A Creative Curation by Mary Davis
Josephine Butler is a lesser-known feminist and social reformer who fought for women's rights in the Victorian era. My curation will explore her work against the harsh treatment of prostitutes during the Victorian era by focusing on her campaign against the Contagious Disease Acts. I will provide context for her work by describing the rise of prostitution in England and the Contagious Disease Acts before discussing her campaign and what I believe it reveals about women, sex, and morality during the Victorian era.
Victorian Prostitution: The Conditions that Fostered "The Necessary Evil"
The practice of prostitution, dubbed "The Great Social Evil," was growing in Victorian England. The Industrial Revolution led to an increase in population, a surplus of labor, and a subsequent decrease in wages. Many working class women turned to prostitution to supplement a meager wage from factory or domestic work. Young men were expected to marry only when they could afford to support a family. This was not economically feasible for many during this time. Additionally, the British Army did not allow men to marry. These factors contributed to an abundance of unmarried men and women, and inevitable extramarital relations ("Prostitution in Victorian England").
"The Great Social Evil" was simultaneously believed to be a "Necessary Evil." These seemingly conflicting ideas and the debate over the sanctity of prostitution grew out of Victorian conceptions of sex and gender roles. The value of a Victorian woman relied heavily on ideology of "The Angel of the House." Women were expected to be domestic and pure moral leaders of a household. Because of these expectations and the idea that sex was only meant for procreation, a woman's respectability was contingent on her virginity. Once a woman was no longer a virgin, she was deemed "ruined." Women who had extramarital relations or illegitimate children were also referred to as prostitutes--the term served as a "catch all" to describe sexually impure women ("Prostitution in Victorian England").
On the opposite side of this dichotomy, men were believed to have greater energy to take on roles outside of the home in the public sphere. They were regarded as the lustful opposition to the pure female and were "slaves" to their sexual energies. It was accepted that men needed an outlet for their sexual appetite. Therefore, their participation in the act was blameless. Some justified prostitution because it allowed respectable women to avoid male sexual advances. It provided an outlet for married gentlemen who could not be satisfied by their respectable wives ("Prostitution in Victorian England"). Others justified the practice because they believed the government should not control how labor is used ("Early and Mid-Victorian Attitudes towards Prostitution").
Working class women who were involved with sex work were frequently impoverished. They faced the danger of disease and death. Some became addicted to opium in an attempt to escape from their situation and were in turn more economically unstable. Many prostitutes became the victims of murder, most famously with the case of Jack the Ripper, and some committed suicide. Venereal diseases were also spread between prostitutes and their clients, most notably syphilis ("Prostitution in Victorian England"). Eventually the spread of these diseases created a problem with "The Necessary Evil" that couldn't quite be ignored.
The Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, 1869
The Contagious Disease Act was first passed in 1864, and was modified in 1866 and 1869. They were designed to stop the spread of venereal diseases in the military and navy. Women who were suspected to be prostitutes were forced into a two week long internal medical exam. If women were determined to have a disease, they would spend up to a year in a ward, would be subjected to more medical examinations, and would have their name placed on a police register of "common prostitutes." The examination was supposed to be voluntary, but women were forced to go to court if they did not agree to it and they had no right to Habeas Corpus, right to trial by jury, or right to appeal (Summers 2).
The Acts gave the police the power to determine who was a prostitute and who was not. Working class women were often accused of prostitution if they were found to be in public alone: "Women found to be outside of buildings, standing on corners, or lurking in doorways were particularly in danger of being labeled as ‘common prostitutes.’ Many of these women were gossiping, selling fruits and wares, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time." These women were unjustly forced into humiliating examinations, sometimes referred to as "rape by speculum," because of their class ("The Contagious Disease Acts 1864, 1866, 1869").
Supporters of the law believed that prostitution was inevitable, and therefore clean women must be provided for men to use. However, the legislation officially legitimized a double standard of sexual morality. While both contributing to the practice of prostitution, women were punished and men were pardoned.
The acts unintentionally sparked a feminist movement that united middle and working class women, lead in part by Josephine Butler.
Josephine Butler's Campaign
Josephine Butler lead the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Disease Acts. She was an avid writer and published many essays to advance her cause. Butler also made speeches in Britain and throughout Europe. Butler exposed the double standard of sexual morality to the public and challenged the male systems of power that justified it. She argued that the Acts stripped women of their constitutional rights, and likened the condition of these women to slavery. She targeted members of the aristocracy that enforced the legislation, pointing out the upper class male's exemption from punishment (Summers 4). Notably, during an interview, a prostitute revealed to Butler that the man who condemned her had used her services the day before: "I did find it rather hard that the gentleman on the bench who gave the casting vote for my imprisonment had paid me five shillings the day before to go with him" (qtd. in Summers 4). The issue of women's rights was closely entwined with the issue of class, as many women were led to sex work due to economic need, and upper class males were both using their services and condemning them.
"I did find it rather hard that the gentleman on the bench who gave the casting vote for my imprisonment had paid me five shillings the day before to go with him" (qtd. in Summers 4).
Butler was also critical of male physicians and believed their practices were violating to women. The examinations performed on women who were suspected of prostitution were invasive and humiliating. Butler argued that prostitutes "had been invaded by men's bodies, men's laws, and by that 'steel penis,' the speculum" (Walkowitz 125). She portrayed them as innocent women who were forced to sell their bodies and who fell victim to male aggression. This image challenged the Contagious Disease Act's implied message that prostitutes were the temptresses of men (Walkowitz 127). Her discourse relied heavily on identification with the female body. According to Anne Summers, "her campaigns were rooted in the physical experience of the female body. She asserted the validity of that experience, and the rights to that body, against the judgements and ambitions of the medical profession, the desires of male partners or purchasers, and the decision of the legislative state" (Summers 10). Legitimizing the experience of the female body empowered women to take ownership over their experience. This was an important first step in the feminist movement as it validated the female experience in opposition to the men who had the power in society to make decisions about the female body.
This rhetoric allowed middle-class and working class women to come together as reformers. Women referred to each other as family--"mothers," "sisters," and "daughters"--manipulating their domestic and familial roles to work against patriarchal power. They asserted their right to defend prostitutes as "fallen sisters" who had the right to sell their bodies. This created a connection between women across classes and mobilized a large group of women (Walkowitz 127).
This was sensational!
Butler mobilized these women to enter the political arena. They were speaking openly about prostitution and issues surrounding the construction of sexuality. They were challenging powerful men. Butler concluded her essay "The Constitution Violated" powerfully: "English women will be found ready again and again to agitate, to give men no response, to turn the world upside down if need be, until impurity and injustice are expelled from our laws" (qtd. in Summers 6). This quote reads as a sensational call to action to Victorian women.
"English women will be found ready again and again to agitate, to give men no response, to turn the world upside down if need be, until impurity and injustice are expelled from our laws" (qtd. in Summers 6).
And all this was happening during the conservative Victorian Era, in which women were expected stay in the private sphere, and much less expected to speak about sexual matters. But they were producing an embodied protest that was described as "at times violent and embarrassing in its outspokenness," in defense of their rights (Summers 9). Women, who would in subsequent centuries fight for suffrage and reproductive rights, were beginning to turn the world upside down under the leadership of Butler.
The Contagious Disease Acts were repealed in 1886. Butler continued to campaign for women's rights. She became part of William T. Stead and Florence Booth's campaign to end child prositiution and helped raise the age of consent from 13 to 16 (“Josephine Butler: The Forgotten Feminist").
So What Does This Mean? Women, Sex, and Victorian Morals
The Contagious Diseases Acts revealed the problematic Victorian attitude toward prostitution. Women were condemned for their participation in the act of prostitution, while the men that paid for their services were accepted by society. Women were "ruined" and "fallen" when they participated in extramarital sex. In contrast, the men who solicited prostitutes were not only sanctioned by society, but the government was actually attempting to protect their habit through legislation. The Contagious Diseases Acts were not passed to help women who were forced into prostitution because of their economic struggles because they deviated from the gender expectations of moral women. Instead, they were passed to ensure that the male sexual appetite would be sustained. It did not matter if women were contracting venereal diseases through "The Necessary Evil," only that they were passing them to men.
The Contagious Disease Acts also illuminated that issues of gender were associated with issues of class. The fact that working class women and prostitutes were indistinguishable in the eyes of the Contagious Disease Acts shows that the Victorian standard of the "ideal woman" was impossible for a working class woman to achieve. Working class women could not be "The Angel of the House" when they were required to work to survive. Regardless of their moral character, their participation in public spaces made them subject to accusations of prostitution. Women were limited to the domestic sphere and expected to take care of their families and homes, but the working class women who were unable to live comfortably without contributing a salary were unable to meet the standards. They were devalued as much as the women who were prostitutes.
Josephine Butler's campaign was radical for the time, but still limited by traditional gender norms. The women used their expected predisposition to the domestic sphere as leverage while advancing for the rights of women. Although the campaign did bring together working class and middle class women, it maintained a hierarchy that limited the working class women to subordinate roles.
I believe this was necessary for the campaign to be successful. Instead of "turning the world upside down" immediately, women needed to work within the belief systems constraining them in order to appeal to the male audience which had the power to make changes. With the help of Josephine Butler, small doses of sensational feminism were able to tilt the world a bit in the direction of equality.
Works Cited
Summers, Anne. "'The Constitution Violated': The Female Body and the Female Subject in the Campaigns of Josephine Butler." History Workshop Journal, no. 48, 1999, pp. 1-15, www.jstor.org/stable/4289632. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Walkowitz, Judith R. “The Politics of Prostitution.” Signs, vol. 6, no. 1, 1980, pp. 123-135, www.jstor.org/stable/3173970. Accessed 14 Sept. 2017.