Patriarchy And Prostitution In The Eighteenth Century: A Cause And Effect Relationship

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of patriarchy in creating the issue of prostitution during the eighteenth century. It argues that prostitution during that time had a relationship with commercialism with the consequences of women being forced to secure a living through using their sexuality instead of their minds or hands. To achieve this goal, the paper analyzes how the issue was addressed in the literary works of Daniel Defoe, Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Eliza Haywood, along with the prostitute narratives which were written during the same time. The significance of the works is that they do not only the provide both, the male’s and the female’s perspective towards prostitution, but also the prostitute herself. The paper concludes that the eighteenth-century prostitution existed as a tool that exposed the hypocrisy of its patriarchal society, especially in terms of the inequality that was concerned with the gender and the economic rights.