Authors: Simone de Beauvoir
Mlle G. de Bordeaux, leaving the convent at eighteen, is persuaded, out of curiosity and without thinking of any danger, to follow a stranger from the fair into his caravan, where she is deflowered.
Without thinking, a thirteen-year-old child gives herself to a man she has met in the street, whom she does not know and whom she will never see again.
M.… tells us explicitly that she was deflowered at seventeen by a young man she did not know … she let it happen out of total ignorance.
R.…, deflowered at seventeen and a half by a young man she had never seen whom she had met by chance at the doctor’s, where she had gone to get the doctor for her sick sister; he brought her back by car so that she could get home more quickly, but in fact he left her in the middle of the street after getting what he wanted from her.
B.… deflowered at fifteen and a half “without thinking about what she was doing,” in our client’s words, by a young man she never saw again; nine months later, she gave birth to a healthy boy.
S.…, deflowered at fourteen by a young man who drew her to his house under the pretext that he wanted her to meet his sister. The young man in reality did not have a sister, but he had syphilis and contaminated the girl.
R.… deflowered at eighteen in an old trench from the front by a married cousin with whom she was visiting the battlefields; he got her pregnant and made her leave her family.
C.… at seventeen, deflowered on the beach one summer evening by a young man whom she had just met at the hotel and at a hundred meters from their two mothers, who were talking about trifles. Contaminated with gonorrhea.
L.… deflowered at thirteen by her uncle while listening to the radio at the same time as her aunt, who liked to go to bed early, was sleeping quietly in the next room.
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We can be sure that these girls who gave in passively nevertheless suffered the trauma of defloration; one would like to know what psychological influence this brutal experience had on their future; but “girls” are not psychoanalyzed, they are inarticulate in describing themselves and take
refuge behind clichés. For some, the facility of giving themselves to the first comer can be explained by the existence of prostitution fantasies about which we have spoken: out of family resentment, horror of their budding sexuality, the desire to act grown-up, some young girls imitate prostitutes; they use harsh makeup, see boys, act flirtatiously and provocatively; they who are still infantile, asexual, and cold think they can play with fire with impunity; one day a man takes them at their word, and they slip from dreams to acts.
“When a door has been broken open, it is then hard to keep it closed,” said one fourteen-year-old prostitute.
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However, the girl rarely decides to be a streetwalker immediately following her defloration. In some cases, she remains attached to her first lover and continues to live with him; she takes an “honest” job; when the lover abandons her, another consoles her; since she no longer belongs to one man, she decides she can give herself to all; sometimes it is the lover—the first, the second—who suggests this means of earning money. There are also many girls who are prostituted by their parents: in some families, like the famous American family the Jukes, all the women are doomed to this job. Among young female vagabonds, there are also many girls abandoned by their families who begin by begging and slip from there to the streets. In 1857, out of 5,000 prostitutes, Parent-Duchâtelet found that 1,441 were influenced by poverty, 1,425 seduced and abandoned, 1,255 abandoned and left penniless by their parents.
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Contemporary studies suggest approximately the same conclusions. Illness often leads to prostitution as the woman has become unable to hold down a real job or has lost her place; it destroys her precarious budget, it forces the woman to come up with new resources quickly. So it is with the birth of a child. More than half the women of Saint-Lazare had at least one child; many raised from three to six children; Dr. Bizard points out one who brought fourteen into the world, of whom eight were still living when he knew her. Few of them, he says, abandon their children; and sometimes the unwed mother becomes a prostitute in order to feed the child. He cites this case, among others:
Deflowered in the provinces, at nineteen, by a sixty-year-old director while she was still living at home, she had to leave her family, as she was pregnant, and she gave birth to a healthy girl that she
brought up well. After nursing, she went to Paris, found a job as a nanny, and began to carouse at the age of twenty-nine. She has been a prostitute for thirty-three years. Weak and exhausted, she is now asking to be hospitalized in Saint-Lazare.
It is well-known that there is an increase of prostitution in wars and the crises of their aftermath.
The author of
The Life of a Prostitute
, published in part in
Les Temps Modernes
,
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tells of her beginnings:
I got married at sixteen to a man thirteen years older than I. I did it to get out of my parents’ house. My husband only thought of making me have kids. “Like that, you’ll stay at home, you won’t go out,” he said. He wouldn’t let me wear makeup, didn’t want to take me to the movies. I had to stand my mother-in-law, who came to the house every day and always took the side of her bastardly son. My first child was a boy, Jacques; fourteen months later, I gave birth to another, Pierre … As I was very bored, I took courses in nursing, which I liked a lot … I got work at a hospital on the outskirts of Paris, working with women. A nurse who was just a girl taught me things I hadn’t known about before. Sleeping with my husband was mostly a chore. As for men, I didn’t have a fling with anyone for six months. Then one day, a real tough guy, a cad but good-looking, came into my own room. He convinced me I could change my life, that I could go with him to Paris, that I wouldn’t work anymore … He knew how to fool me … I decided to go off with him … I was really happy for a month … One day he brought along a well-dressed, chic woman, saying: “So here, this one does all right for herself.” At the beginning, I didn’t go along with it. I even found a job as a nurse in a local hospital to show him that I didn’t want to walk the streets, but I couldn’t carry on for long. He would say: “You don’t love me. When you love a man, you work for him.” I cried. At the hospital, I was sad. Finally, I was persuaded to go to the hairdresser’s … I began to turn tricks! Julot followed me to see if I was doing well and to be able to warn me if the cops were onto me.
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In some ways, this story is the classic one of the girl doomed to the street by a pimp. This role might also be played by the husband. And sometimes, by a woman as well. L. Faivre made a study in 1931 of 510 young prostitutes; he found that 284 of them lived alone, 132 with a male friend, and 94 with a female friend with whom they usually had homosexual ties.
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He cites (with their spelling)
*
extracts of the following letters:
Suzanne, seventeen. I gave myself to prostitution, especially with women prostitutes. One of them who kept me for a long time was very jealous, and so I left that street.
Andrée, fifteen and a half. I left my parents to live with a friend I met at a dance, I understood right away that she wanted to love me like a man, I stayed with her four months, then …
Jeanne, fourteen. My poor sweet papa’s name was X.… he died in the hospital from war wounds in 1922. My mother got married again. I was going to school to get my primary school diploma, then having got it, I went to study sewing … then as I earned very little, the fights with my stepfather began … I had to be placed as a maid at Mme X.’s, on X. street … I was alone with a girl who was probably twenty-five for about ten days; I noticed a very big change in her. Then one day, just like a boy, she admitted her great love. I hesitated, then afraid of being let go, I finally gave in; I understood then certain things … I worked, then finding myself without a job, I had to go to the Bois, where I continued with women. I met a very generous lady, and so forth.
Quite often, the woman only envisages prostitution as a temporary way of increasing her resources. But the way in which she then finds herself enslaved to it has been described many times. While cases of the “white slave trade,” where she is dragged into the spiral by violence, false promises, mystifications, and so on, are relatively rare, what happens more often is that she is kept in this career against her will. The capital necessary to get her started is provided by a pimp or a madam who acquires rights over her,
who gets most of her profits, and from whom she is not able to free herself. Marie-Thérèse carried on a real fight for several years before succeeding:
I finally understood that Julot didn’t want anything but my dough, and I thought that far from him, I could save a bit of money … At home in the beginning, I was shy, I didn’t dare go up to clients and tell them “come on up.” The wife of one of Julot’s buddies watched me closely and even counted my tricks … So Julot writes to me that I should give my money every evening to the madam: “Like that, nobody will steal it from you.” When I wanted to buy a dress, the hotel manager told me that Julot had forbidden her to give my dough … I decided to get out of this trick house as fast as I could. When the boss lady found out I wanted to leave, she didn’t give me the tampon before the visit like the other times, and I was stopped and put into the hospital
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… I had to return to the brothel to earn some money for my trip … but I only stayed in the house for four weeks … I worked a few days in Barbès like before but I was too furious at Julot to stay in Paris: we fought, he beat me, once he almost threw me out of the window … I made an arrangement with a go-between to go to the provinces. When I realized he knew Julot, I didn’t show up at the rendezvous. The agent’s two broads met me on rue Belhomme and gave me a thrashing … The next day, I packed my bags and left alone for the isle of T.… Three weeks later I was fed up with the brothel, I wrote to the doctor to mark me as going out when he came for the visit … Julot saw me on Boulevard de Magenta and beat me … My face was scarred after the thrashing on Boulevard de Magenta. I was fed up with Julot. So I signed a contract to go to Germany.
Literature has popularized the character of the fancy man. He plays a protective role in the girl’s life. He advances her money to buy outfits, then he defends her against the competition of other women and the police—sometimes he himself is a policeman—and against the clients. They would like to be able to consume without paying; there are those who would readily satisfy their sadism on a woman. In Madrid a few years ago Fascist and gilded youth amused themselves by throwing prostitutes into the river on cold nights; in France students having fun sometimes brought women into
the countryside and abandoned them, entirely naked, at night; in order to get her money and avoid bad treatment, the prostitute needs a man. He also provides her with moral support: “You work less well alone, you don’t have your heart in it, you let yourself go,” some say. She often feels love for him; she takes on this job or justifies it out of love; in this milieu, man’s superiority over woman is enormous: this distance favors love-religion, which explains some prostitutes’ passionate abnegation. They see in their male’s violence the sign of his virility and submit to him even more docilely. They experience jealousy and torment with him, but also the joys of the woman in love.
But sometimes they feel only hostility and resentment for him: it is out of fear, because he has a hold over them, that they remain under his thumb, as we just saw in the case of Marie-Thérèse. So sometimes they console themselves with a “fling” with one of their clients. Marie-Thérèse writes:
All the women have flings, me too, in addition to their Julot. He was a very handsome sailor. Even though he was a good lover, he didn’t turn me on, but we felt a lot of friendship for each other. Often he came up with me without making love, just to talk; he told me I should get out of this, that my place wasn’t here.
They also find consolation with women. Many prostitutes are homosexual. We saw that there was often a homosexual adventure at the beginning of their careers and that many continued to live with a woman. According to Anna Rueling, about 20 percent of prostitutes in Germany are homosexual. Faivre points out that in prison young women prisoners correspond with each other with pornographic and passionate letters that they sign “United for life.” These letters are similar to those schoolgirls write to each other, feeding the “flames” in their hearts; these girls are less aware, shyer; prisoners carry their feelings to the limit, both in their words and their actions. We can see in the life of Marie-Thérèse—who was launched into lovemaking by a woman—what special role the female “pal” plays in comparison to the despised male client or the authoritarian pimp:
Julot brought around a girl, a poor drudge who didn’t even have a pair of shoes to wear. At the flea market they buy what she needed, and then she comes to work with me. She was sweet, and in addition she liked women, so we got along well. She reminded me of everything I learned with the nurse. We had a lot of fun, and instead of working, we went to the movies. I was happy to have her with us.
One can see that the girlfriend plays approximately the same role that the best friend plays for the virtuous woman surrounded by women: she is the companion in pleasure, she is the one with whom she has free, gratuitous relations, that can thus be chosen; tired of men, disgusted by them, or wishing for a diversion, the prostitute will often seek relief and pleasure in the arms of another woman. In any case, the complicity I spoke of and that immediately unites women exists more strongly in this case than in any other. Because their relations with half of humanity are commercial, because the whole of society treats them as pariahs, there is great solidarity among prostitutes; they might be rivals, jealous of each other, insult each other, fight with each other; but they have a great need of each other to form a “counter-universe” in which they regain their human dignity; the friend is the confidante and the privileged witness; she is the one who approves of the dress and hairdo meant to seduce the man, but which are ends in themselves in other women’s envious or admiring gazes.