Prostitution in mid-nineteenth century England lurked just beneath the surface of Victorian society. Although the subject was taboo in polite company, moralists, writers, and social workers often were highly outspoken on the subject of "fallen women." Indeed, many authors chose to embody all three voices by bringing the public's attention to this "scourge of society." Dante Gabriel Rossetti uses a supposedly "enlightened" scholar to expose some of the underlying middle-class fears of "fallen women" and the dangers inherent in placing women in stereotypical categories in his poem "Jenny." Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, too, wrote about a prostitute in her novel Mary Barton. However, differences in authorial experience, opinion, and viewpoint provide the reader with two contrasting views of prostitution.

Women in nineteenth century England labored under the stereotypes of a Madonna/Magdalene mentality. In an age when "normal" women were not thought to have any sexual pleasure, it is no surprise that prostitution flourished. Most nineteenth century prostitutes were orphans or young women who resorted to prostitution to augment their meager incomes as laundresses, seamstresses, or factory workers. Many of these young women viewed their stint as prostitutes as a transient stage in their lives. Often by age twenty-five or six they would marry and move on with their lives.

Although middle and upper class men had the capital, most working-class prostitutes "serviced" men of their own class. Women flocked to army bases and naval ports to take advantage of England's "Bachelor Army" and greatest naval fleet. In the wake of the Crimean War, the military became increasingly concerned about the health of its' servicemen; venereal diseases ran rife among the military's enlisted men.⁽¹⁾ The government's answer was to institute the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1864 which required all prostitutes within a radius of the bases to register with the police and to monthly submit to an internal examination to verify whether or not she was diseased. Those infected were incarcerated in lock hospitals with other venereal victims for up to nine months. According to this system, once a woman was listed as a prostitute, she was compelled to appear for this exam whether or not she continued to practice the profession, or if she later married. No matter what, the stigma followed her. The public outcry against these Acts was enormous for many people felt that such actions only reinforced the established sexual "double-standard." Even "reformed" prostitutes could not leave behind the stigma of the fallen woman. These Acts were hotly contested for about twenty years until they were finally dropped in 1886.⁽²⁾

During these years, Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote his poem "Jenny." At the same time, the dispute over the rights women, even fallen ones, stayed prominent in the public mind. Perhaps Rossetti had such an audience in mind when he wrote this work. In "Jenny," Rossetti uses the dramatic monologue to explore notions of Victorian womanhood. The prostitute Jenny is the foil against which the speaker ponders over the fine line separating the "fallen woman" and the "angel-lady."

The speaker is a student who has lapsed to his former, dissolute lifestyle ("It was a careless life I led / When rooms like this were scarce so strange") (p. 64). Although before he had consorted frequently with prostitutes, the speaker probably never thought of his purchases beyond their sexual capacity. In the course of the evening, somewhat to his dismay, Jenny falls asleep with her head upon his knee without having consummated their exchange. That he still anticipated an adventurous evening is evidenced by such lines as, "What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep / Your head there so you do not sleep; But that the weariness may pass." (p. 65) She remains asleep thus providing the vehicle for the poem. Instead of sexual excess, the speaker begins to speculate about her past, her humanity, and her shame. Through this discourse, he proposes a "linguistic fantasy [in which] he gains the sexual power Jenny denies him."⁽³⁾ Her silence permits the speaker to ponder over who she is as both a person and a cipher, and come to realize that she is no different than any other female. Perhaps only when "the noise of life" ceases does he really think about the "unthinkable" woman--the whore.

The "Scholar John" in "Jenny" has been the subject of literary criticism for the past 130 years. John Ruskin and Robert Buchanan (writing as Thomas Maitland), two famous mid-Victorian literary critics, "condemned the speaker [for] his cool detachment and lack of sentiment."⁽⁴⁾ Ruskin elaborated by explaining "the character of the speaker...is too doubtful...he reasons and feels entirely like a wise and just man--yet is occasionally drunk and brutal: no affection for the girl shows itself..." Both the critics perceived the speaker's descent into the "middle-class ethos" just like Matthew Arnold in his "Study of Poetry." The speaker exhibits signs of "narrow-mindedness," even in the face of his "wickedness" and "moral laxity."

Twentieth century critics continue to study this "middle-class" disposition. James G. Harris in his article on Rossetti complains, "the young man's bent for moralizing displaces what should have an aesthetic experience, and blinds him to the true worth, the riches before him."⁽⁵⁾ William Hardesty III continues, "this prig sees Jenny, as well perhaps as women whom he would consider nobler, merely as sex objects. Kris Lakey, the author or an insightful article in Victorian Poetry, concludes from these critics, that the speaker is a "faceless intellectual conductor who facilitates abstract moral debate rather than a character whose sensibility colors his intellectual response to his situation.⁽⁶⁾ For all the "scholar john's" book learning and former bohemian lifestyle, this middle-class voice crops up both throughout the poem and within through his envisionment of women. He cannot but to designate women into "separate spheres." Yet, within this poem, he begins to realize that Jenny and his fiancée Nell are not so different.

Jenny sleeps "just as another woman...Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps of doubt and horror.." (p. 67) The prostitute is not of another species--she is a flesh and blood woman like any other "made of the same lump [of clay]." She is even "so mere a woman" like the speaker's beloved Nell (whose love for the speaker does not prevent him from consorting with prostitutes--would she still have wanted him had she known of his secret, silent other life?) Yet even the speaker acknowledges that "love" is the common "part of all they share." In this poem, love sometimes seems to be confused with sexual pleasure/anticipation. In this confusion, the speaker associates, perhaps to his horror, his "love" for Jenny with his love for Nell. This love/sexual experience, although lacking in Nell, is more than made up for by Jenny in her lifestyle. This relationship, however, is not fulfilled between Jenny and the speaker.

Indeed, his relationship with Jenny, albeit a commercial one, is not very different than that with Nell. In fact, the speaker probably has thought more about Jenny, the individual, in the space of a few hours than in the untold amount of time he has known Nell. Actually, his "interpretations" of Jenny seem so much more interesting when compared to the clothes mad and empty-headed Nell (My cousin Nell is fond of fun / And fond of dress and change and praise / so mere a woman in her ways) (p. 67) whose innocence of sexuality seems to both entice him and to cause him to further realize that she, like Jenny, is a sexual being.
 

One little part of all they share

For Love himself shall ripen these

In a kind soil to just increase

Through years of fertilizing peace (p. 68).

Perhaps he looks forward to a possible consummation with Nell which he has been denied with Jenny. To date he had not "known" either Jenny or Nell, yet Jenny possesses a "storehouse" of knowledge which both repels and entices him to probe deeper with his thoughts--though not with his body.

Another image prevalent throughout the poem is that of the book metaphor. Critic Robin Sheets in her article "Pornography and Art: The Case of Jenny," examines this metaphor's extension through Rossetti's poem. The young scholar, unable to work, leaves his library and hires Jenny, "an object to be opened in the pursuit of textual pleasures," whom he assumes she will be "the one text he is able to master." However, Sheets hints that this metaphor carried "unconscious hostility" for it suggests to the reader that Jenny "will be as impenetrable as his other books." As the poem continues, Jenny becomes a "volume seldom read" in which, the book image, now associated with Jenny's mind, suggests that the speaker is beginning "to suspect that he cannot open the Jenny-text. The image becomes sexual as he anticipates his words pushing against the taut binding and penetrating her brain."⁽⁷⁾

Blooming, beautiful Jenny is like "a rose shut in a book in which pure women may not look." (p. 69) Although he is a supposedly free thinking, enlightened scholar, the speaker's books, (i.e. learning and society) compel him to follow tradition and condemn her. The books become the forces which oppress her and contaminate her. (Perhaps this is a metaphor for the men who both pay for her and then legally oppress her) This poses the question, does the prostitute contaminate society or is she the victim of society's lusts? Within the book that the Jenny-bloom is pressed, "vile words" leech into this "crushed flower." Words which no lady can look upon without her cheek becoming "more than a living rose." Thus, the speaker almost implies that forces beyond Jenny's control cause her to degrade herself. Nevertheless, women such as Jenny also endanger the virtue of "purer" women, for the lady too, becomes at risk when she faces the reality of the fallen woman.

The speaker archly extends the pure verses contaminated metaphor even further for he continues by comparing Jenny's beauty to the artwork of Da Vinci and Raphael. This is interesting for both artists are famous for their religious paintings, especially Madonnas, which conjures up both the old stereotypes of Madonna and Magdalene and the fine line drawn between them. However, Jenny's image inspires the speaker to wax eloquently and fearfully how she shows "this which man has done...Man's pitiless doom must now comply with lifelong hell." (p. 69) She becomes neither Madonna nor Magdalene but Eve: "A cipher of man's changeless sum of lust, past, present, and to come." (p. 70)

This imagery also coalesces with Walter Pater's descriptions of the Mona Lisa by Da Vinci, written in his essay "The Renaissance. Pater exclaims that in her smile "all the thoughts and experiences of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have power to define and make expressive...the lust of Rome, the reverie of the Middle Ages...[and] the sins of the Borgias."⁽⁸⁾ Jenny, to the speaker, like to Mona Lisa's smile, personifies the corporality of the world and the base nature of mankind. Unlike DaVinci's Mona Lisa, however, Jenny is not the speaker's "ideal lady" but a fearful combination of sex, sin, and womanhood--a combination which, as the writer discovers, even Nell possesses.

The speaker's gazing at Jenny leads him to the conclusion that virtue is not always beautiful or kind. During his night-long verbal reverie, the speaker muses how morality often is jealous. "...Envy's voice at virtue's pitch / Mocks you because your gown is rich." (p. 64) The phrase "vice is seldom clad in rags" comes to mind. Virtue isn't always its own reward, for voluptuous, desirable Jenny stands out over the "pale girl" whose "ill clad grace and toil worn look proclaim the strength that keeps her weak and other nights than yours bespeak." (p. 64) Yet society applauds the chastity of the "pale girl" for her "strength" of character which chooses virtuous poverty over sinful splendor. Perhaps her "lonely" evenings and threadbare clothes give her the impetus to mock the well clad Jenny.

For all her "fleshly pleasures," lurking beneath Jenny may be some unpleasant realities. As mentioned earlier, venereal diseases spread almost uncontrollably between prostitute and John in mid-Victorian England. D.G. Rossetti, even if he himself was unafflicted, would have been highly aware of the Contagious Diseases agitation. He seems to have imparted this knowledge to his narrator for he speaks of Jenny's mind (and, presumably, her body,) as "A Lethe of the middle-street / Where all contagious currents meet" (p. 67). Disease and decay seem to be part of Jenny's lifestyle. Perhaps this explains why the speaker does not wake her up--he might be an early practitioner of "safe sex."

Thus Jenny, the embodiment of both lust and love divine, becomes inexorably entangled in the speaker's notion of sin, grace, and womanhood. Woman, the eternal question, rankles his mind until the dawn. No doubt, he would have preferred a night of passion, instead, he provided for the reader a compelling commentary into his views of women.
 

Elizabeth Gaskell's "Esther" in her novel Mary Barton provides an interesting contrast to Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Jenny" in several ways. Both "Jenny" and "Esther" embody the absolute worst of Victorian womanhood in that they have "fallen into sin" and become prostitutes. However, in Mary Barton, the reader understands the circumstances behind Esther's "fall." In "Jenny", the reader must rely solely upon the speculations of the man who has bought her for the evening.

The social implications of the two women are entirely different. Elizabeth Gaskell in her novel Mary Barton places Esther within an entire social context. Esther is the quintessential "good girl gone wrong."⁽⁹⁾ Esther's shame is eventually known and acknowledged by her family, neighbors, and her entire circle of friends. Esther must pay the price of reckless love by her abandonment by her sailor and the death of her child. For this she rightly suffers, in the mind of her greatest critic, John Barton.

Elizabeth Gaskell's sympathy towards this character comes forth in her vivid portrayal of Esther's poverty and degradation and her desire to save her beloved niece from her fate. Even Gaskell's description of Esther's clothes, her "gauze bonnet, once pink, now dirty white, the muslin gown all draggled and soaked up to her very knees" tell of her fall more eloquently than her words of warning to her niece. (p. 168 Mary Barton) This is such a contrast from the girl who left her boardinghouse "dressed in her bonnet, and gloves on her hands, like the lady she was so fond of thinking herself." (p. 43 Mary Barton) Gaskell graciously allows Esther to die of consumption (no doubt the result of her ill-gotten and insubstantial finery) in her brother-in-law's home instead of in a lock hospital.

John Kucich in his article "Female Transgression in Elizabeth Gaskell's Novels," believes that the skewed, calculating application of social desires and ambitions lead to ruin in Gaskell's novels; only the rectification of this calculating ambition will cause the character to discover proper sexual identification and behavior.⁽¹⁰⁾ According to this theory, because Mary Barton came to her senses, she married happily and achieved a lifestyle only dreamed of by her Aunt Esther. For Esther, who realized her bad choices only too late, experienced shame, social displacement, and eventually, death. Yet, was Esther really calculating? She thought she could become a "lady" with better clothes, food, and social standing. Instead, Esther was probably blinded by the outward signs of gentility and did not think of the consequences of "rising above her station."

In contrast to Gaskell's Esther, the reader's understanding of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Jenny" is limited to the words spoken by the narrator. Jenny's "employer," the "scholar-john" of literary criticism, waxes eloquently through the night about Jenny. However, for all his eloquence, he can only speculate; he is an unreliable narrator. The reader can infer the truth about Jenny from her surroundings.

Jenny seems to have succeeded as a better class of prostitute. The description of Jenny's room in the poem, contrasts with Ether's obvious poverty . Jenny seems to have her own room which in itself is significant. The speaker's descriptions of "clocks," "lamps," and her "double pillowed bed," differs entirely from poor Esther who probably sleeps on the streets or wherever she can find a place to rest. Although this speculation probably is unrealistic, the john imagines Jenny's "lifted silken skirt" while her "coach wheels splash rebuke / On virtue" (p. 66). This is in sharp contrast to the water-logged and bedraggled Esther.

These different observations of and commentaries upon prostitution could easily result from the vast differences between Elizabeth Gaskell and D.G. Rossetti themselves. Gaskell, as the wife of a Unitarian minister in Manchester, would have had firsthand experience with the poor. With Christian charity in mind, Gaskell probably had contact with prostitutes who, in her mind, were led to prostitution out of poverty, desperation, or seduction. She sympathetically portrays Esther as a fallen woman with a mission: to prevent a similar fate for her niece.

In contrast, D.G. Rossetti himself had numerous contacts with nameless and faceless prostitutes. He had two long-term liaisons with prostitutes who served him both as lovers and models before he met and subsequently married Elizabeth Siddal.⁽¹¹⁾ He probably had the opportunity to consort with a better class of prostitutes than those Gaskell met. Jenny's comfortable room, her supposed silks, and her "scholar-john's" educational opportunities suggest a higher standard of living. Instead of the starving "wretched woman" portrayed by Esther, Jenny is a seemingly well fed, voluptuous blond ("...warm sweets open to the waist. / All golden in the lamplights' gleam") (p. 64) who, once she overcomes her shame, seems to like her profession ("Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea") (p. 63). Granted, this "warmth" may be some sexual fantasy of the unreliable narrator. Whatever her true feelings, Jenny seems to make a fairly good living for herself.

For the "scholar-john," silence is golden. He can envision, fantasize, and speculate about Jenny's past, present, and future. Silence is their secret. Unfortunately for Esther, her speech is all to clear. Until she voiced herself, John Barton could block her from his mind and protect Mary from the shame of her aunt. However, when Esther comes forth to warn Mary and her father, reality eventually comes crashing down upon herself and the Barton family. Their shame, which results from Esther's transgressions, is communal. Esther broke the silence by coming forth and confirming all her misdeeds.

Thus, although "Jenny" and "Esther" in Mary Barton are prostitutes, their voices, situations, and authorial experience are vastly different. These two works provide an interesting contrast of womanhood against the backdrop of the mid-nineteenth century's growing awareness of prostitution.
 
 

1. Judith K. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Social Reform: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 49.

2. Eric Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalenes (London: Heineman, 1975), p. ,192.

3. Daniel A. Harris. "D.G. Rossetti's Jenny: Sex, Money, and the Interior Monologue." Victorian Poetry 22 (Summer 1984), p. 205.

4. Kris Lackey, "A Scholar-John: The Speaker in Jenny." Victorian Poetry 21 (Winter 1983), p. 426.

5. James G. Harris, "The Rejected Harlot: A Reading of Rossetti's `A Last Confession' and `Jenny'." Victorian Poetry 10 (1972), pp. 126-127.

6. Lackey, "The Scholar-John," p. 428.

7. Robin Sheets, "Pornography and Art: The Case of Jenny," Critical Inquiry 14 (Winter 1988), p. 328.

8. Walter Pater, The Selected Writings of Walter Pater, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: New American Library, 1974), p. 46.

9. Beth Kalikoff, "The Falling Woman in Three Victorian Novels," Studies in the Novel 19 (Fall 1987), p. 358.

10. John Kucich, "Transgression and Sexual Difference in Elizabeth Gaskell's Novels." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 32 (Summer 1990), pp. 192-193.

11. Sheets, "Pornography and Art," p. 315.

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