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Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought
Berlin Coquette: Prostitution and the New German Woman, 1890–1933
During the late nineteenth century the city of Berlin developed such a reputation for lawlessness and sexual licentiousness that it came to be known as the "Whore of Babylon." Out of this reputation for debauchery grew an unusually rich discourse around prostitution. In Berlin Coquette, Jill Suzanne Smith shows how this discourse transcended the usual clichés about prostitutes and actually explored complex visions of alternative moralities or sexual countercultures including the “New Morality” articulated by feminist radicals, lesbian love, and the “New Woman.”
Combining extensive archival research with close readings of a broad spectrum of texts and images from the late Wilhelmine and Weimar periods, Smith recovers a surprising array of productive discussions about extramarital sexuality, women's financial autonomy, and respectability. She highlights in particular the figure of the cocotte (Kokotte), a specific type of prostitute who capitalized on the illusion of respectable or upstanding womanhood and therefore confounded easy categorization. By exploring the semantic connections between the figure of the cocotte and the act of flirtation (of being coquette), Smith’s work presents flirtation as a type of social interaction through which both prostitutes and non-prostitutes in Imperial and Weimar Berlin could express extramarital sexual desire and agency.
237 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 3, 2013
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September 21, 2018
Dealing with the history of prostitution from a theoretical level has always been difficult, if only because there has always been some slippage and struggle over the meanings of various words that can be used to define women as literal prostitutes or to censure them for what was considered their "loose" moral behavior. I don't want to use the "W" word, but you get the drift.
Ms. Jill Suzanne Smith takes this complexity as the entry point for her study on the idea of the prostitute in Germany in the 1920s. "Weimar" has become a sort of catchall metonym, even though Berlin was the center of Germany (and arguably European culture) during this time. The author examines the literature, movies, fine art, and laws of the twenties to show how attitudes on women's rights in the wider society were very much tied to the fate and status of prostitutes in the Weimar Years (I almost wrote "working girls" instead of "prostitutes" there, which illustrates how conflation and overlap between groups of women continues to shape our thought and language).
The work is uniformly interesting, and incorporates some theory without browbeating the reader too hard or becoming insufferable, which can sometimes happen in scholarly texts that strive so hard to be perceived as academic that they willfully try not to be entertaining, or sometimes even readable.
The book starts with the ideas of August Bebel and George Simmel, that marriage may be codified and protracted prostitution, or just a regrettable and unavoidable outcome of the capitalist commodification of everything, including sex. I'm skeptical of that last idea, since prostitutes tend to ply their trade in nations regardless of their political orientation (it might not be the world's oldest profession, but it almost certainly is the most durable and women have sold sex everywhere from concentration camps to ostensible socialist utopias).
The ultimate view that obtains after reading this book is that perhaps too much misplaced moral, intellectual and social energy has been exerted on combating or interpreting prostitution, which (no matter how well-meaning) obscures the fact that women become prostitutes because it is a way to make a living in a harsh world, and to achieve a measure of independence when other options might not be close at hand.
Not as good an analysis as Maria Tatar's "Lustmord" (which the author really keeps in her sights and slams with some regularity) but a solid and accessible study all in all. Recommended.
Ms. Jill Suzanne Smith takes this complexity as the entry point for her study on the idea of the prostitute in Germany in the 1920s. "Weimar" has become a sort of catchall metonym, even though Berlin was the center of Germany (and arguably European culture) during this time. The author examines the literature, movies, fine art, and laws of the twenties to show how attitudes on women's rights in the wider society were very much tied to the fate and status of prostitutes in the Weimar Years (I almost wrote "working girls" instead of "prostitutes" there, which illustrates how conflation and overlap between groups of women continues to shape our thought and language).
The work is uniformly interesting, and incorporates some theory without browbeating the reader too hard or becoming insufferable, which can sometimes happen in scholarly texts that strive so hard to be perceived as academic that they willfully try not to be entertaining, or sometimes even readable.
The book starts with the ideas of August Bebel and George Simmel, that marriage may be codified and protracted prostitution, or just a regrettable and unavoidable outcome of the capitalist commodification of everything, including sex. I'm skeptical of that last idea, since prostitutes tend to ply their trade in nations regardless of their political orientation (it might not be the world's oldest profession, but it almost certainly is the most durable and women have sold sex everywhere from concentration camps to ostensible socialist utopias).
The ultimate view that obtains after reading this book is that perhaps too much misplaced moral, intellectual and social energy has been exerted on combating or interpreting prostitution, which (no matter how well-meaning) obscures the fact that women become prostitutes because it is a way to make a living in a harsh world, and to achieve a measure of independence when other options might not be close at hand.
Not as good an analysis as Maria Tatar's "Lustmord" (which the author really keeps in her sights and slams with some regularity) but a solid and accessible study all in all. Recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review