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Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
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Flackette Goes Retro
07/29/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
Fancy was her name.
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callmecountry
07/29/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
My favourite whore's biography is 'Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure'. The euphemisms for gentlemanparts are great - 'plenipotentiary member' is my favourite. BBC4 showed a great miniseries of the book last year - well worth seen=king out
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Flackette Goes Retro promoted this comment callmecountry was starred callmecountry was unstarred

beatrice2000
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
Has anyone seen the movie Dangerous Beauty? It explains the courtesan Veronica Franco's reasoning as her family being poor, but her being very witty and smart and beautiful, and being a courtesan would allow her to seduce men both sexually and with her brain, and be paid handsomely for it. It's not a perfect movie, but it's fun to watch and think more about the fantasy rather than the reality.
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MargaretMoony
07/29/09

@beatrice2000: It was a good movie!
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nessalicious
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
These books also inspired Zola to write one of the best books ever 'Nana' about a French actress/courtesan's rise to infamy and her gradual descent.

I recommend it to anyone!
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descent
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
These sound SO much more interesting than my own whore memoirs, which are usually drunken, hard-to-follow, slightly passive agressive FB status updates posted between 2 and 4 a.m.
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isacloud
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
My thesis was on a very similar topic to this, so it's odd to see it written about on here!

Part of the thing that's fascinating about this genre is the agency it gave women who were often portrayed as wretches to be pitied. The thing that endlessly fascinates me about the 18th century is this sort of dualling portrayal: on the one hand you have the hugely popular seduction novels (Clarissa, etc.), which were basically etiquette books/cautionary tales for middle class girls/women, and then you have this genre, which, yes, often portrayed prostitutes as past victims of "seduction" (often rape) but saw it leading not to the protagonist's ruin or death, but to a sort of triumph.
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funnyface
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
I'm taking a class on 18th Century women's writers this fall and now I'm suddenly disappointed that there are no whore memoirs on the syllabus.
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andBegorrah
07/28/09

@funnyface: But their contemporaries and critics usually called them whores, so there's that!
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Jenloveshercurves
07/28/09

@funnyface: It seems that you need to tell your professor that you would like to read one of these and compare it through a lens to another novel you are reading.
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Ailatan
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
Has anyone read The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag? It got me into the life of Emma Hamilton.

Also worth watching That Hamilton Woman with the beautiful Vivien Leigh.
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curiousgeorgiana
07/28/09

@Ailatan: Also worth reading: "England's Mistress" the bio of Emma Hamilton. Absolutely amazing.
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Ailatan promoted this comment curiousgeorgiana was starred curiousgeorgiana was unstarred

Ailatan
07/28/09

@curiousgeorgiana: Thanks, I'll see if I can find it.
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Susie Bright
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
Sadie, I'd love to see you compare some of those old whore memoirs with the famous stripper tell-alls of recent years!
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MizJenkins
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
See also, Supahead.
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descent
07/28/09

@MizJenkins: Also known as "The Oral History of Karrine S-----".
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J.D.Regent
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
I want Sadie to stage a takeover of my book club.
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andBegorrah
07/28/09

@J.D.Regent: I want her to stage a takeover of my brothel/writers' collective. Our profits AND our publication rates are execrable.
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Edited by andBegorrah at 07/28/09 7:11 PM andBegorrah was starred andBegorrah was unstarred

RosemaryF
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
I know that fanny=cooch in the UK, but I'm assuming that it didn't have the same meaning in 1759. Did the current definition come from her name, possibly?
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andBegorrah promoted this comment RosemaryF was starred RosemaryF was unstarred

andBegorrah
07/28/09

@RosemaryF: It's possible that it became a slang term with the publication of (the very very dirty) Fanny Hill in 1748. But it's a bit chicken-and-egg-ish: "Moll" was a lower-class nickname that became associated with female pickpockets and other roguish types thanks to Moll Cutpurse, who had biographical and autobiographical pamphlets published, and then of course Moll Flanders, whose name is deliberately suggestive; but were Molls criminals who influenced the cultural coding of the name, or did the infamous Molls of popular literature invent that association? Did Cleland invent "fanny" as a dirty word, or did he use it for the name because it already was one?
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la.donna.pietra
07/28/09

@andBegorrah: I would guess that "Fanny" was not a pejorative term by at least 1778, as Fanny Burney would have published Evelina as Frances or Mary Frances Burney (when she did get around to acknowledging authorship) otherwise. It was a common diminutive of "Frances" for a good chunk of the 17th century.
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andBegorrah
07/28/09

@la.donna.pietra: True, and of course there was "Fanny INSUFFERABLETWAT Price" - that's my own personal nickname for her - among other figures into the first half of the 19th century. The mythology of the Cleland etymology is just so appealing though, damn it.
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Pizza!Pizza!Pizza!
07/28/09

In reply to Blaming And Shaming: "The Whore Memoir"
Like they say, if you're part of a minority or oppressed group, best to be at the very bottom or the very top, financially. Most high-end prostitutes managed to be a little of both.
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