“Every patriarch has his prostitute”: the prostituted woman in Virginia Woolf’s writings

Abstract

ABSTRACT The marginalized figure of the prostituted woman haunts Virginia Woolf's writings throughout her career. Lola Mendoza in The Voyage Out, Florinda and Laurette in Jacob's Room, Nell and her friends in Orlando, and the musings on prostitution in Three Guineas all indicate that, despite her status as the privileged daughter of an educated gentleman, Woolf empathized with women who were ostracized by society because they sold their bodies for money. That profound empathy stems from Woolf's childhood experiences of sexual abuse at the hands of her half-brothers. Like many survivors of childhood sexual abuse, Woolf was given presents by her abuser to reward her for her cooperation and to ensure her silence. That particular tactic frequently makes the abused child feel complicit in her own abuse. Consequently, Woolf identified with prostitutes, as Leonard's nickname for her, “Aspasia,” suggests. In Three Guineas, Woolf writes from her position as a prostituted woman (or girl, really) while resisting its abjection. Unlike her fellow modernists, Woolf directs our sympathy toward society's traditional scapegoat and documents that the prostitution of women is the inevitable result of the systematic oppression of women at every level of society.