Even prostitution, in the long run, may become a more or less
respectable profession, as it was in the great days of the Greeks. That
quality will surely attach to it if ever it grows quite unnecessary;
whatever is unnecessary is always respectable, for example, religion,
fashionable clothing, and a knowledge of Latin grammar. The prostitute
is disesteemed today, not because her trade involves anything
intrinsically degrading or even disagreeable, but because she is
currently assumed to have been driven into it by dire necessity,
against her dignity and inclination. That this assumption is usually
unsound is no objection to it; nearly all the thinking of the world,
particularly in the field of morals, is based upon unsound assumption,
e.g., that God observes the fall of a sparrow and is shocked by the
fall of a Sunday-school superintendent. The truth is that prostitution
is one of the most attractive of the occupations practically open to
the sort of women who engage in it, and that the prostitute commonly
likes her work, and would not exchange places with a shop-girl or a
waitress for anything in the world. The notion to the contrary is
propagated by unsuccessful prostitutes who fall into the hands of
professional reformers, and who assent to the imbecile theories of the
latter in order to cultivate their good will, just as convicts in
prison, questioned by tee-totalers, always ascribe their rascality to
alcohol. No prostitute of anything resembling normal intelligence is
under the slightest duress; she is perfectly free to abandon her trade
and go into a shop or factory or into domestic service whenever the
impulse strikes her; all the prevailing gabble about white slave jails
and kidnappers comes from pious rogues who make a living by feeding
such nonsense to the credulous. So long as the average prostitute is
able to make a good living, she is quite content with her lot, and
disposed to contrast it egotistically with the slavery of her virtuous
sisters. If she complains of it, then you may be sure that her success
is below her expectations. A starving lawyer always sees injustice, in
the courts. A bad physician is a bitter critic of Ehrlich and Pasteur.
And when a suburban clergyman is forced out of his cure by a
vestry-room revolution he almost invariably concludes that the
sinfulness of man is incurable, and sometimes he even begins to doubt
some of the typographical errors in Holy Writ.
The high value set upon virginity by men, whose esteem of it is based
upon a mixture of vanity and voluptuousness, causes many women to guard
it in their own persons with a jealousy far beyond their private
inclinations and interests. It is their theory that the loss of it
would materially impair their chances of marriage. This theory is not
supported by the facts. The truth is that the woman who sacrifices her
chastity, everything else being equal, stands a much better chance of
making a creditable marriage than the woman who remains chaste. This is
especially true of women of the lower economic classes. At once they
come into contact, hitherto socially difficult and sometimes almost
impossible, with men of higher classes, and begin to take on, with the
curious facility of their sex, the refinements and tastes and points of
view of those classes. The mistress thus gathers charm, and what has
begun as a sordid sale of amiability not uncommonly ends with formal
marriage. The number of such marriages is enormously greater than
appears superficially, for both parties obviously make every effort to
conceal the facts. Within the circle of my necessarily limited personal
acquaintance I know of scores of men, some of them of wealth and
position, who have made such marriages, and who do not seem to regret
it. It is an old observation, indeed, that a woman who has previously
disposed of her virtue makes a good wife. The common theory is that
this is because she is grateful to her husband for rescuing her from
social outlawry; the truth is that she makes a good wife because she is
a shrewd woman, and has specialized professionally in masculine
weakness, and is thus extra-competent at the traditional business of
her sex. Such a woman often shows a truly magnificent sagacity. It is
very difficult to deceive her logically, and it is impossible to disarm
her emotionally. Her revolt against the pruderies and sentimentalities
of the world was evidence, to begin with, of her intellectual
enterprise and courage, and her success as a rebel is proof of her
extraordinary pertinacity, resourcefulness and acumen.
Even the most lowly prostitute is better off, in all worldly ways, than
the virtuous woman of her own station in life. She has less work to do,
it is less monotonous and dispiriting, she meets a far greater variety
of men, and they are of classes distinctly beyond her own. Nor is her
occupation hazardous and her ultimate fate tragic. A dozen or more
years ago I observed a somewhat amusing proof of this last. At that
time certain sentimental busybodies of the American city in which I
lived undertook an elaborate inquiry into prostitution therein, and
some of them came to me in advance, as a practical journalist, for
advice as to how to proceed. I found that all of them shared the common
superstition that the professional life of the average prostitute is
only five years long, and that she invariably ends in the gutter. They
were enormously amazed when they unearthed the truth. This truth was to
the effect that the average prostitute of that town ended her career,
not in the morgue but at the altar of God, and that those who remained
unmarried often continued in practice for ten, fifteen and even twenty
years, and then retired on competences. It was established, indeed,
that fully eighty per cent married, and that they almost always got
husbands who would have been far beyond their reach had they remained
virtuous. For one who married a cabman or petty pugilist there were a
dozen who married respectable mechanics, policemen, small shopkeepers
and minor officials, and at least two or three who married well-to-do
tradesmen and professional men. Among the thousands whose careers were
studied there was actually one who ended as the wife of the town’s
richest banker—that is, one who bagged the best catch in the whole
community. This woman had begun as a domestic servant, and abandoned
that harsh and dreary life to enter a brothel. Her experiences there
polished and civilized her, and in her old age she was a grande dame of
great dignity. Much of the sympathy wasted upon women of the ancient
profession is grounded upon an error as to their own attitude toward
it. An educated woman, hearing that a frail sister in a public stew is
expected to be amiable to all sorts of bounders, thinks of how she
would shrink from such contacts, and so concludes that the actual
prostitute suffers acutely. What she overlooks is that these men,
however gross and repulsive they may appear to her, are measurably
superior to men of the prostitute’s own class—say her father and
brothers—and that communion with them, far from being disgusting, is
often rather romantic. I well remember observing, during my
collaboration with the vice-crusaders aforesaid, the delight of a lady
of joy who had attracted the notice of a police lieutenant; she was
intensely pleased by the idea of having a client of such haughty
manners, such brilliant dress, and what seemed to her to be so
dignified a profession. It is always forgotten that this weakness is
not confined to prostitutes, but run through the whole female sex. The
woman who could not imagine an illicit affair with a wealthy soap
manufacturer or even with a lawyer finds it quite easy to imagine
herself succumbing to an ambassador or a duke. There are very few
exceptions to this rule. In the most reserved of modern societies the
women who represent their highest flower are notoriously complaisant to
royalty. And royal women, to complete the circuit, not infrequently
yield to actors and musicians, i.e., to men radiating a glamour not
encountered even in princes.