Prostitution in the Long Eighteenth Century

Anyone taking a course in eighteenth-century British studies (at whatever level) would be hard pressed to avoid encountering prostitutes. So ubiquitous are these figures in various verbal and graphic texts from the eighteenth century that even a very select group of course materials would tender, at the very least, a reference or allusion to prostitution. Not surprisingly, the pervasiveness of prostitution in post-Restoration print culture has been acknowledged and examined over the last several decades by a number of scholars who have duly identified its connection to a range of other social phenomena, from constructions of female identity to the "rise" of the novel to imperial conquests. Until quite recently, however, such critical attention has been limited to journal articles and book chapters, and it has sometimes relegated commercial sex to the status of a constitutive element of what are regarded as broader and more significant social events and processes. The three books considered here, in contrast, put prostitutes and prostitution center stage, undertaking full-length studies of representations of the commercial sex trade. In doing so, they illustrate that prostitution's virtual omnipresence in eighteenth-century life demands more focused and extended critical consideration than it has received thus far.

These works do follow a few recent, substantial treatments of prostitution in the period, namely Randolph Trumbach's Sex and the Gender Revolution (1998), Tony Henderson's Disorderly Women (1999), and Bradford Mudge's The Whore's Story (2000)—and if we want to stretch the bounds of the period to the other side of the Restoration, James Grantham Turner's Libertines and Radicals (2002). Yet, Laura J. Rosenthal, Sophie Carter, and Melissa M. Mowry make representations of prostitutes and commercial sex transactions their abiding concern, unlike Trumbach's focus on the eighteenth-century intensification of heterosexuality and Mudge's interest in the novel. Similarly, in contrast to Henderson, who endeavors to uncover the actual experiences of "common" street prostitutes, these three scholars are interested in the social, cultural, and political significance of prostitution as it is represented in various print media. Indeed, one of the strengths of these three studies as a whole is that they bring together a wide range of period representations of prostitutes and prostitution, and thus they function as very rich and essential research sources for anyone wishing to undertake study in this area.

Individually, though, the works differ slightly in terms of the types of eighteenth-century media they consider and their historical coverage. Whereas Carter's Purchasing Power attempts to foreground the role visual print images played in formulating ideas about prostitution by placing them in the broader context of other print media, Rosenthal's Infamous Commerce engages a variety of eighteenth-century written texts while also providing extensive readings of several canonical fictions, including Roxana, Clarissa, and Tom Jones. Mowry's Bawdy Politic, on the other hand, though it too focuses exclusively on written texts, mainly addresses pornographic satires and, to a lesser extent, court records. This limited expanse, however, is due in part to Mowry's concentration solely on the post-Restoration Stuart period rather than a lengthier stretch of the "long eighteenth century." In contrast, Carter's study confines itself to the eighteenth century proper, whereas Rosenthal's ranges from the Restoration (and even occasionally dips into the Civil War and Commonwealth decades) to the 1780s journal and literary accounts of Captain Cook's voyages.

The most provocative and copious in its insights and analysis is undoubtedly Rosenthal's Infamous Commerce. Seeking to broaden existing treatments of prostitution, which couch it mainly in terms of the formation of female identity, Rosenthal shows that representations of prostitution indicate and explore...