Love for Sale

Abstract

This book is the first study to examine the ubiquity of commercial sex in Russian literary and artistic production from the nineteenth century through the fin de siècle. The book offers a compelling account of how the figure of the sex worker captivated the public's imagination through depictions in fiction and fine art, bringing to light how imperial Russians grappled with the issue of sexual commerce. Studying a wide range of media — from little-known engravings that circulated in newspapers to works of canonical fiction — the book shows how writers and artists used the topic of prostitution both to comment on women's shifting social roles at the end of tsarist rule and to express anxieties about the incursion of capitalist transactions in relations of the heart. Each chapter focuses on a type of commercial sex, looking at how the street walker, brothel worker, demimondaine, kept woman, impoverished bride, and madam traded in sex as a means to acquire capital. The book argues that prostitution became a focal point for imperial Russians because it signaled both the promises of modernity and the anxieties associated with Westernization. The book integrates historical analysis, literary criticism, and feminist theory and conveys how nineteenth-century beliefs about the “fallen woman” drew from medical, judicial, and religious discourse on female sexuality. The book invites readers to draw a connection between rhetoric of the nineteenth century and today's debate on sex workers' rights, highlighting recent controversies concerning Russian sex workers to show how imperial discourse is recycled in the twenty-first century.