Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: ‘The Great Social Evil’ – Representing the Victorian Prostitute
- 1 White-Washed Sepulchres and Wives of Englishmen: William Acton's Representation of English Prostitutes
- 2 From ‘Masses of Rottenness’ to the ‘Queen's Women’: The Report of the Royal Commission (1871)
- 3 Mothers, Sisters and Shameless Women: Josephine Butler and the Victorian Prostitute
- 4 Mercy and Grace: Wilkie Collins and The New Magdalen
- 5 My Secret Life and the Pornographic Representation of Prostitution
- Conclusion: Countering the Myth
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
3 - Mothers, Sisters and Shameless Women: Josephine Butler and the Victorian Prostitute
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: ‘The Great Social Evil’ – Representing the Victorian Prostitute
- 1 White-Washed Sepulchres and Wives of Englishmen: William Acton's Representation of English Prostitutes
- 2 From ‘Masses of Rottenness’ to the ‘Queen's Women’: The Report of the Royal Commission (1871)
- 3 Mothers, Sisters and Shameless Women: Josephine Butler and the Victorian Prostitute
- 4 Mercy and Grace: Wilkie Collins and The New Magdalen
- 5 My Secret Life and the Pornographic Representation of Prostitution
- Conclusion: Countering the Myth
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
It is only when the slave begins to move, to complain, to give signs of life and resistance, either by his own voice or by the voice of one like himself speaking for him, that the struggle for freedom truly begins. The slave now speaks. The enslaved women have found a voice in one of themselves who was raised up for no other end than to sound the proclamation of an approaching deliverance. Never mind the imperfection of the first voice. It is the voice of a woman who has suffered, a voice calling to holy rebellion and war. It will penetrate.
Josephine E. Butler's invocation of the analogy of American slavery and the contemporary struggle for abolition was a powerful and significant trope in the ‘feminist’ rhetoric pushing for repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in Victorian England. As the charismatic leader of the Ladies National Association (LNA), Butler was the dominant ‘first voice’ in a group of feminist reformers who targeted the issue of prostitution by publishing numerous addresses, pamphlets, and periodicals. Although the repeal movement included members of both sexes, the LNA was a distinctive force with a distinctive rhetoric. As women they broke new ground in their public campaigning on sexual matters. In their calls for an equal standard of sexual morality they focused exclusively on the position of women in the gendered framework of Victorian society, contributing to what has come to be called ‘first wave feminism’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Prostitute's BodyRewriting Prostitution in Victorian Britain, pp. 71 - 98Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014