Common Women : Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England"Common women" in medieval England were prostitutes, whose distinguishing feature was not that they took money for sex but that they belonged to all men in common. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England tells the stories of these women's lives: their entrance into the trade because of poor job and marriage prospects or because of seduction or rape; their experiences as streetwalkers, brothel workers or the medieval equivalent of call girls; their customers, from poor apprentices to priests to wealthy foreign merchants; and their relations with those among whom they lived. Common Women crosses the boundary from social to cultural history by asking not only about the experiences of prostitutes but also about the meaning of prostitution in medieval culture. The teachings of the church attributed both lust and greed, in generous measure, to women as a group. Stories of repentant whores were popular among medieval preachers and writers because prostitutes were the epitome of feminine sin. Through a sensitive use of a wide variety of imaginative and didactic texts, Ruth Karras shows that while prostitutes as individuals were marginalized within medieval culture, prostitution as an institution was central to the medieval understanding of what it meant to be a woman. This important work will be of interest to scholars and students of history, women's studies, and the history of sexuality. |
Contents
| 3 | |
Brothels Licit and Illicit | 32 |
Becoming a Prostitute | 48 |
The Sex Trade in Practice | 65 |
Marriage Sexuality and Marginality | 84 |
Common terms and phrases
accused adultery Agnes Alice bawdry BIHR bishop bishop of Winchester Book Bromyard brothelkeepers brothels Cal L-B Cal PMR Cambridge University Press charged Chaucer CLRO commercial prostitutes common whore common women compurgators court records Court Rolls culture customers daughters defamation ecclesiastical economic example exempla fabliaux female feminine sexuality fifteenth century fined fornication fourteenth fourteenth-century gender Goldberg Golden Legend Guildhall Library harlot History husband indicate Joan John Karras King's Lynn late medieval Liber Albus literature lived lust male manorial Margaret Margery Margery Kempe marriage married Mary medieval England medieval English Middle English misogyny moral offenses official brothels Oxford University Press preachers preaching priests procurers pros prostitutes punished Record Office regulation Saint sermons servants sex trade sexual behavior Shipman's Tale sins social Southampton Southwark stewholders stews story term texts Thomas tion titutes towns trans Virgin vols whore whoredom wife wives woman York