Prostitution — Carnal Commerce

Introduction 

Prostitution, considered the oldest profession in human history, was widely accepted in the 18th-century European society. This is despite the efforts by both religious and government institutions to try containing it. Prostitution flourished and the extent to which it thrived is shown by the level of interest in it by the contemporary scholars, poets, and other artists of the time as well as of recent studies into the prostitution in historical Europe. Of particular interest are the illustration of prostitution in Europe through paintings in the works of William Hogarth and Tessa Storey. Hogarth and Storey illustrate about prostitution from different times in history and while Hogarth does so from the first-hand experience, Storey uses both primary and secondary sources as well as her own interpretation and understanding of the contexts to present her illustrations. As such, there are clear differences, despite there being some similarities too, between the pieces of art by the two authors. 

Differences in Perspectives on Prostitution 

The first notable difference between the two illustrations on prostitution by the two authors is the context in which the illustrations were made. Hogarth writes from the medieval context, a time when prostitution was widely accepted across Europe (England) and specifically in London, the author's birth city. On the other hand, Storey's illustrations are done based on primary and secondary sources that she examines for her 2008 book, Carnal Commerce in Counter-Reformation and thus, she also illustrates based on the Roman context. One thing to note about the medieval age is that while prostitution flourished, it was nevertheless considered a vice, unacceptable behavior that did not reflect the social norms of the 18th European society. So, in illustrating prostitution in London, Hogarth presents it as an immorality that leads to damage to the women who engaged in the act. This is clear from The Libertine Life paintings that show the life of a woman who works as a prostitute as miserable despite her even being capable of clinching a powerful position in the society through the wealth she gains through prostitution. In one illustration, a woman is depicted as vulnerable and somewhat suffering from a sexually transmitted infection as she vomits while seated on her bed as shown below: 

As shown in the illustration above, the woman is isolated from the rest of the society and has no one to attend to her while she is sick from her "immoral" act of gaining financial independence. Before she gets to the position above, however, the woman is shown to be sexually appealing, causing men to lust for, as in the following illustration: 

Hogarth contrasts the kind of life a woman lives above with that of being a mother, a wife in The Happy Family. The illustrations in the Happy Family depict a situation in which a woman who shuns prostitution lives a happy life and builds a respectable family, eventually being in a position to raise her children as opposed to committing them to a grave in the other life of a prostitute. It is immediately clear from the illustrations that Hogarth viewed prostitution as entirely evil and even tried to bring in the idea of the need for divine intervention to save women from it as shown in the following illustration: 

On her part, however, Storey presents prostitution as part of the social, economic, and cultural history of Rome. She delineates from the predominantly top-down history of moralized marginalization in Hogarth's work as well as the underlying institutional repression of prostitution to an objective approach that focuses on the woman as a worker, a member of the family institution and society, and as both a social and cultural actor. According to Storey's illustrations, it is apparent that she is of the view that women were driven into prostitution not out of poverty or greed, but out of Counter-Reformation by various religious institutions that were meant to transform public morality represented by prostitution. She presents prostitution in the lively picture of the infamous '"carnal commerce" of Rome, incorporating the point of view of the women and their customers. Both customers and the prostitutes suffered from the societal attitude towards prostitution. The illustrations of Signora Anzola and the youth who falls in love with a prostitute help to explain the point. The series of the life of Anzola shows a woman who begins partying from where she gets into prostitution, is promoted to live the life of duchess before she is caught with one of her other lovers and is rendered homeless and penniless. She loses all her belongings to a second-hand dealer and is left for the streets where she suffers from syphilis that kills her later in the hospital. On the other, the youth who dates a prostitute and decided to welcome her home to her parents is thrown out of the house by his father. His mother gives him some money that he squanders in gambling and in living large with his prostitute. She abandons him when the money is depleted. The youth resorts to stealing which leads to his arrest and imprisonment. Fortunately for him, he gets the help of a friend out of the prison. In the two accounts, both prostitutes and their customers were equally victims of a society that socially constructed prostitution as a vice, something that is not present in Hogarth's illustrations. Instead, Hogarth shows through his illustration that it was primarily women who suffered the brunt of societal disapproval of prostitution. Moreover, while Storey shows that over the centuries between the 16th and 18th centuries prostitution was gaining ddiscernible growth, Hogarth is of the position was getting societal disapproval and that reforms through an intervention by religious and governmental institutions would see its slow disappearance. 

Similarities of Perspectives on Prostitution 

Despite there being clear differences about the perspectives of the authors regarding prostitution in the 18th-century Europe, some similarities are apparent from the illustrations — prostitution leads to short-term gains or benefits and long-term suffering for the prostitute(and her customers in the case of Storey's illustrations). The short-term gains were majorly financial in nature as women earned money from the commoditized bodies. Through such financial gains, prostitutes became financially independent and some of them even became influential. In the story of Anzola, she was lured into prostitution to get a financial reprieve. While achieved her goal, she ended up in the streets and later died miserably of syphilis. The same story is reflected in the following illustration by Hogarth: 

The woman in the painting ended up losing her child that she must have conceived in her prostitution endeavors. The society did not care much about the plight of the woman losing her child. The child some sort of outcast, a product of an immoral act, a sin so to say. As for the customers to the prostitutes, Storey shows that they too suffer in the end from their lust for the flesh. The young man who courted a prostitute and was eventually chased away by his father did not have a good ending for his story. He became a spendthrift and used all the money his mother gave him to entice his lover, only to end up being left by the woman when he had depleted his financial resources. The young man's "good life" with the prostitute was short-lived. 

Apart from the short-term benefits of prostitution, the two authors also agree on the fact that prostitutes targeted and were mostly engaged with the middle-class and high-class men in the society. The paintings show wealthy men, judging on their lifestyle and dress code, engaging with the prostitutes as in the following illustration by Hogarth: 

The man in elegant dress code is shown engaging a prostitute in a conversation that is seemingly about seeking sexual pleasure from her. Storey also provides an illustration of a youth, the son of a wealthy man, who courts a prostitute. The woman who dies of syphilis, Anzola, was previously a mistress to a very wealthy man who gave her good life and she even lived the life of a duchess. The fact that prostitutes went after rich men also help to reinforce the first point that the key motivation behind prostitution was its promise for financial stability or independence. 

Conclusion 

In summary, Hogarth and Storey differed in the manner in which they conceived prostitution in Europe, but still reached consensus on why women engaged in prostitution and what outcomes were likely from the act. According to Hogarth, prostitution was an immorality that the society did not have to tolerate. Women who engaged in prostitution was evil and needed divine intervention to live acceptable lifestyle and raise honorable families. On the there hand, Storey sees prostitution as an outcome of the role of woman as social actors, members of their families with economic responsibilities, despite the fact they engaged in what religious institutions and the government of Rome did not approve. Clearly, Hogarth did his illustrations about prostitution in London from the point of view of reformers. He did not have the privilege of consulting a wide range of literature and sources as had Storey, making his perspective more of his own conviction about prostitution. On the other hand, Storey consulted both primary and secondary sources on the nature of prostitution in Rome, taking a view that slightly deviated from that of Hogarth and looked at prostitution from both the experience of prostitutes and their customers and the position of the Roman government and religious institutions. 

Storey on "Carnal Commerce" in Rome 

Prostitution has evolved from being what was previously sordid academic sidebar into a phenomenon in human history completed integrated into the economic, social, and cultural history. One does not look any further than Storey's Carnal Commerce in Counter-Reformation Rome in order to understand the shift that has taken shape in scholarship on prostitution. Storey's book is a revision of study of prostitution, moving away from the institutional repression and moralized marginalization of prostitution into an examination of the phenomenon from the perspectives of the women involved and their customers as well as religious institutions and government actors. In short, she takes an integrated examination of prostitution to give an objective view of the nature of prostitution in the 18th-century Rome. Apart from the fact that Storey shifts the optics through which prostitution has been viewed in the past, she also gets the advantage of consulted new sorts of documentation. Thus in her introductory remarks, she acknowledges the role of the judicial archives in modern Italian cities that provided gratifying information on sex trade from which she drew new and important perspectives. The book, a monograph to give it a proper name, provides an extended and in-depth picture of prostitution in England. She builds from the work of previous scholars who examined prostitution in Rome and organizes the thoughts and ideas of these authors into themes for the nine chapters. The following review will focus on Chapter 5 and the last chapter, Chapter 9. From the two chapters, the small topical discussions approach as used by the author are quite thoughtful, but not wholly convincing. 

At the core of Storey's book are the last five chapters, which speak to the experience of traders and their customers within the commerce of prostitution. Many of the women in Rome real exercised both social and economic agency though in what might be described as strikingly complicated way. In Chapter 5, the author speaks to the business end of prostitution, showing that women in Rome were sellers of their commoditized bodies. Beyond being sellers of their bodies, prostitutes in Rome were also identified as consumers and brokers of material culture. She goes ahead to develop identity for the Roman prostitutes. According to the author, women who practiced prostitution in Rome were identified by their level of autonomy. These women were likely to be segregated from the integrated and respectable society, although the author fails to develop this subject further in Chapter 5 even she introduced it in an earlier chapter as spatial matter. As regards the relationship between the prostitutes and their customers, especially regular agents ( amici fermi ), Storey observes that the prostitutes constructed ideal relationships with their clients, making it possible to continue influencing the perception of the society regarding prostitution. They, the prostitutes, framed masculinity-enhancing practice in which she notes that several men shared a single prostitute as in the illustration below: 

While the author recognizes the fact there were conflicts and rivalries in the judicial records she had access to, she downplays the role of women in shaping their personal relationships which was a characteristic of sex trade in Rome. 

While the study carried out by Storey deserves to be praised for the good work in examining the life of prostitutes of varying wealth and pestige as well as their customers, it ignores the so-called honest courtesan who thrived in the Renaissance papacy. Honest courtesans referred to those prostitutes who practiced publicly and not those who worked secretly and the latter who considered officially illegal. Proper distinction in this area is lacking as it does with related scholarships. Storey has distinguished between women practicing prostitution in low, middle, and high class based in their differences in access to both social and economic capital. The weakness in what should have been the core of the book threatens to subvert the success Storey had achieved or intended to achieve. 

References 

Storey, T. (2012). Carnal commerce in Counter-Reformation Rome . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.