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the book collector came after him ‘not one has sounded its deepest depths or probed its darkest mysteries.’12 Many tried. Parent’s formidable work became the cornerstone of a staggering amount of art and literature—he has been called ‘a veritable Linnaeus of prostitution.’13 Balzac, Flaubert, the Goncourts, Hugo, Huysmans, Sue and Zola were all familiar with Parent and each created novels based on the lives of prostitutes that were based, in part, on data gathered by him. In art, the prostitute became a frequent figure in the caricatures and chromolithographs of the 1840s–1860s, as she did in the subsequent works of Manet, Degas, Lautrec and Picasso, whose Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) refers not only to the name of a Barcelona brothel, but also—and originally—to one of the old slang words for prostitute, Pont-d’Avignon, so-called for the bridge under which many prostitutes met their customers during the Avignon Papacy in the 14th century. Sur le pont d’Avignon on y danse, on y danse. But perhaps Parent’s most devoted acolyte was Alexandre Dumas (père), who acknowledged him not only on the first page, but throughout Filles, lorettes et courtisanes (1843), his analysis and description of the Byzantine typology used to describe each of the three levels of Parisian prostitution, elaborating on Parent’s original list. From the lowest working-class filles de la Cité (known as numéros, chouettes, calorgnes and trimardes), to the middle-class filles du boulevard (grisettes, lorettes, ratons, louchons), and up to the highest level of filles en maison (courtisanes, femmes du monde), Dumas inventoried them all. Although such terms were included in other works, notably those on slang, no other book had been devoted exclusively to the subject, and in such a literary way. As Dumas observes in his introduction: ‘Here is a corner of the grand Parisian panorama which no one has dared to sketch, a page in the book of modern civilization whose base is a word no one has dared utter.’ Dumas had the audacity and honesty to assert that prostitution was at the base of Parisian society. He wasn’t wrong. Yet Dumas, who understood so much about prostitution’s 12. Octave Uzanne. Parisiennes de ce temps. Mercure de France, 1910. Translated as The Modern Parisienne. G. P. Putnam’s, 1912, pp. 177–215. 13. Alain Corbin. Women for Hire. Harvard University Press, 1990, p. 6. 54
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pavement nymphs and roadside flowers place in 19th century Paris, made no mention of the sexism that accompanied and regulated it—even though it was he who coined the phrase Cherchez la femme, inferring that a woman was usually the cause of most problems.14 Others, steeped in misogyny, did not hesitate to express their sexist views, although not as metaphorically as Dumas. Noted historian and sociologist Jules Michelet held that the social order was in grave danger due to women’s ‘weak, atavistic and deranged sexuality’ as evidenced by prostitution. Writing about women’s ‘natural inferiority,’ he asserted that women were only fit to be wives and mothers.15 A more brutal attitude suited Pierre Joseph Proudhon, the influential philosopher known for his socialist-libertarian politics and for being the ‘father of anarchism.’ He was also an extreme misogynist whose views, although widely shared, were rarely put into print with such viciousness. He did not think twice in declaring in his most shocking work, La Pornocratie (1875), that a woman was capable of being only ‘a harlot or a housewife’ and that ‘a woman does not at all hate being treated with violence, indeed even being violated.’16 (Little wonder that so many women, thwarted and abused mentally, emotionally and physically, were diagnosed with ‘hysteria.’) Many of these presumptuous attitudes about women may be traced back to Parent, whose classification and regulation of prostitutes heralded the 19th century’s determination to proscribe women’s opportunities, education and sexuality.17 Yet Proudhon’s words seem more monstrous than most, and I wondered how deeply his views were embedded in French culture. With Dumas as a guide, I began to compile my own list of French synonyms for prostitute, reasoning that such words would reveal a great deal about how the French regarded women and sex. I didn’t realize just how long 14. It appeared in his crime novel Les Mohicans de Paris (1854–59). 15. See Michelet’s L’Amour (1858) and La Femme (1860). 16. P.-J. Proudhon. La Pornocratie ou Les Femmes dans les Temps Moderne. Lacroix, 1875, p. 267. This infamous work, published posthumously, was a diatribe against women and their increasingly active roles in 19th century society, which he viewed as having become a pornocracy, the rule by prostitutes and corrupt individuals. 17. And let us keep in mind that the women of France were not allowed to vote until 1944. 55

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the book collector came after him ‘not one has sounded its deepest depths or probed its darkest mysteries.’12 Many tried. Parent’s formidable work became the cornerstone of a staggering amount of art and literature—he has been called ‘a veritable Linnaeus of prostitution.’13 Balzac, Flaubert, the Goncourts, Hugo, Huysmans, Sue and Zola were all familiar with Parent and each created novels based on the lives of prostitutes that were based, in part, on data gathered by him. In art, the prostitute became a frequent figure in the caricatures and chromolithographs of the 1840s–1860s, as she did in the subsequent works of Manet, Degas, Lautrec and Picasso, whose Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) refers not only to the name of a Barcelona brothel, but also—and originally—to one of the old slang words for prostitute, Pont-d’Avignon, so-called for the bridge under which many prostitutes met their customers during the Avignon Papacy in the 14th century. Sur le pont d’Avignon on y danse, on y danse.

But perhaps Parent’s most devoted acolyte was Alexandre Dumas (père), who acknowledged him not only on the first page, but throughout Filles, lorettes et courtisanes (1843), his analysis and description of the Byzantine typology used to describe each of the three levels of Parisian prostitution, elaborating on Parent’s original list. From the lowest working-class filles de la Cité (known as numéros, chouettes, calorgnes and trimardes), to the middle-class filles du boulevard (grisettes, lorettes, ratons, louchons), and up to the highest level of filles en maison (courtisanes, femmes du monde), Dumas inventoried them all. Although such terms were included in other works, notably those on slang, no other book had been devoted exclusively to the subject, and in such a literary way. As Dumas observes in his introduction: ‘Here is a corner of the grand Parisian panorama which no one has dared to sketch, a page in the book of modern civilization whose base is a word no one has dared utter.’ Dumas had the audacity and honesty to assert that prostitution was at the base of Parisian society. He wasn’t wrong.

Yet Dumas, who understood so much about prostitution’s

12. Octave Uzanne. Parisiennes de ce temps. Mercure de France, 1910. Translated as The Modern Parisienne. G. P. Putnam’s, 1912, pp. 177–215. 13. Alain Corbin. Women for Hire. Harvard University Press, 1990, p. 6.

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