The Great Social Evil: Victorian Society's Creation of Prostitutes

Scholars today widely agree that the Victorian age, from 1830-1901, was not the best time for English women.  As the editors of the Norton Anthology of English Literature write, "political and legal reforms in the course of the Victorian period had given citizens many rights...but women did not share in these freedoms" (990).  Given few educational opportunities; lacking the right to participate in the political process, either through voting or holding political office; and unable, until the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 to 1908, even to "own or handle their own property" ("Introduction" 990), women--particularly women of the upper and middle classes--were relegated to home and hearth, and "feminine idleness was treasured as a status symbol" ("Woman Question" 1582).  In an age of great social change, however, women's subservient position did not go unnoticed; many writers of the time addressed the "Woman Question."  An examination of the career of Becky Sharp, one of the two women at the center of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, reveals the oppressive paradox at the heart of genteel Victorian womanhood:  a woman's financial and social security depended on her use of her sexuality to attract a mate, and yet a virtuous woman could never use that sexuality knowingly to further the cause of her own survival.  According to Victorian mores, only wicked women dared try to take control of their own fates.  Unfortunately for many women, the unlucky accident of poverty or low social class could turn an intelligent and ambitious woman "wicked."

Thackeray seems to have recognized the unfairness of this doctrine, and to have addressed it in his treatment of Becky Sharp.  The orphan of a drunken painter and a French opera-girl, Becky enters Vanity Fair, and the marriage market, a penniless governess with nothing but her own wits to help her make her way in the world.  Her exploits as she rises from governess to Captain's wife, and from poverty to comparable wealth and security, do mark her as a wicked woman and eventually as a disgraced demimondaine, but they also demonstrate extraordinary intelligence and an indomitable will, as well as a certain sympathy towards her on the part of her creator.  As Richard C. Stevenson writes, "the text provides us with a 'double' yet coherent way of viewing Becky:  on the one hand we are given a firm basis on which to judge her severely, and on the other we are encouraged to see the limitations of that judgment and to feel a guarded admiration for the way in which she comports herself" (1).  Thackeray accomplishes this by establishing Becky as a character without a single resource in the world beyond what lies within herself.  Becky muses, "[I have] only herself and her own wits to trust to.  Well, let us see if my wits cannot provide me with an honorable maintenance" (104), and they do.  The aplomb with which she determines to rise above her circumstances in invites the reader's sympathy and admiration.

Becky's circumstances at the beginning of the novel are indeed disadvantageous, at least relating to her chances in the marriage market in which the genteel young ladies of the time met their future providers.  Thackeray explains:

For though the task of husband-hunting is generally, and with becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange these delicate matters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself, there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble off her hands...Our beloved but unprotected Rebecca determined to do her very best to secure the husband, who was even more necessary for her than for her friend [Amelia Sedley, the merchant's daughter].  (23-4)

The perception of necessity drives Becky.  Amelia is the daughter of a well-off merchant.  She will never, as far as the reader knows, have to work for her living, or suffer any indignities in order to survive.  Without a husband, however, Becky must.

Becky is, in fact, already familiar with both work and indignity.  At Miss Pinkerton's, the girls' school where she and Amelia became friends, Becky was "bound over as an articled pupil; her duties being to talk French [to teach the other girls],...and her privileges to live cost free, and, with a few guineas a year, to gather scraps of knowledge from the professors who attended the school" (Thackeray 13):  she was more of a servant than a pupil.  Her own words expose the indignities of the position:

For two years I have only had insults and outrage from [Miss Pinkerton].  I have been treated worse than any servant in the kitchen.  I have never had a friend or a kind word, except from you.  I have been made to tend the little girls in the lower schoolroom, and to talk French to the Misses, until I grew sick of my mother tongue.  (Thackeray 11)

Her low status allows others to feel justified in treating her poorly, and she has only more of the same kind of treatment to look forward to upon leaving school, since she will be working as a governess.  Is it incomprehensible, then, that she should attempt to escape this dismal future using what advantages she does have at her disposal?

Those advantages, luckily for Becky, do improve her chances in the marriage market.  She has "very large, odd, and attractive [eyes]; so attractive that the Reverend Mr. Crisp, fresh from Oxford, and curate to the Vicar of Chiswick, the Reverend Mr. Flowerdew, fell in love with Miss Sharp; being shot dead by a glance of her eyes" (Thackeray 14):  even at the beginning of her career, she is already capable of exploiting her physical attractiveness in order to secure her future.  Such precocity isn't surprising.  "She had never been a girl, she said; she had been a woman since she was eight years old" (Thackeray 14) as a result of the exigencies of poverty.  As a child, she had had to talk creditors into "the granting of one meal more" (Thackeray 14), and the cunning that such early experience naturally developed helps her make the most of her advantages.  What also helps her make the most of her advantages is her awareness of them.  "I am a thousand times cleverer and more charming than [the rich Creole], for all her wealth," Becky reflects; "I am as well bred as the Earl's grand-daughter, for all her fine pedigree" (Thackeray 16).  That awareness of her assets drives her to try to use them to her benefit.  "She determined at any rate," Thackeray writes, "to get herself free from the prison in which she found herself [at Miss Pinkerton's], and now began to act for herself, and for the first time to make connected plans for the future" (16).  This ability to plan and act for herself will soon set her apart from her fellow girls.  Her self-reliance may run counter to the Victorian ideals of feminine "unworldliness and innocence" ("Woman Question" 1581), but without it, she would have no control over her future.

With Becky's failure to capture Jos Sedley, however, Thackeray makes clear how society's judgments limit that control.  Jos, Amelia's rich buffoon of a brother, encounters Becky when she descends upon the Sedley home for a visit before the beginning of her employment as a governess, and as soon as Becky becomes aware of his wealth, she "determined in her heart upon making the conquest of this big beau" (Thackeray 23).  Through a carefully executed campaign of flattery, feigned modesty, and hints of deeper regard, Becky does nearly succeed in capturing him.  Her methods at this point in her career may sometimes be obvious, and, as Thackeray points out, "some ladies of indisputable correctness and gentility will condemn [her actions] as immodest" (32), but they work:  by the time Becky and Jos set out on their ill-fated trip to Vauxhall, Jos is "no doubt about to" propose to her (65).  What prevents Becky from succeeding is the mockery of George Osborne, Amelia's fiance.  In a pivotal conversation with Jos, George stands in for societal judgment on Becky's low status, the very obstacle against which she struggles:

[George] had been revolving in his mind the marriage question pending between Jos and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of a family into which he...was going to marry, should make a mésalliance with a...little upstart governess..."Who's this little schoolgirl that is ogling and making love to him?...A governess is all very well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law.  I'm a liberal man; but I've proper pride, and know my own station:  let her know hers."  (69-70)

One aspects of George's argument here are particularly significant.  First, Becky's status as a governess isn't what bothers him, precisely; it is, rather, her position as an upstart governess--one seemingly attempting to rise socially--that rankles.  Her efforts to rise above that place--her "ogling" and "making love to" Jos--are what offend George's sense of propriety.  He disapproves of Becky's desire to procure for herself a higher station in life than that into which she was born.  Society, represented by George Osborne, condemns the woman who deliberately uses her desirability to improve her situation.

The next stage of Becky's career further illustrates the limitations and punishments society imposes on women like Becky.  Taking with her the lessons learned from her failure with Jos Sedley, Becky goes to Queen's Crawley, where she meets the noble Crawley family and takes up the governess position from which she had hoped to escape through marriage to Jos.  Undaunted by her recent failure, Becky rapidly makes a success of the job:

It became naturally Rebecca's duty to make herself, as she said, agreeable to her benefactors, and to gain their confidence to the utmost of her power...As my Lady Crawley was not one of those [influential] personages...not to be of the least consequence in her own house, Rebecca soon found that it was not at all necessary to cultivate her good will...With the young people, her method was pretty simple.  She did not pester their young brains with too much learning...With Mr. Crawley Miss Sharp was respectful and obedient...The little governess rendered herself agreeable to her employer...[by finding] many different ways of being useful to him.  (Thackeray 103-7).

The practice she has had in flattery and observation serve her well with the Crawleys:  she quickly renders herself an indispensable part of the family.  Not only does she win over the immediate household, but she also charms the Crawleys' wealthy spinster aunt, Miss Crawley.  Miss Crawley tells Becky, "What is birth, my dear?...You, my love, are a little paragon...You have more brains than half the shire...you ought to have no superior, and I consider you, my love, as my equal in every respect" (Thackeray 125).  The irony of Miss Crawley's flattery of Becky is that Miss Crawley does still treat Becky as an inferior, asking her to "put some coals on the fire" and "pick this dress...and alter it," and to "run of her errands, execute her millinery, and read her to sleep with French novels, every night" (125).  Her kind words still encourage Becky, however, and Becky has soon achieved the most basic of her goals:  she has married well, to Captain Rawdon Crawley, Miss Crawley's favorite nephew and presumed heir.  But Miss Crawley's reaction when she learns of the marriage once again brings the ambitious social climber back down to earth.  All her liberal proclamations forgotten in the face of the reality of her beloved and well-born nephew's marriage to a governess, Miss Crawley screams in hysterical disbelief, "Rawdon married Rebecca--governess--nobod...How dare you?" (Thackeray 195) and subsequently cuts Rawdon out of her will.  Once again, not only have Becky's undeniable advantages failed to secure her the future she desires, but the very act of trying to secure that future has resulted in her rejection by established members of society.

That Becky's spirit does not falter after this failure to win over society illustrates what Stevenson describes as "her extraordinary ability to make the best of poor circumstances" (3).  When Rawdon asks her what will happen if "the old lady doesn't come to," Becky confidently replies, "I'll make your fortune" (196-7).  She doesn't quite do so, but in the next phase of her career, she does succeed at keeping her household afloat:

[Rawdon] vowed with a great oath that there was no woman in Europe who could talk a creditor over as [Becky] could.  Almost immediately after their marriage, her practice had begun, and her husband found the immense value of such a wife.  They had credit in plenty, but they had bills also in abundance, and laboured under a scarcity of ready money...[Yet] Rawdon and his wife had the very best apartments...; the landlord, as he brought in the first dish, bowed before them as to his greatest customers.  (Thackeray 267)

Here, Thackeray presents the complexity of Becky's character.  Her actions themselves cannot be considered honorable, consisting as they do of convincing creditors to lend her husband more money which Rawdon cannot repay, and yet the spirit with which she approaches the necessity of keeping herself and her husband fed and housed is admirable.

At this stage, however, Becky begins to overstep the boundaries of necessity, to reach for too much rather than what she deserves, leading to her ultimate fall.  This shift begins in Brighton, when Becky and Rawdon meet up with the newlywed George and Amelia Osborne.  The Osbornes' situation resembles the Crawleys':  Amelia's father has become a disgraced bankrupt, and George's insistence on marrying her anyway has resulted in his disinheritance.  George, therefore, has little wealth to tempt Becky, who is, in any case, already married and no longer free to make a marital conquest of him.  Despite this lack of practical motivation, however, and despite the fact that he is married to her close friend, Becky deliberately sets out to charm George, and succeeds:

As Emmy did not say much or plague [George] with her jealousy, but merely became unhappy and pined over it miserably in secret, he chose to fancy that she was not suspicious of what all his acquaintance were perfectly aware--namely, that he was carrying on a desperate flirtation with Mrs. Crawley...flattering himself that [she] was dying of love for him.  (Thackeray 355)

Beyond the small sums Rawdon wins from George during this flirtation, no reason exists for Becky to use her wiles on her friend's husband.  She is, therefore, overreaching herself, and this marks her transition from spirited fighter to wicked woman.  Her tendency to lean on wealthier and more influential protectors than her husband--first General Tufto, under whom Rawdon serves as aide-de-camp, and later on the cruel and corrupt Lord Steyne--likewise indicates a significant change.  No longer just a social climber, Becky is now on the way to becoming a prostitute.

It is after Rawdon's discovery of her alone with Lord Steyne, and his discovery of the jewels and money she has hidden from her husband even when they could have kept him out of prison, drives him to leave her that she is exiled from respectable society and enters the world of the demimonde, from which she can never fully escape.  After a long absence, Becky resurfaces, masked and gambling, at a Baden-Baden casino.  Thackeray's description of the previous part of her life skillfully suggests the worst without having to state it explicitly:

We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's biography with that lightness and delicacy which the world demands--the moral world, that has, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name...In describing this Siren [Becky], singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water?  No!...And so, when Becky is out of the way, be sure that she is not particularly well employed, and that the less that is said about her doings is in fact the better.  If we were to give a full account of her proceedings during a couple of years...there might be some reason for people to say this book was improper.  (819-20)

It seems clear that the "hideous tail" of this siren here represents the sexual compromises the siren Becky has had to make beneath the surface of her public existence.  Those compromises, after her separation from her husband, become more and more overt, as shown by the way the men who once treated her with respect now "laughed in her face with a familiarity that was not pleasant," "nodded to her without moving his hat," and "tried to walk into her sitting-room [uninvited]" (Thackeray 824).  Becky's attempts to use her attractions to maintain her position have backfired.  Despite her efforts to hold her head high and maintain the character of a respectable woman, Becky is eventually given "a notice to quit from the landlord, who had been told by some one that she was quite an unfit person to have at his hotel...she was forced to fly" (Thackeray 825).  From these disgraces, and an episode as Jos Sedley's mistress, Becky can never recover her reputation.  By the end of the novel she is alone:  her son "has declined to see his mother," and Amelia, once her most steadfast friend, scurries off at the sight of her (Thackeray 888).

In Becky's story, one sees the cruelty of the Victorian moral system:  in life as well as in fiction, gender inequities often meant that necessity or ambition drove clever, good-looking girls unfortunate enough to have been born into poverty into prostitution, which then shut them irrevocably out from "respectable" society.  It is not unnatural, after all, that poor girls should sometimes feel, as Becky did, that they merited just as much comfort and amusement as others received, and not unnatural that some of those girls should attempt to acquire what they had not been given.  The anonymous Victorian author of "The Great Social Evil" writes:

Frequently...some young lady who had quitted the paternal restraints, or perhaps, been started off, none knew whither or how, to seek her fortune, would reappear among us with a profusion of ribands, fine clothes, and lots of cash.  (Anonymous 1593).

Examples like these showed the author the advantages of prostitution, and she followed those examples early on.  Born into poverty and low social class, she would not be able to acquire the rewards earned through the sale of her body in any legitimate fashion anyway.  Those rewards are not enough to blind her to her place in society, however:

We [prostitutes] come from the dregs of society, as our so-called betters term it.  What business has society to have dregs--such dregs as we?  You railers of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, you the pious, the moral, the respectable, as you call yourselves, who stand on your smooth and pleasant side of the great gulf you have dug and keep between yourself and the dregs, why don't you bridge it over, or fill it up, and by some humane and generous process absorb us into your leavened mass, until we become interpenetrated with goodness like yourselves?  Why stand on your eminence shouting that we should be ashamed of ourselves?  What have we to be ashamed of, we who do not know what shame is--the shame you mean?...Will you make us responsible for what we never knew?  (1595)

This anonymous author, whose passionate eloquence and intelligence must have shocked some readers considering her profession, makes a powerful case against Victorian sexual mores.  The very qualities that define ideal Victorian womanhood make rising from poverty impossible for women not born into affluence, and poor women, born outside Victorian definitions of respectability, have no reason to adhere to those sexual mores.

Virtue and the lack thereof in Victorian society, therefore, depended as much on social class as on innate moral qualities, creating an unjust system set up to punish women with the courage and will to attempt to overcome their circumstances.  Thackeray, despite his ultimate condemnation of Becky Sharp as a creature of vice, demonstrated this injustice in his illustration of her career.  Becky famously says, "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year" (535).  It is the getting of that five thousand a year that poses a problem, since for someone who starts out in the circumstances in which Becky does, there is little chance of acquiring any adequate income without turning to the behaviors forbidden to "good" women.  The anonymous prostitute behind "The Great Social Evil" illustrates that with her own story:  how would a girl born into poverty be able to afford both the security and the luxuries she and her ilk can, if not for prostitution?  And why should she and her ilk care for polite society's condemnation of them, when polite society was never going to accept or acknowledge them in the first place?  The very qualities that enabled certain women to rise above their births also ensured their ostracism from "respectabe society."  Ultimately, Victorian sexual mores set active, ambitious, and aggressive women up for condemnation and failure.

Works Cited

Anonymous.  "The Great Social Evil."  Reidhead 1592-6.  Print.

Reidhead, Julia, ed.  The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th ed.  New York, NY:  W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.  Print.

Stevenson, Richard C.  "The Problem of Judging Becky Sharp:  Scene and Narrative Commentary in Vanity Fair."  Victorians Institute Journal .6 (1977):  1-8.  Web.  1 May 2010.

Thackeray, William Makepeace.  Vanity Fair.  New York:  Bantam Classic, 1997.  Print.

"The Victorian Age 1830-1901."  Reidhead 979-999.  Print.

"The 'Woman Question':  The Victorian Debate About Gender."  Reidhead 1581-3.  Print.