2. 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”
3. 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.
4. 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
5. 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
10. 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
11. “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
12. 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)
13. 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?
14. 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.
15. 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.
My term paper is entitled Sex, Money, and the Pursuit of Liberty: The Queer Temporality of the Victorian Prostitute
Here I have an excerpt from D. G. Rosetti’s “Jenny”. I’ll give you a moment to review its language and tone of pity and powerlessness. He speaks of Jenny as fall’n, scorn’d, frail and lost. The entire poem is constructed around her helplessness in slumber while he writes her story for her.What I am asking is that we revisit the long-pitied Jenny. Rosetti tried to think of her kindly butdid he consider her accurately? How else might his monologue have gone? Perhaps Jenny was formerly an entry level domestic service worker. She worked 14 hour days, six or seven days a week with only brief breaks. Fed up with her servitude she chose a life that offered nearly equal risks, better pay, better hours, and preferable conditions. In this new occupation she could make her own hours and triple her pay. She would no longer fear her mistress’s harsh reprimands and would not rely on a kind recommendation to ensure future employment. Work would be easy to find and she could find it most anywhere. She is not the object of pity. She is an independent agent who after weighing the risks, has chosen a life of prostitution.
The main claim I make in my paper is this: Because a Victorian woman could choose prostitution in an effort to avoid marriage, child-bearing, caretaking, and domesticity, making this life choice is pursuing a queer temporality.A few stipulations on that: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 millinery and domestic service.
The structure of my paper is thus:Queer Time and the Prostitute’s Place in which I talk about the definitions of my terms and the scope of my studyThe Potential for Gaiety and Agency in the Brothel in which I look at examples of women who chose prostitution and how their lives were improved for itThe Othering Victorians in which I discuss the Victorian focus on being “pattern” and how that made this choice more radical than everMarriage and Celibacy Battle the Great Evil in which I look at the tendency to pose celibacy and marriage as binary oppositions, and how prostitution comes into play as a tertiary optionQueering Heterosexual Temporality where I look at Victorian lifestyles that are queer within het. temporalityOther Queer Victorians where I explore the other people who challenged social norms by living within a queer temporalityAnd Limitations and Conclusions where I wrap up my argument and apologize for what I left out.For the purposes of this presentation we’re only going to focus on these points due to time constraints and knowledge that I can assume from this educated audience.
I need to first define some of my terms.The concept of a Queer Temporality was developed recently (2009) by Judith Halberstam. It 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. It exists as a set of alternatives to heterosexual temporality which is defined by courting, marriage, and child-rearing.Although prostitution implies a wide range of participants with different stipulations, clientele, and description, I have a very specific group that I focus on in my paper. These areWorking classWomenWho Selected prostitution as an alternative to other occupationsAnd Avoided heterosexual temporality through this choice
With that said, fun and frivolity likely do not come to mind when envisioning the Victorian prostitute. At the time the occupation was abhorred and the women in it were thought to be pathetic souls trapped in an exploitative system of poverty. Fergus Linnane makes clear in Madams: Bawds and Brothel-Keepers of London that the Victorians. . . regarded prostitution as a fate worse than death, but for most girls it was infinitely preferable to a life of servitude as a ‘domestic’ or the sweated labor of millinery. It suited many girls of restless or independent character. Frederick Merrick, chaplain of Millbank Prison reported that out of 16,000 prostitutes he interviewed 14,000 were attracted by the promise of ‘nothing to do; plenty of money; your own mistress; perfect liberty; being a lady’. (188)
Prostitutes often put on a bit of drag by playing the classy Victorian woman with a hint of mockery in their performance (Walkowitz 26). The fancy and extravagant dress set them apart from other working class women. Their dress was a badge of their occupation, but also a uniting dress code for a culture of independent women within this lower class. Most middle-class observers completely missed the camp, however and just found them to be gawdy (Walkowitz 26).If you can’t read the cartoon, it is entitled THE GREAT SOCIAL EVIL and says Time: Midnight. A sketch not 100 miles from the Haymarket (a well-known center for prostitution). One woman says to the other, Bella: AH! Fanny! How long have you been gay?”This refers to the woman’s fancy dress and the nature of her occupation.This is a good example of overlapping terms. I discuss this further in my paper, but this cartoon will have to suffice for the presentation.
The working woman’s admirer, Arthur Munby said that a prostitute he encountered was “a handsome young woman of twenty-six, who, having begun life as a servant of all work, and then spent three years in voluntary prostitution amongst men of a class much above her own, retires with a little competence, and invests the earnings of her infamous trade in a respectable coffee house” (qtd. in Walkowitz 23)This is a good example of prostitutes using their earnings to escape the trade and retire comfortably. Mostly I just wanted to interrupt pictures of prostitutes with this bleak portrait of a bearded Munby.
In her book Prostitution and Victorian Society, Judith Walkowitz points out another interview with a woman who tells this story:“I was a servant gal away down in Birmingham. I got tired of workin’ and slavin’ to make a living and getting a --------- bad one at that; what o’ five pun’ a year and yer grub, I’d sooner starve, I would. After a bit I went to Coventry, cut brummagem, as we calls it in those parts, and took up with soldiers as was quartered there. I soon got tired of them. Soliders is good – soliders is – to walk with and that, but they don’t pay; cos why they ain’t got no money; so I says to myself, I’ll go to Lunnon and I did. I soon found my level there” (13).This woman is lovingly nicknamed “Swindling Sal”.
This set of options, marriage or celibacy, was so finite and worrisome for Victorians that it became a major topic of discussion in periodicals. John M. Robson showcases this issue in Marriage or Celibacy?: The Daily Telegraph on a Victorian Dilemma. The concept of prostitution as an alternative to this binary set was not completely out of the Victorians’ reach, as papers such as the Daily Telegraph and the Times tended to publish together articles about “the great social evil [a.k.a. prostitution] with the difficulties of middle-class marriage” (26). A section in this newspaper entitled “Frugal Marriages” featured prominently discussions of allowances, incomes, and social sacrifices/benefits of marriage (27).
This was published in The Daily Telegraph by a woman seeking a husband.
It is impossible to explore prostitution as a queer temporality without exploring other Victorians who also exist within this frameworkOne of the most common forms of enacting a queer temporality would be through chosen celibacy. I use this term not to indicate a literal absence of sexual activity because we cannot know if these women were or were not abstinent. If these women were sexually active, they certainly did not advertise it or document it in their diaries. Instead, I am using celibacy in the same way that the writers of the Daily Telegraph did, to act as a false opposition to marriage indicating only that the women in this category were not married.Women who actively chose celibacy might have used a number of reasons to excuse their decision to abstain from marriage. A career in an approved field (nursing or tailoring for example) would relieve society’s worry that this woman was acting outside of her feminine duties. Indeed focusing on a career would be a good way to detract from the glaring lack of mate or suitor in a time when one or the other was almost required. Acting as the family caretaker too would keep anxious busybodies at bay as it was thought to be part of a woman’s duty to play nurse to her family when the time came. Of course neither of these were particularly progressive, but a woman could have safely chosen one of these alternatives.Another, racier option would be to go into acting. Although not highly esteemed by the more moral members of society, actresses often remained “celibate” and dedicated their lives to their trade. Positions were quickly opening for women to perform in small local bars and this might have appealed to a woman not quite tempted to prostitution but willing to garner attention from male patrons. This was a good way for a working class woman to remain within her class, performing for those within her class, while still procuring a bit of glamor. The positions were plentiful as nearly 70% of working class men spent their evenings in pubs, many of which featured live entertainment (August 53).
A third option of which we have only one documented case, demonstrates a much broader potential for subverting the norms of Victorian life. Emily Hall married Edmund Haughton Jackson in 1887 in the town of Clitheroe, Lancashire, but the couple never cohabited. In fact, except for a few days immediately following the ceremony, (2) Emily refused to live with her husband for four years, ignoring his many requests to do so and defying a court’s judgment in his successful suit for restitution of conjugal rights in 1889. According to English law, her flouting the order for restitution could have landed her in prison. However, Parliament abolished the penalty of imprisonment in the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1884 so by the time Emily and Edmund Jackson became embroiled in their battle of wills there was little Jackson could do. (100)In this domestic (or not) dispute we see a woman enacting and indeed testing her agency by marrying but not following any of the expected practices thereafter. Despite its direct correlation with marriage, I would argue that Emily Jackson presents the queerest temporality of all: one in which she can marry and then completely overturn all ideas that society holds for a married woman, including cohabitation.
In conclusion It is vital to keep always in mind that the liberty and agency endowed upon these women was only remarkable when compared to other women of their class. That the risk of venereal disease, the certain social shame, and the uncertain outcomes of the profession would outweigh the horrors of working in a mill while maintaining a house and home reveals not only something about the conditions of the Victorian working class home and workplace but something about the independent spirits many of the women of the class possessed.
The simple lack of preserved diaries and data about prostitutes from the era (or working class women in general) prevents me from finding elaborate case studies in which women attest to choosing this lifestyle. Without these firsthand testimonies my assertions remain untested and speculatory. Luckily my purpose is not to prove a grand hypothesis, but to shed light on group of women often darkened with misinformation. It is my hope that the consideration of these women as agents in their own subversive rewriting (and queering) of time schematics will open up new possibilities for exploration and more venues in which women thought helpless can be proven strong.Thank you.
