Description
Book SynopsisLaura J. Rosenthal uses literary and historical sources to explore the meaning of prostitution from the Restoration through the eighteenth century.
Trade ReviewRosenthal offers an intriguing account of the changing figure of the prostitute in Restoration and 18th-century British culture. Tracing the transition from 'prostitution as the embrace of pleasure' to 'prostitution as the sacrifice of pleasure to business,' she argues that early in the period prostitutes were represented as 'desiring women,' longing for sexual fulfillment and receiving payment only incidentally, but that over time they came to be depicted as enterprising capitalists who engaged in sex only incidentally, in the process becoming alienated from their labor. The author pursues this thesis through a satisfying mix of texts, some firmly canonical (Clarissa, Tom Jones), some quasi-canonical (Roxana, Fanny Hill), and some obscure (prostitute biographies, South Sea narratives). Rosenthal discovers new points of contact between gender studies and labor history, and along the way touches on industrialization, contractual relations, consumerism, societies for the reformation of manners, Jewish identity, and the history of the novel. Her close readings are sensitive and well informed; the book is also pleasingly readable and therefore accessible even to nonspecialists.
* Choice *
What is most surprising about Laura Rosenthal's wonderfully textured cultural history of prostitution in eighteenth-century Britain is that it was not written earlier. Given the predominance of the whore's story in the period and 'the copious, even obsessive, writing about prostitution in the eighteenth century,' as Rosenthal rightly attests, the fact that no comprehensive survey of this literature had been published to date seems like a critical aberration that Infamous Commerce finally corrects.... Her book overflows with convincing and persuasive readings of individual texts because of the analytical simplicity and critical complexity of its historical thesis.... Infamous Commerce opens a flood of so many new possibilities (new texts, new readings, new histories) that it has immediately become an ur-text in the field. Every future scholar of eighteenth-century prostitution and prostitute narratives will cite this work.
* Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature *
Table of ContentsIntroduction1. A "Cool State of Indifference": Mother Creswell's Academy2. The "Deluge of Depravity": Bernard Mandeville and the Reform Societies3. Whore, Turk, and Jew: Defoe’s Roxana4. Fanny’s Sisters: The Prostitute Narrative5. Clarissa among the Whores6. Tom Jones and the "New Vice"7. Risky Business in the South Seas and BackConclusion: Usury of the HeartNotes
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