A Few Brief Thoughts on “Blaming and Shaming in Whore’s Memoirs” by Julie Peakman

This was found in History Today and makes for quite the titillating introduction to a fascinating side of the literary spectrum. Peakman, a lecture at the University of London with a focus on sex and literature, has become interested in an 18^th-century genre where prostitutes and women with scandalous reputations wrote what were basically the tell-all memoirs of their times.

It makes me think of James Boswell publishing his diaries unexpurgated in his own time.

Peakman recognizes very modern impulses behind these books. "Whore biographies," she says, not only allowed their authors to make money to support them in an old age where looks and appeal dropped, but also let them "reveal their paramours for what they really were."

From my point of view, a grand literary project could be dreamed up of their relations with the famous authors of their day, or a comparison between how THEY wrote about sex and how MEN wrote about sex.

An interesting double-standard…just as women are often dichotomized into Madonnas and Whores, so the latter are celebrated when they make their exploits public, even rejoiced over by their fallen nature, while the idea of men telling all often comes across as repellent.