Hypothesis”)

Using Foucault or other theorists or historians who consider the social constructions and impact of sexuality, discuss the narratives presented here as they reflect anxieties about society.  These women were at first consigned to and then operated on the periphery of societies, often seen as a threat.  How do the narratives here apprehend them and the asylums that took them in?

2)   Consider the progression of the narrators’ lives as the authors present them here?  What techniques are used, what emotions evoked, what purpose behind the structure of the fragments we have here?  Don’t merely retell the stories as they presented but analyze how the progress of the subject is presented from where she starts to where she ends up.

CHAPTER FIVE
(Maria)

Anon., An Authentick Narrative of the Most Remarkable Adventures, and Curious Intrigues, Exhibited in the Life of Miss Fanny Davies, the Celebrated Modern Amazon

1)   Consider Fanny’s movement through society: she takes on various roles and wears disguises.  To what extent does changing social identity facilitate her mobility?  If you know The Roaring Girl you may want to compare and contrast how the playwright there depicts Moll Cutpurse and the freedoms and restrictions she has as she assumes or sheds clothing and identity. 

2)   Imagine you are Fanny reading this account of your life.  Respond to it in a letter to the publisher, approving or rebutting content and approach.

DISCUSSION:

Lauren:

I read Ch 1, Authentick Memoirs of the Life, Intrigues, and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury. With True Characters of her most Considerable Gallants.

I responded to Prompt 2: If Sally Salibsury were telling her own story, how do you think it would differ from the one presented here?

           As classified by Rosenthal, this “memoir” falls under the category of the “Libertine Narrative” (xvi) and could very much be defined as a “stor[y] of female empowerment, although not necessarily in celebratory ways” (xviii). One of the reasons this memoir frustrated me was because of the blatantly biased and misogynistic perspective offered by the author Captain Charles Walker. While I believe this bias was meant more comically than as moral revulsion, it left a lot to be desired of the full perspective of the woman he was depicting. As a sign of the times, Sally was portrayed through a man’s lens that lacked the understanding that a woman is capable of compartmentalizing sex as a business and not as a romance. He used letters of any random person that was willing to respond to his newspaper advertisement to gain the “strictest Regard to Truth and Impartiality in the following MEMOIRS” of the infamous Sally Salisbury (10). This maintained itself as a laughable idea throughout the text as he made a point to not only include the (verified or unverified) anecdotes he collected bereft of any rebuttal from Sally, but also the letters from the men explaining their purpose in sending the stories, which almost always made some reference to Sally as a “mischievous animal” (9), “wanton, gamesome Devil” (44), “vile Sorceress!” (54), or several other colorful phrases shaping the portrayal of this prominent prostitute. If Sally were the narrator, I’m not sure that she would deny these titles, as they do offer her the kind of empowerment and control that she purposefully emitted, but the chance that this was purely her public self and varied greatly from her private self, remains speculative but highly likely.

A recurring complaint from the published letters was that Sally had a “Propensity to Ingratitude” (35) and this was a theme in which I would have loved to hear Sally’s point of view. I kept repeatedly asking myself what could Sally possibly feel gratitude for? The sense I gathered about her was that she was a fierce business woman who was not only very good at her job, but also very adept at sensing promising business situations. The idea that time with her was a business endeavor and in no way a romantic connection seemed lost on everyone but her. I believe her prowess would be an intriguing insight into not only how and why she ended up with certain men, but also the comedy she most likely experienced as she watched them fall in love with her and lose all their money. As Walker’s perspective remains purely outside of Sally’s, she seems to lack the ability to feel anything other than conniving lust and anger. There is one anecdote that contradicts this though, and that begs for deeper insight; when she falls in love with one of her suitors but ultimately, chooses money over his wellbeing. Presented again as lacking gratuity, the story concludes that she is a woman “in whose Nature it never was, nor ever can be, to be true to any one Man upon the Face of the Earth” (39). From Sally’s perspective, the reader could learn that this choice stemmed from a much deeper sense of survival than the inability to feel love as the memoir suggests; for in the book she is always the angry and violent perpetrator and never the victim of any substantial spectacle. As a prostitute, the chances she wasn’t victimized several times throughout her career are extremely rare and I wonder if in her actual memoir she would have followed the idealized, heartless, and impervious goddess figure that Walker painted, or if we would have seen someone with the emotions and insecurities of an actual human being. 

Works Cited:

Walker, Charles. “Authentick Memoirs of the Life, Intrigues, and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury. With True Characters of her most Considerable Gallants.” Nightwalkers, edited by Laura Rosenthal, Broadview, 2008, 1-68.

Diane:

Chapter Three: Penitents in Magdalen-House 

Laura J. Rosenthal refers to Magdalen House (aka Magdalen Hospitals, Asylums, or Laundries) as a “controversial” charity—for me, an amazing understatement (Nightwalkers 152). This charity, founded in London (1758), later appeared in Ireland (1767), the United States (1800), Sweden (1852), and Canada (1858). The last Magdalen establishment closed in 1996 and was later cited by the United Nations for torture. One hundred and fifty years before this censure, Charles Dickens was recruited by heiress Angela Burdett-Coutts to open a facility more sympathetic to the treatment of fallen women than facilities like Magdalen House, which she and Dickens considered harsh and punishing. Dickens opened Urania Cottage as an alternative but later lost Burdett-Coutts’s financial support when he very publicly separated from his wife. 

According to H.F.B. Compston’s late nineteenth-century history of Magdalen House, on the wall of each ward was written: “Tell your story to no one.” While “Emily” in Nightwalkers may have been strongly encouraged not to tell her story, her “story” was appropriated by an anonymous author to encourage “support for and contributions to” the charity (Nightwalkers 152). Perhaps the subtlest (and most revealing) clue to Emily’s real story is in her final “statement”: 

Nor was I sensible of my wickedness when I applied to be received into this place: I sought it as a refuge from distress and misery; my heart grieved, but did not repent till I came hither, where I was shown my sins in their black colours; and, [was] awakened to repentance by a sense of guilt (Nightwalkers 190). 

In the late 1800s, philosopher Jeremy Bentham advocated the Panopticon as the most effective, rational, and enlightened design for institutions intended to address societal problems: prisons, schools, workhouses, hospitals, and asylums. Although a crusader for individual rights 

and freedoms, Bentham viewed the Panopticon as a model for reducing intuitional costs and training inmates. His proposed Panopticon would consist of a tower where a single custodian could view all inmates, but the inmates could never be certain when they were being viewed. In theory, this leads to inmates policing themselves. 

In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault notes that the need to create docile bodies that can be “subjected, used, transformed, and improved” is as old as civilization (136). It was only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, that exercising “subtle coercion . . . constant coercion” to subject individual bodies became “general formulas for domination” (137). Strict discipline was needed and this “presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation” (170). A hierarchical system of observation and supervision where the supervised became also supervisors was most efficient. This required a system of normalized judgments. Therefore, Nightwalkers’s Emily was made to understand her wickedness and sins after coming to Magdalen House and only thereafter felt guilt. As she internalized the message sanctioned by Magdalen House, her story could be told, and she could be recognized as a positive example for other inmates. Yet Foucault cautions that the aim of any panoptic schema is not for the “immediate salvation of a threatened society”—or any of its individual members—but is to strengthen social forces (209). “Hierarchical, continuous and functional surveillance” brings with it “mechanisms of power” that become an integrated, self-sustaining system functioning “largely in silence” (176-77). 

Check these out: http://www.regencyhistory.net/2017/07/the-magdalen-house-in-regency-london.html www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATaFyIbd5hY http://philomenamovie.com/ 

Works Cited: 

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1995. 

Rosenthal, Laura J., editor. Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century. Broadview Press, 2008.

Melanie:

I read Chapter 2, The Juvenile Adventures of Miss Kitty Fisher, and answered question #2: “Look at John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749), John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester’s Restoration poems, and some of the other texts referenced in the notes here as well as “prostitute” or “ladies of pleasure” texts that you find in the database Eighteenth-Century Collection Online (ECCO in our A-Z library databases).  To what extent, after skimming some of these, do you feel that this author is working in this genre: Are the Juvenile Adventures no more than a pastiche of motifs?  Are there any major differences or similarities that stand out? Is this a “good” Nightwalker Memoir?”

Throughout the reading, I couldn’t help but feel that Juvenile Adventures seemed a bit too formulaic, a bit too narratively “too good to be true” to be a truly genuine account.  The narrative covers the early years of Kitty Fisher, with the story beginning before she was even born.  From there, the reader learns of her upbringing, education, and first encounters with men as they gradually chip away at her chastity until she eventually comes to command her own sexuality.  The whole story seems, if nothing else, to explain why a woman who appears to be a noble, high-class individual would become a prostitute.  

Juvenile Adventures is written in the third person, with the story being told by a narrator who claims to be translating the tale from Spanish.  Rosenthal points out this is possibly because the original author wanted to avoid charges of libel, while keeping the ruse thin enough that a reader of the time would know which prominent figures were being called out (Nightwalkers, 69).   Every other text I pulled from the ECCO is written in first person, from the woman’s perspective.  Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure and Genuine Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Maria Brown, both by John Cleland, put the heroine at the center of the action.  In skimming through both of those tales, it seems that the focus is more on the sordid acts of the protagonist - the planning, preparation, and manipulation that goes into their artful seduction of men.  Juvenile Adventures consistently refers to the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of many people but almost never Kitty herself.  Notably, the first twenty pages of the text deal with the thoughts and feels of her father and spend little time on Kitty herself, even once she has come of age.  It is not lost on me that each of the narratives mentioned so far have been written by men, and seem to be more of a reflection of how men at the time would assume woman were thinking, rather than an actual representation of a woman and her life.  Juvenil Adventures still stands out as different, however, in that it barely makes an attempt at presenting the woman’s perspective.

There were times during the reading when I wondered if this was written to satisfy some curiosity about the life circumstances that lead to a woman becoming a courtesan.  Kitty Fisher dealt with some “high rollers”, gentlemen who would have preferred to purchase the services of an upper class girl.  Kitty’s life seems to have been crafted, from her father spending his life savings to dress her as though she was an aristocrat (72) and providing a noblewoman’s education covering multiple languages, art, dance, music, and culture (84) to her apparent predisposition to exhibitionism (75).  In truth, she reminded me of the exact kind of woman that Baldwin spent all his time looking for in his own narrative.  While it is plausible that this woman, who at least certainly existed, experienced these events similarly to the way they are presented in this narrative, it is far more likely that the anonymous author used a few tidbits of juicy gossip to craft a fictional version of Miss Fisher’s life in what they thought to be a more softer and more refined homage to Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.  The author even mentions Cleland’s work by name, claiming that Kitty read it at school while discovering her own sexuality.  But unlike Memoirs, which jumps from sexual adventure to adventure, Juvenil Adventures has whole chapters dedicated to little more than describing what the people around Kitty were doing to prove how much they loved her.  Ultimately, this makes Juvenil Adventures seem a bit out of place to me.  It is not raunchy enough to fit perfectly alongside Memoirs or other “banned books” of the time, but it also does not read like a true enough story for me to feel like it is an accurate account of anyone’s thoughts, feelings, or life.

Works Cited

Cleland, John.  Genuine Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Maria Brown.  London,  MDCCLXVI. [1766]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. Georgia State University. 20 Feb. 2018

<http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.gsu.edu/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=atla29738&tabID=T001&docId=CW101356645&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE>.

Cleland, John. Memoirs of a woman of pleasure. ... Vol. Volume 1. London,  M.DCC.XLIX. [1749]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. Georgia State University. 20 Feb. 2018

<http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.gsu.edu/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=atla29738&tabID=T001&docId=CW115398226&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE>.

Rosenthal, Laura J., editor. Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century. Broadview Press, 2008.  69 - 151.

Maria:

Chapter 5, Prompt 2 (A rebuttal letter from Fanny; because this is written as a letter, I did not include in-text citations, and for space on our blog, no Works Cited)

“An Authentic Narrative of the Most Remarkable Adventures, and Curious Intrigues, Exhibited in the Life of Miss Fanny Davies, the Celebrated Modern Amazon” (Anonymous, but possibly written by “Mr. Thompson”)

5 September, 1786

My dear Mr. Thompson,

I read with extreme interest your “authentic narrative” about my life, and feel compelled to write a rebuttal, as, my dear man, I strongly refute its authenticity. I do not recall that you sought me out for authentication of these escapades . . .  or did you? Perhaps we met under cloak of darkness? On a comfortable feather bed in Covent Garden, of a winter’s evening? I do not recall; I am sorry if our encounter did not penetrate my . . . memory bank. Furthermore, it seems you grossly misuse the term “narrative”; a narrative would hardly be punctuated with harsh judgments, religious platitudes, and sanctimonious declarations, as is yours. You do not simply recount a series of events, you judge me, and all those like me.

You flatter me with the label, “Celebrated Modern Amazon.” If you mean I am a woman warrior, as in olden days of Greece, indeed I am. A warrior for survival. Bravo, my dear Mr. Thompson! Here, you speak the truth. Unfortunately, you go on to “attempt to draw a picture of the human heart, in its depraved state and display vice in its utmost deformity.” You call me a young woman “so capable of evil, as one of the softer sex.” Evil? Evil, I ask? Survival. Survival, I clarify. You contrast my “evil” with the sweetness of a “virtuous woman,” “certainly the glory of the creation, the best boon bestowed by Heaven on man; a source of hope to her humble suitor, and a crown of happiness to her husband.” I ask, you, Mr. Thompson, are women placed on Earth solely for the pleasure of man, as you, indicate? If so, I can vouch that I have fulfilled that responsibility quite well. Or must that man who is so pleasured be a suitor or a husband?

You seem to have answers to questions such as the one I pose. Since it so seems, I want you to answer this: How would you suggest a young girl of six years old, alone in the world, survive? Yes, I was a thief. Yes, I was a pleasure maker. Yes, I wore disguises. But I survived. I lived. Ah, quote your Milton: “Whose mortal taste, Brought death into the world, and all our woe.” And quote your Good Book “because sentence is not passed speedily, their hearts are set upon evil.” And recount the story of Abimelech who beseeched his armor-bearer to kill him with a sword so the true cause – a millstone dropped on his stupid head by a WOMAN – would not end his life. Perhaps you know some of what I did. But you do not accurately portray the “why” of what I did.

Interesting that you beseechingly inquire of Lord -----, “wilt thou thus stain an illustrious line of ancestry, by descending to the bought embraces of an artful young harlot?” I implore you to consider St. Augustine’s opinion: “If you expel prostitution from society, you will unsettle everything on account of lusts.”

But above all, I urge you to consider this, from your Good Book: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” You end your “authentic narrative,” speaking of mercy. Nowhere else in your harsh diatribe does this word appear. God above knows my heart. You do not. I am sorry for those I hurt. Sadly, an empty belly seeks many sources to be filled.

Fanny Davies

Modern Amazon

Richard:

The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen- 

House...and An Account of the Death of F.S. 

Prompt 2 

Opportunities in this era for many people may have looked bleak, which only serves to underscore the nothingness awaiting women in this time. There simply were no ‘opportunities’ in the public sphere and only an expected option or two involving marriage and/or the prospect of a fairly dreary life in some ‘suitable’ vocation. And even a woman with ‘A Coach and Six’ would be living within tightly defined mores and social mobility. 

In The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen-House...and An Account of the Death of F.S....the accounts are said to be ‘sympathetic’ and deal with women who are repentant with regard to the state of their lives while some of the other narratives involve characters cast as ‘libertine’ and much more rebellious in nature. 

These narratives may provide more of a ‘360’ view and contribute to an individual and social identity that also reflects human nature in ways that may not have changed much since then. 

In An Account of the Death of F.S... the main character is said to be in the throes of her faith while dying of ‘consumption’ i.e. tuberculosis. This is fairly sympathetic in itself as it doesn’t focus or assign the onset of death to anything that would or has to be directly tied to the activity of prostitution, such as disease or physical injury sustained from acting as a prostitute. Certainly many men, women, and children would succumb to consumption in this era.  

Framed as a ‘sympathetic’ account, a window opens on the experiences of a woman that would not be there through the historically puritanical view of prostitution, i.e. the notion that this was brought about from some innate sinfulness that caused the woman to turn toward criminality and having understood this, there would be little else necessary to know either about the milieu this woman was living in, or why she reacted in such a manner. 

This is closer to a novel form of story-telling. There is a protagonist, a plot line, a beginning, middle and end, rising tension to a climax/denouement, etc. The tension/conflict is multi-leveled and framed as largely the woman vs. the prevailing societal ideas that must be complied with or somehow, overcome, and stemming from efforts for reform largely due to concerns over “...how to limit the spread of venereal disease and to protect virtuous women from seduction.” (www.blissbennet.com) 

With Emily the Nature vs. Nurture argument, or pre-dating that, the question of "innate ideas" or "instincts" was of some importance in the discussion of free will in moral philosophy. In 18th-century philosophy, this was cast in terms of "innate ideas" establishing the presence of a universal virtue, a prerequisite for objective morals. (Lacy, Norris J.) 

Emily was overtaken by her environ and caused many reappraisals of her innate ideas of virtue, further prompted by her need to survive. Left to her own devices and with no other support, this inner virtue was not enough to sustain her as each new wrinkle, or test, in the narrative wears her down and leaves her more and more prone to act on instinct, which results in still more isolation and adds to the sympathetic nature of the narrative. 

Emily’s gradual descent as rendered in the narrative seems to employ/represent every obstacle one could encounter and the inherent societal barriers that she faces in an effort to keep herself and her child housed and fed. Even a final option of begging has its built-in barriers and limitations, which also heightens for the reader the degree of both admiration and pity. 

Emily herself is seen as a character loaded with societal ideas about how a woman does or doesn’t fit into current mores, sexual parameters, etc. and is accepting of the ultimate mandate to comply with them. This would be an alignment -- for better or worse -- with ‘objective morals and universal virtue.’ 

Have the struggles with regard to free will posed in the narratives really changed much since then? 

  

WORKS CITED: 

Rosenthal, Laura J., editor. Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century. Broadview Press, 2008, chapters Three and Four. 

English usage is based on a tradition going back to medieval literature, where the opposition of nature ("instinct, inclination") norreture ("culture, adopted mores") is a common motif, famously in Chretien de Troyes' Perceval, where the hero's effort to suppress his natural impulse of compassion in favor of what he considers proper courtly behavior leads to catastrophe. Lacy, Norris J. (1980) The Craft of Chrétien de Troyes: An Essay on Narrative Art, Brill Archive, p. 5.     

Prostitution and the Law in the Long 18th Century  

www.blissbennet.com 

Alice:

Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives From The Eighteenth Century

Edited By Laura J. Rosenthal

CHAPTER ONE

Captain Charles Walker, Authentick Memoirs of the Life, Intrigues, and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury

       The narratives framed in Nightwalkers   represent the investigation of the individual which became   common practice during the eighteenth – century in British Literature.   The genre of literary works   place  emphasis on self or personal identity  of the female  as seen through  historical and cultural aspects of that era through  eponymous and epistolary styles.    For example,  in Chapter One, Captain Walker’s narrative represents the  eponymous technique  by  remembering Sally Salisbury as the primary female individual named and Defoe’s novel, Moll Flanders,  follows that same tradition.     The format of epistolary  or letters  is traditional in the context of  eighteenth century memory writing found in  Captain Walker’s dedicatory epistle to Sally Salisbury and the same is true in Moll Flanders Memoirs.

     The prostitute narratives of the eighteenth century range from varied perspectives concerning   personal identity.   The sentimental narratives direct their criticism toward society rather than the individuals in the prostitute industry.  In contrast to the sentimentalist approach, the libertine narrative views the prostitute as that individual who empowers herself by using her sexuality to gain economic mobility.  In Chapter One , my response is directed  on providing a  brief analysis of the  libertine narrative  by examining the  method of  individualizing the identity of Sally Salisbury  while  considering a  similar approach  found in Defoe’s   eighteenth century novel, Moll Flanders .

     From the perspective of the libertine narrative in which Chapter One falls, a number of  literary techniques traditionalize this type of prostitute narrative:  individuals are identified  by  a criminal biography,  seek  economic mobility, rebellion against society,  demonstrate impatience with  standard social codes of behavior,   very proud of their looks or glamour, and  include  dishonest  or  caustic conduct which Sally Salisbury and Moll Flanders display.

     Because of the nature of the sex worker’s   occupation, she typically walks the streets at dark seeking her male prey as the title suggests,  Nightwalkers.  Captain Walker  uses   descriptive language  in the title -  words like: intrigues, adventure,  celebrated , and authentic which may alert the reader to the narrator’s feelings of admiration toward Sally on the basis of how she lived  and made life so interesting and profitable  as a prostitute.  He begins his 1723 letter with The Epistle Dedicatory to Mrs. Sally Salisbury which sets the tone for Walker’s admiration for her as one who individualized herself beyond the eighteenth century social codes expected of women because these heroines are viewed  as  smart and savy enough to succeed economically and socially, regardless of their  immoral underworld occupation or lowly beginnings.    Captain Walker describes Sally Salibury:

              “. . . . But tho’ it is not easy to find a proper Patron amongst the Men, yet for Your Satisfaction I

             Must tell You, the whole Species is at Your devotion, and the seeming Disdain of Your own Sex,

            Not so much from an Unwillingness to Patronize Your Actions, as an Incapacity of Copying so

            Bright an Example.  ; ; ; Your polite Deviations from Virtue and graceful Wantonness, are what

          Alarm  your whole Sex, . . .

Additionally,  he praises  her identity  as extraordinary:

           “ . . . No, your Sphere of Elevation is much higher, and You move with an Elegance peculiar to Your

              self.”

Moreover, the libertine narrative individualizes the prostitute as an opportunist and avaricious female  who takes advantage of men in order to empower  herself  as she rebels  against the gendered codes of society.

Furthermore,  Sally Salisbury becomes extremely  possessive and individualistic and  does not fear confronting the hypocrisy of the majority culture and their attitudes toward female sexuality. 

          Her intolerance  is explained by  Walker:

      “ . . . Those Hypocrites who pretend to dis-esteem You upon the Account of Your Profession,

               neither consider the Antiquity of it; the Usefulness of your Labours to the Publick; or the

          Honours conferred upon your Loving Sisterhood by the greatest, and wisest Law-givers, Princes,   

         States in all Ages . . . “

     Sally Salisbury is identified in criminal biography when she fatally stabbed   her lover and was imprisoned ; and so is the case in  Defoe’s eighteenth century  novel, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders  Who was born in Newgate. . .  (Written from her own memorandums, 1722) who exhibited criminal behavior as well.   Sally Salisbury and Moll Flanders ‘  greed for money  and vanity  individualize  each of them .

       For example ,  although seduced earlier,  Moll Flanders  attributes  her misfortune  to her vanity, confessing that . . . “But that which I was too vain of, was my Ruin, or rather my vanity was the Cause of it” (Defoe, p.19) .  In conclusion, Sally Salisbury  delves  into the individual self  who  is  anti- establishment,  embraces  eroticism  through an episodic  life

Julia

Anon., An Authentick Narrative of the Most Remarkable Adventures, and Curious Intrigues, Exhibited in the Life of Miss Fanny Davies, the Celebrated Modern Amazon

QUESTION 1:

Fanny Davies maneuvers in both the male and female spheres of society as a man primarily. Generally, the men in this novel exist in anonymity mostly unjudged, “We forbear to mention the name of this unfortunate fellow, as his father lives in reputation, and is deservedly deemed an honest man”, yet Fanny is never afforded this privilege (202). For women, the idea that one can judge character and virtue solely on looks is ubiquitous.  

Fanny, before she was fourteen, was a very forward girl in stature, strength, and beauty, and began to attract the notice of young fellows bigger than boys. She still retained a modest deportment. To have looked on her fair face, rosy cheeks, coral lips, black eyes, ivory neck, slender waist, delicate arms, and beautiful hair […] one would not have taken her for any thing less than a master-piece of nature; or a being not much lower than an angel. […] In a word, Fanny was the fairest of her sex in Southwark; but all was false and hollow. (200)

Fanny being able to slip between these different roles says something towards the changing attitude toward social identity. The narrative begins in a world where it is believed, for women distinctively, that one can place someone in their “proper” role(s) dependent on looks; that looks equal social distinction. Revealing that social identity was this very outward-in movement. Fanny’s ability to step outside of that and “fool” others, places the agency back onto Fanny and women at large. Women, outside of this prostitution sphere, already have stigmatized identities. They are already placed in the strict mother/whore binary. Women receive their identities based on how the men in their lives see them. Women who participate in sex work, then, create a break from this binary. They create an inward-out movement of social identity. No longer are women’s social identity determinate on men. Contentions, however, arise with the fact that Fanny takes on “maleness” in order to receive this agency and what this may say about women’s agency. However, it is important to remember that Fanny only decides to put on the disguise of “maleness” to escape societal judgments women are subjected to, but men are privileged to avoid.  

The character of our heroine was soon blazoned abroad, and she could not even ride out on a party of pleasure, without meeting the derision and contempt of even the lowest ladies of those parts. It was this general scorn, that induced Fanny to change her dress, and make her appearance into a masculine attire. She wore buckskin breeches, with all the habit suitable to a foxhunter; and learning to ride a spirited mare, could, without dread or hesitation, leap over a gate or a hedge. (204)

Fanny firmly ensconces herself in her “femaleness” using the double entendre, “I am no man for you” all while dressed in manly attire (213). But, importantly, this manly attire does not extend into her social identity; which is doubly important in a narrative where we encounter people’s failures to place Fanny in a familiar identity. “But one evening she was found by Baileys, the street officer, in company with several abandoned boys, who being well-known pickpockets, […] and discovered the general complexion of her character” (199). And “Her sex was discovered” (213). We see this failure again with the narrator misplacing her identity because they do not fit in with this outward-in projection of social identity “The deceived wanton fell into a swoon, and our fair deceiver of woman, as well as man, embraced the opportunity of retiring from the tavern” (213). Her identity is never outright; it is always being discovered.

Works Cited

Anonymous. “An Authentic Narrative of the Most Remarkable Adventures, and Curious             Intrigues, Exhibited in the Life of Miss Fanny Davies, the Celebrated Modern Amazon.”            Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century, edited by Laura J.          Rosenthal, Broadview Press, 2008, pp. 197-223.  

Ben:

Apprehending Emily

Chapters 3 of Nightwalkers is an 18^th century narrative account of a fictional prostitute named Emily Markland who encounters redemption and reform in the Christian hospital the Magdalen House.  In the “Repressive Hypothesis,” Foucault argues that as opposed to our typical view that sexuality was repressed in the Victorian era, the 18^th and 19^th centuries were a time in which society created a new abundance in language and methods of classification around sex to establish an “ordered maximization of collective and individual forces” (308). For Foucault, sex was not controlled through prohibition, repression, or exclusion, but rather regulated and ordered through the permissive incitement by “agencies of power” to demand that individuals and society speak about sex in “endlessly accumulated detail” (306). In this response, I will examine the use of narrative in the story to apprehend Emily within an ordered framework. Specifically, I focus on the use of first person singular and the way the settings and interactions locate her within a social economic context.  Crucial to the discourse on sexuality lies the formation of the subject within the linguistic ordering of society. For Foucault, individual subjectivity does not exists outside of society, but rather is the product of the arrangement of social productive forces.  Emily’s narrative captures her previous experience as a prostitute and reinscribes her subjectivity in a new position within social retaliations of power.

            Before we approach the narrative in Chapter 3, it’s important to get a broader context of the role that the detailed accounting of sex played in the era. As Foucault argues “one of the great innovations of power in the 18th century was the emergence of ‘population’ as an economic problem” (307).  In this time period, various discourses came into being that sought to both describe and arrange the population in terms of wealth, labor capacity, growth, and the management of resources.  At the center of this new understanding of the population was a new focus on sex.  As Foucault describes, “it was necessary to analyze the birth rate, the age of marriage, the legitimate and illegitimate births, the precocity and frequency of sexual relations, the ways of making them fertile and sterile, the effects of unmarried life or of the prohibitions, the impact of contraceptive practices, [etc.]” (308).  To accomplish this new establishment of order, it was necessary to create various methods of discourse that locate and discipline sexuality within a carefully articulated taxonomy.   Sex understood as reproduction of the labor force, sex as pleasure or entertainment, sex as a commodity, sex as sin, sex as perversion, sex of the libertine as a form of liberation—in all these various discourses, sex became the object of hyper scrutiny to be articulated in detail.  As Foucault argues, it is through this careful narrativisation and arrangement of disciplines around sexuality that modern subjectivity is formed.  For Foucault, individual subjectivity is not a self that exists outside of society, but is rather the product of the arrangement of social productive forces through discourse.  In this way, narrative is performative in the sense that it orders and structures the world within a particular framework.  

            Returning to Chapter 3, before Emily’s first person narrative begins a speaker introduces us to her and explains that she is a fictional character who represents a kind of person we might find in the Magdalen House.  The speaker describes the role of the Magdalen House as a place of reform, and emphasizes the importance of allowing these women to confess their stories to those who are willing to listen with pity and mutual affection.  The Magdalen House can be seen as a common example of the hospitals that arose in the 17th Century along with an attitude that understood prostitutes not as objects of scorn and vilification but as objects of pity capable of reform and salvation.  Foucault traces the history of the detailed enumeration of sex acts to the practice of confession in pastoral Catholicism.  During and after the Counter-Reformation,  confession became a more regular occurrence for common people and more meticulous rules governing the practice were imposed.  In confessions involving sex, the church demanded that “sex not be named imprudently, but its aspects, its correlations, and its effects must be pursued down to their slenderest ramifications” (303).  The new call for detail was not focused on the physical aspects of sex, but rather locating the “important moment of transgression from the act itself to the stirrings […] of desire” (303).  This shift in Catholicism focused confession on tracing the “meeting line of the body and the soul” to discover the desire beneath “the surface of the sins” (303). We can see elements of these historical practices around confession in Emily’s first person narrative as a penitent.  As she says, “I have exposed all my crimes and follies; and given a strong proof how much evil one bad action draws along with it” (190).  She also says that it was through her encounter with the hospital and telling her story that “I was shewn my sins in their black colours; and, awakened to repentance by a sense of guilt” (190).  Through the confession of her sins, she is able to establish a mastery over them and locate her subjectivity as a saved soul aware of the “wickedness” of her former life (190). An important element of this confession is her admission of the joy she found in her sin.  Again, we see the focus not just on physical actions but on the desire behind them.  When she recounts her time with Mr. Markland as his lover, she talks about her vanity and the joy she found being admired when he took her to public places during the summer.  She says, “Vanity, which had so long lurked unseen in my heart, began to grow perceptible; and the pleasure of being admired, made the greatest charm of a public place” (167).  Rather than an enumeration of the physical details of her sexual activities, a key element of Emily’s confession requires the identification of this vanity as a form of desire that kept her entrapped in her sinful lifestyle.  

            Her narrative and religious identification also locate her as engaged in a complex interaction with society.  We see Emily in context of a variety of social spheres—the upper-class, bourgeois family where she works as a maid and becomes the lover of the adult son Mr. Markland, the brothel where she is beaten for refusing a customer, the labor market where employers refuse to give her a position as a seamstress because her lack of experience and lack of a respectable reference for the position, to begging in the street where she encounters the complex hierarchy between beggars and faces the criticism of passers by.  The settings and descriptions in Emily’s narrative reflect the turn in the 18th century toward the development of organizing discourses around population.  We see detailed descriptions of various class positions, the accounting of public and private spaces, and the details of the disciplines of interaction within various contexts.  All of these settings locate Emily within a broader social context at the same time they individualize her through a careful attention to detail.  Her narrative frames her as a religious subject, a lost soul, struggling with the temptations of the world with the world understood in social, economic terms as population.  

            As a whole, the narrative describes a process where she transitions from a position of vulnerability within society to a point where she enters into the hospital with hopes that “a course of regularity would so far wash out the infamy from my reputation” (190).  Developing this new regularity as a form of discipline is the necessary condition for her sister’s husband to allow her to see her sister and to find employment and stable living conditions.  In this way, telling her story, which is the story the hospital demands, and conforming her behavior to that narrative relocates her position within various social spheres.  Telling this narrative and taking on the identity it provides her, allows Emily to become acceptable to her family, to find employment, and to secure a more stable living condition.  This process of narativization is a process through which Emily’s subjectivity is reinscribed into a new position within social relations of power. Rather than the narrative being Emily’s story, the narrative is as a process that constructs Emily.  It is a process that forms her subjectivity according to the institutional demands of 18^th century society.  With this in mind, it’s interesting to think of the fact that Emily is not as a real person.  She is a model that, like other narratives about sex in the 18^th century, serve as an injunction for individuals to locate their subjectivity within their framework.  In this story, we see Foucault’s critique of the ‘repressive hypothesis.’  It isn’t through the suppression of Emily’s sexuality that she is controlled, but rather it is through the permissive solicitation to narrativize, to tell a story and find subjectivity in it, that the prostitute narrative apprehends 18^th century women within relations of power.

Works Cited

Foucault, Michel, and Paul Rabinow. “The Repressive Hypothesis.” The Foucault Reader.

Vintage Books, a Division of Random House Inc., 2010. PP.301-329.

Rosenthal, Laura J. Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century. Broadview

Press, 2008.

J

.