Date Thesis Awarded
8-2008
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
History
Advisor
Kathrin Levitan
Committee Members
Deborah Denenholz Morse
Karin A. Wulf
Abstract
The goal of my research is to investigate the ways in which prostitutes, and specifically prostitutes in public spaces, were used as a symbol for the multiple fears that arose in British society during the long nineteenth century. These fears ranged in content from economic anxieties, to the control of women, to more specific concerns over public health and international relations. The rhetoric used against prostitutes coincides with the progression of these anxieties, suggesting that the true nature of public concern over prostitutes was not necessarily about sex as a commodity; rather, these women acted as an outlet through which contemporaries could express their broader, perhaps more complicated fears during the period, many of which related directly to the use of public space.
Recommended Citation
Booth, Maria Dale, "Prostitution and the Representation of Anxiety in London, 1723-1870" (2008). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 848.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/848
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Comments
Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.