.<\/span><\/p>\nWickenden, Dorothy. <\/span>Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West<\/span><\/i>. First Scribner hardcover edition. New York, NY: Scribner, 2011.<\/span><\/p>\nTranscript<\/p>\n
DeLeonibus: On April 9th, 1836, upscale prostitute Helen Jewett was brutally murdered by a brothel client in New York City. Her body was axed and burned in bed. She was 22 years old. Her death sparked a media sensation as people deplored the murder of the poor naive woman, seduced into sex by a man who then abandoned her virtueless, and forced into prostitution out of economic necessity.<\/span><\/p>\nMusic plays<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\u201cand Lord knows she’s beautiful Lord knows the usuals leaving a body sore She take the little change she make to fix her nail cuticles, Lipstick is suitable to make you fiend for more She play Mr. Shakur That’s her favorite rapper bumping “Brenda’s Got A Baby” While a pervert yelling at her and she capture features of a woman But only 17, the 7 cars start honkin\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: Helen Jewett was a person, Helen Jewett was a prostitute, and Helen Jewett was murdered.<\/span><\/p>\nOf these three characteristics, the final two seemed to be more important to the media after her death. <\/span><\/p>\nHello, I\u2019m Maddie Birchfield.<\/span><\/p>\nStern: I\u2019m Sophia Stern.<\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0And I\u2019m Sophia Deleonibus.<\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: And this is Fallen Women, coming to you on May 7th, 2017 from Grinnell Iowa. Today we will explore the narrative that has been created surrounding prostitution, and how we have dissected this historiography to try to uncover the pieces of the story that might be hidden or missing, or the parts that have been exaggerated and overshown to attempt to better discern the true history of sex work in America at the turn of the century.<\/span><\/p>\nTransition music plays<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0Helen Jewett\u2019s murder makes me feel uncomfortable and distressed. The murder is brutal and scary. There is a part of me that doesn\u2019t even want to talk about it, while another part of me thinks we have a duty to relay her life. However, my curiosity wants to spread her story because it\u2019s interesting. The sensation around her murder has worked on me, and I want to gossip about it. <\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0What struck me most when first hearing Helen Jewett\u2019s story was the thought that we don\u2019t actually know what her life was like. The only information we have on her are quote-on quote life stories written by men after her death. Helen\u2019s narrative has been untouched by her own voice. And yet, we speak of Helen Jewett as if we knew who she was. <\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: As Sophia said in the intro, Jewett was said to have been forced into prostitution by economic necessity, but what I found myself searching for most in the research for this podcast was how, even when pushed into sex work by forces they could not control, how were these women able to push back on this lack of autonomy, and find ways to gain agency in their work and their surroundings. Yet, at the same time, I was trying to avoid what has been done time and time again, which is the simplification of these women\u2019s lives down to the singular meaning for their existence. <\/span><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0The majority of my anxieties surrounding this narrative comes from history being constructed by men. The male gaze obscuring history is ever present in the history of the sex worker, leading to an unreliable narration. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0Agreed! Similarly, I came across several sources that had major problems. The most worrisome examples were the multitude of female prostitute \u2018autobiographies\u2019 written by men. <\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: Additionally, so many sources use courtroom documentation which doesn\u2019t paint a whole picture. For one, courtroom documents only show what ended up in court, not even close to a whole story. For another, courtroom\u2019s were run by men and men who upheld the institution that created sex laws. The reports are constructed by only one side of any proceeding. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0Think back to the Helen Jewett source! \u00a0Helen Jewett was proclaimed a victim and only that. There was no place beside this victimhood to examine Helen as an agent or as an individual.<\/span><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0Men were writing her \u201clife story\u201d and sensationalizing her murder in the press. They took her voice, only caring about her once she wasn\u2019t around to defend herself. In life, the reform era drew upon the Victorian vision of the Devil’s mistress. In death, they turned her into a depraved victim<\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0So how can we think about Jewett\u2019s agency in this case? Or any prostitutes agency?<\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: By using secondary sources to critique our narratives, especially the ones men are constructing. <\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0Our first and macro cultural problem is the Othering of the prostitute as an Othered sex act. Because the inequities in society reflect in prostitution, labeling sex work as an oppressive system implies there is a utopia on the other side. As said by historian Brents Hausbeck, \u201cThe stereotypical approaches to prostitution — as deviance, as the enduring power of men over women, as violence against women, or alternatively as sexual liberation and empowerment, are problematic because they frame prostitution as a universal, singular \u201cother\u201d sexual experience.\u201d (Hausbeck 226)<\/span><\/p>\nTransition music plays<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0One way of looking at the narrative of prostitution is by looking at material culture left behind. The turn of the 20th century goes by many names, but for our context, the late 1800\u2019s to the mid 1900\u2019s was the Golden Age of Brothels. Sex work was happening in all shapes and forms, but the brothel dominated prostitution culture. <\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0There were elite brothels and brothels with reputations for disease. There were expensive brothels and brothels where you could be in and out in ten minutes, ten dollars less in your pocket. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: At the end of the day, most brothels were illegal. Many brothels cropped up with fronts. A common guise was the saloon, especially out West. It was clever: both sold alcohol and both sold sex, but the saloon was legal. <\/span><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0The main distinction between the two is that saloon\u2019s sold sex to encourage the sale of alcohol while the brothel sold alcohol to encourage the sale of sex. As long as the saloon wasn\u2019t caught, the sex work could happen among the chaos of drunken men. <\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: To combat this, a law was passed that prohibited all women from entering any saloon or else she would be considered a prostitute. While this didn\u2019t stop women, prostitutes or not, it did prevent women from having a lasting presence in these bars. <\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0Remember, this was a time of Westward Expansion, manifest destiny, and the mining rushes. Men flooded the West Coast, seeking for their fortune, and with them came the women, also seeking theirs. <\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: We\u2019d like to acknowledge here that Westward expansion was at the expense of American Indians. The saloons and brothels were situated on stolen land, as were the other events of our narrative.<\/span><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0As G.L. Simmons puts it, the American narrative is based on the rapid exploitation of natural resources. To keep America booming, the miners had to be kept happy, and non-pimped women were able to capitalize and fill their pockets. In some senses, this could be seen as a patriotic act. In others it could be seen as filled with agency. One aspect that is filled with agency was the archiving of material culture.<\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0Because women were banned from the saloons under the law, they had little control over what was left behind, meaning most things we have from saloons are items deemed owned by men.<\/span><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0However, because women owned, operated, and occupied brothels, they were able to control the history they left us. Women dominated the selection of material culture in the brothels and thus they get to tell their story. In short, our material evidence that comes from brothels was controlled by women, while the material evidence from saloons-<\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: and almost everywhere else! <\/span><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0– was controlled by men. <\/span><\/p>\nTransition music plays<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nMaddie: On the subject of brothels, I have to bring up Rachael Pringle Polgreen. \u201cShe was a woman of color, a former slave turned slave owner, and many stories circulate that she ran a well-known brothel without much legal controversy.\u201d (Fuentes 143) <\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0As a member of the black elite, she was able to live like wealthy whites, but not everyone could garner the success that Polgreen had, and this didn\u2019t mean that the women working for the brothel owners were completely disenfranchised in these establishments.<\/span><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0In fact, brothels could be safe places for women. In certain brothels, prostitutes earned a living, had a bed to sleep in, and had a supportive community of people who shared their life experiences.<\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0Within the brothels, women had the ability to make friends out of loyal customers, a blatant use of their sexuality to gain security.<\/span><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0This community sometimes allowed protection in the case of difficult or dangerous partners. Compared to outside the brothels, where the stakes were higher and the security almost non-existent, for prostitutes on the streets, there was always the risk of being caught or prosecuted. Sex workers were often forced to move around, to escape the law, or to escape abusive partners. <\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: In the case of Dorothy \u201cTar Baby\u201d Brown, she escaped her life on the streets only to end up living in horrible conditions because no work would pay her enough to expand her horizons. The money outside of prostitution was never comparable to the earnings that could be made selling her body. <\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0Some women were able to make a good enough living that they had money to spare. Interestingly enough, some prostitutes willingly \u201cdonated to local charities, churches, and schools,\u201d revealing their deep-seated desire to avoid ostracization from society (Collins 30). <\/span><\/p>\nStern: Let\u2019s bring economics fully into this equation. In his 1919 doctoral thesis, which examined social non-conformity and delinquency among women, Frances Quinter Holsopple studied a young woman named Bertha who \u201cclaims she was forced into prostitution by poverty\u201d (Holsopple 39). <\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: Money can explain the distinction between women in brothels and women on the streets, and their different relationship with the law. <\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: Women who did not bring in enough profit to the brothel were kicked out and \u201cforced to solicit on the street because they [could not] otherwise earn a living\u201d (Holsopple 8).<\/span><\/p>\nStern: In the same vein, a prostitute excluded from a high end brothel could be found in a \u201ccheap disorderly house,\u201d where their pay was lower and the likelihood was that they were being pimped (Holsopple 8). <\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: According to Holsopple, \u201cThe prostitutes who [came] under the jurisdiction of the court are the least successful of their profession. As for the large number of women who were \u201ckept\u201d in more or less comfort, and the larger number who resort to occasional immorality to supplement their earnings, they are never included in any statistics of prostitution\u201d (Holsopple 8). <\/span><\/p>\nTransition music plays<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nStern: Whether women chose to enter prostitution or not, economic success was certainly a draw. \u00a0\u00a0\u201cMany of the high class parlour women made considerable amounts of money, which in due course allowed them to set up their own houses if they wished\u201d (Simmons 130), similarly to Rachael Polgreen.<\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: But not all prostitutes could turn brothel owner, and many met the much worse fate of jail time for their crimes. Although one article I read by Clara Weidensall was entitled \u201cThe Mentality of the Criminal Woman,\u201d all of the tests focused on their physical attributes. The tests were done on two groups, some maids used as a control, and a group of prisoners in Connecticut, called the Bedford 88. <\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0The Bedford 88 came out shorter and heavier, indicating a poor diet, lacking in nutritional value. One point made about the women, that actually hinted at the mind, was that a good portion of the women were not as educated as the maids.<\/span><\/p>\nStern:When tasked with the Tapping Test, a test where the subject must tap repeatedly on the table as fast as they can until they fatigue, many of the girls could not understand the simple instructions.<\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: \u00a0Rather than realizing that a major issue in these women\u2019s lives is their lack of education, Weidensall asserts that \u201cthe test affords an excellent example of the incapacity of many criminal women to understand even very simple directions and emphasizes the need there is that greater care be given directions than is commonly the custom\u201d (Weidensall 255). <\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus:The reason that these women might have not understood was because they didn\u2019t have the same amount of schooling, creating a gap between the maids and Bedford 88 that goes back to the important thing that Weidensall overlooks in her study, money. <\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: These women were uneducated because they were economically disadvantaged, and they became criminals because prostitution provided earnings that could keep these women alive. <\/span><\/p>\nTransition music plays<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0The agent vs. victim binary is well-delineated in the historiography of American female prostitution. The prostitute as victim of circumstance, poverty, seduction, you name it, is a well-accepted narrative. Let\u2019s think back to the story of Helen Jewett. Shortly after her death, a brief biography of Ms. Jewett was published, describing how she had been seduced into discarding her virtue by a man who then abandoned her. Disgraced and alone, she turned to prostitution to make ends meet. <\/span><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0While portraying prostitutes as victims may save them from condemnations of impurity, this narrative denies agency for women engaging in sex work. The prostitute as agent is the other side of the historiographical binary. <\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: A prostitute named Elizabeth examined in a 1919 doctoral thesis professed that she \u201cbecame a prostitute deliberately\u201d (Holsopple 41).<\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0The idea of agency is not limited to the freedom to choose one\u2019s profession – more often than not, the agency narrative is linked to social respect and economic independence.<\/span><\/p>\nStern: \u00a0In the book <\/span>A Place for Pleasure<\/span><\/i>, Simmons reveals that New Orleans brothel-owners \u201cwere often respectable pillars of society…some [achieving] national fame\u201d (Simmons 127). <\/span><\/p>\nMaddie: These women were respected for managing and operating brothels and successfully navigating a male-dominated business world.<\/span><\/p>\nDeLeonibus: \u00a0With this idea of agency in mind, I\u2019d like to return to Helen Jewett. In contrast to the biographical account from mid 19th century, American women\u2019s historian Patricia Cline Cohen describes Jewett as an agent rather than a victim in an article on her life. Interestingly enough, Cohen describes how Jewett yielded her intellectual agency to frame herself as a victim-turned prostitute. Cohen writes: <\/span><\/p>\n