It’s actually a myth that medieval women who didn’t marry by the end of their teens had to resort to prostitution to survive- in core Europe women tended to marry in their early twenties anyways, and medieval women had economic options other than prostitution which could at least keep them alive, and enough charity available that these kinds of economic setbacks were survivable.
This was when GDP of the Uk was close to 3000-4000 per person, or poorer than modern Ukraine... this was post industrial revolution after London had entered what we'd now say is middle income status...
In the Medieval period when real GDP was $300-600 per person per year it would have been vastly worse and the poverty vastly more pressing.
Seriously. the catholic church was running brothels with ~1000 prostitutes in London in the 1100s... when London's total population was 18,000-40,000... and that was just the one Burough where they owned the brothels... there were plenty of private brothels, speak-easy brothels, and women not affiliated with a brothel working as prostitutes as well.
.
Edit: sorry to pick on you but there's this revisionism I got everywhere I've posted this essay that somehow prostitution wasn't common, people weren't poor in the past, and everything that was expansively written about by contemporaries in early modern novels was just fiction and obviously Feilding, Defoe, Richardson, John Ford, Thomas Middleton, and every other writer about the lower classes from 1500-1900 ever wrote about was just sensationalist fiction to be completely ignored.
Prostitution existed in the Middle Ages. It was legal and common. That does not mean that unmarried women had no other recourse; the word spinster meaning what it does is evidence that the default unmarried woman supported herself through something other than prostitution.
Contemporary accounts from 400 years of history 1500-1900 (Dickens, Tolstoy, Hardy, and many others wrote extensively on this in the 19th).
Historical records of the Lancet Medical journal from the 19th century ...
And the Historical records of the catholic church from the 12th century.
and the historical GDP which shows this is very much in line with what we find in modern poor societies at these GDP levels like El Salvador, Haiti, and Somalia...
There is no scarcity of women, lower gdp figures don't limit how much is available like iron or timber. or food ...GDP just determines the price of their labour and the poverty that will push them to trade that labour.
and your response amounts to: "Nuh Ugh"
Seriously every single piece of evidence we have says that 1100-1900 a single digit percentage of women were employed in prostitution and maybe a very low double digit percentage had engaged in it at some point in their lives. (And yes how people manage to feed themselves and keep themselves alive absolutely seems like the kind of matter of material necessity than can be extrapolated backwards)
We have bawdy authors from the 16th century painting this picture, senitmental authors from the 17th, moral reformer authors form the 19th, quite impressive records from all these eras including very early records from the 11th century...
and what I consistently find is people just deny it because they don't want to believe it.
Seriously every single piece of evidence we have says that 1100-1900 a single digit percentage of women were employed in prostitution and maybe a very low double digit percentage had engaged in it at some point in their lives. (And yes how people manage to feed themselves and keep themselves alive absolutely seems like the kind of matter of material necessity than can be extrapolated backwards)
A single digit percentage of the total population or a single digit percentage of the urban population? Big difference in a 80+% rural society.
I'm not convinced learned city-dwellers' (or soldiers') writings are representative of the rest of the population. I think if you don't live in a city and you have the resources to spare to get yourself a woman to fuck who you don't want to have kids with, you buy (or otherwise obtain) yourself a slave, and have her spinning cloth or do chores around the farm or be otherwise productive the rest of the time. At least she won't necessarily by definition be completely negatively productive for you, the way going to a prostitute is. Prostitutes are for people who are either rich enough that paying one doesn't affect them, or so broken-down that they don't care about tomorrow.
Indeed, the etymology of the word spinster implies that an absolute majority of unmarried women, historically, supported themselves by working wool. Domestic service seems to me more likely to be the next-largest source of employment than prostitution.
While I agree that the OP was a florid Kulakism, the idea of impoverished women having only a single vocation to support themselves is probably anachronistic. It's not spinner OR full time prostitute, it's probably more like spinner that also takes cash for sex from a couple men to make ends meet.
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Notes -
It’s actually a myth that medieval women who didn’t marry by the end of their teens had to resort to prostitution to survive- in core Europe women tended to marry in their early twenties anyways, and medieval women had economic options other than prostitution which could at least keep them alive, and enough charity available that these kinds of economic setbacks were survivable.
3% of the victorian population, 6% of the female population, were employed as prostitutes in 1887... in London. One of the most industrialized cities of the day and one that actually had factory work for women.
This was when GDP of the Uk was close to 3000-4000 per person, or poorer than modern Ukraine... this was post industrial revolution after London had entered what we'd now say is middle income status...
In the Medieval period when real GDP was $300-600 per person per year it would have been vastly worse and the poverty vastly more pressing.
Historical GDP source
Hell the Catholic church owned the brothels in many areas because it was just seen as a fact of life and they were trusted to morally absolve and oversee the "sinner"
Seriously. the catholic church was running brothels with ~1000 prostitutes in London in the 1100s... when London's total population was 18,000-40,000... and that was just the one Burough where they owned the brothels... there were plenty of private brothels, speak-easy brothels, and women not affiliated with a brothel working as prostitutes as well.
.
Edit: sorry to pick on you but there's this revisionism I got everywhere I've posted this essay that somehow prostitution wasn't common, people weren't poor in the past, and everything that was expansively written about by contemporaries in early modern novels was just fiction and obviously Feilding, Defoe, Richardson, John Ford, Thomas Middleton, and every other writer about the lower classes from 1500-1900 ever wrote about was just sensationalist fiction to be completely ignored.
Prostitution existed in the Middle Ages. It was legal and common. That does not mean that unmarried women had no other recourse; the word spinster meaning what it does is evidence that the default unmarried woman supported herself through something other than prostitution.
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I've given you 3 types of evidence:
Contemporary accounts from 400 years of history 1500-1900 (Dickens, Tolstoy, Hardy, and many others wrote extensively on this in the 19th).
Historical records of the Lancet Medical journal from the 19th century ...
And the Historical records of the catholic church from the 12th century.
and the historical GDP which shows this is very much in line with what we find in modern poor societies at these GDP levels like El Salvador, Haiti, and Somalia...
There is no scarcity of women, lower gdp figures don't limit how much is available like iron or timber. or food ...GDP just determines the price of their labour and the poverty that will push them to trade that labour.
and your response amounts to: "Nuh Ugh"
Seriously every single piece of evidence we have says that 1100-1900 a single digit percentage of women were employed in prostitution and maybe a very low double digit percentage had engaged in it at some point in their lives. (And yes how people manage to feed themselves and keep themselves alive absolutely seems like the kind of matter of material necessity than can be extrapolated backwards)
We have bawdy authors from the 16th century painting this picture, senitmental authors from the 17th, moral reformer authors form the 19th, quite impressive records from all these eras including very early records from the 11th century...
and what I consistently find is people just deny it because they don't want to believe it.
A single digit percentage of the total population or a single digit percentage of the urban population? Big difference in a 80+% rural society.
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I'm not convinced learned city-dwellers' (or soldiers') writings are representative of the rest of the population. I think if you don't live in a city and you have the resources to spare to get yourself a woman to fuck who you don't want to have kids with, you buy (or otherwise obtain) yourself a slave, and have her spinning cloth or do chores around the farm or be otherwise productive the rest of the time. At least she won't necessarily by definition be completely negatively productive for you, the way going to a prostitute is. Prostitutes are for people who are either rich enough that paying one doesn't affect them, or so broken-down that they don't care about tomorrow.
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Indeed, the etymology of the word spinster implies that an absolute majority of unmarried women, historically, supported themselves by working wool. Domestic service seems to me more likely to be the next-largest source of employment than prostitution.
While I agree that the OP was a florid Kulakism, the idea of impoverished women having only a single vocation to support themselves is probably anachronistic. It's not spinner OR full time prostitute, it's probably more like spinner that also takes cash for sex from a couple men to make ends meet.
Also it could be euphemism. See AccountantTok.
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