Jemima’s wrongsreading the female body in Mary Wollstonecraft’s prostitute biography

  1. Borham-Puyal, Miriam 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Salamanca
    info

    Universidad de Salamanca

    Salamanca, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02f40zc51

Journal:
IJES: international journal of English studies

ISSN: 1578-7044,  1989-6131

Year of publication: 2019

Issue Title: Open Issue

Volume: 19

Issue: 1

Pages: 97-112

Type: Article

DOI: 10.6018/IJES.341191 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDIGITUM editor

More publications in: IJES: international journal of English studies

Abstract

A popular eighteenth-century genre, the prostitute’s biography portrayed the lives of harlots for an avid audience. These stories capitalized on the prostitute’s body, exposing its allure and degradation, and directing their censure towards the fallen woman or the cruel society that condemned her. At the same time, they revealed the complex realities of prostitution in the gender, moral and economic politics of their time. In the tradition of the ‘whore biography,’ yet departing from simplistic approaches, Mary Wollstonecraft included the story of a redeemed prostitute, Jemima, as one of the inset narratives of her last work, The Wrongs of Woman (1798). The present article discusses how the prostitute’s story enables Wollstonecraft to expose the control over women’s bodies within an endemically unjust society, regulating their role as mothers, sexual beings and workers, advancing contemporary discussions on women’s function as (re)producers and the ways in which their bodies are still circumscribed.

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Funding information

This work was supported by a grant from the Conselleria d‟Educació, Investigació, Cultura i Esport of the Generalitat Valenciana (REF. GV/2018//106).

Funders

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