SEX AND REPUTATION
Women have always been judged by their sexual behaviour. What has become known as the double-standard has informed our understanding of the ways in which, for women, sexuality was key to their position and experience in the community.4 The double-standard connotes a complex system of honour and reputation founded upon the belief that in a patriarchal society women's impurity and immodesty was destabilising and therefore to be condemned, whereas men's sexual licentiousness might be tolerated.
In early modern Europe, to call a woman whore was, with the exception of witch, the most powerful and damaging term of abuse since it called into question her moral behaviour, her chastity and her honour. There was no male equivalent. Gossip, idle talk and common insult were used to regulate women's behaviour and we know how powerful the tongue was from women's insistence on defending their good name against charges of sexual misconduct in church courts, indicating that a woman's standing in the community rested upon her sexual reputation as well as her social position. If London is representative, women brought as many as three-quarters of all defamation cases and defended up to one half of them.5 The language of sexual insult was overwhelmingly female.By the 1800s, although fewer defamation cases reached the courts, the power of sexual insult was as strong as ever. Anna Clark argues that ‘the power of gossip derived from its ability to erase the boundaries between public and private life', hence women of the commercial classes were just as, if not more, vulnerable to sexual insult when their trade depended upon their (sexual) reputation.6 To be accused of immoral behaviour in one's private life imputed one could not be trusted in a public role. Unmarried or widowed women were the most likely to defend their good name since they were most vulnerable to charges of dishonesty and immorality from competitors, male or female.
Whore' along with ‘slut' and ‘dog' did not necessarily imply sexual impropriety on the part of a wife, but was more likely an attempt to cast aspersions on a wife's ability in her sphere — the household — thus imputing dissolute or slovenly behaviour.7 In southern Germany the insult Hur (whore) suggested a dual threat, both to the legitimacy of any offspring and to the ordered household.8 In the context of the divorce court it appears that men accused of using this word were attempting to control a wife who, in their eyes, had become too independent and perhaps had maintained their standing in the community whilst that of the husband had deteriorated owing to his dissolute lifestyle. In southern England too, ‘sexual language was used by men to discipline women who challenged their supremacy', and it was increasingly used to control women who rejected traditional female roles.9 Notions of respectability rested upon a woman's reputation within the private sphere, as a wife and mother. If her propriety within this sphere was questioned, then she was allegedly no better than a common prostitute whose place was on the streets, in public. So, the use of the insult ‘whore' in early nineteenth century plebeian society was a potent way of disciplining female behaviour.In a society where the language of defamation could be challenged, women were able to participate in the complex honour system to their advantage. Speaking in public about sexual reputation allowed women to restore their reputation. By the 1850s, however, sex moved out of the public sphere and became contained within the private sphere. Michel Foucault has argued that the nineteenth century was a period when discourses on sexuality were produced, multiplied and dispersed by a multiplicity of agencies including the churches, scientists, doctors, psychologists and feminists, resulting in the privileging of sexuality as the core of private identity.10 Sexual activity became dangerous when revealed in public, thus legitimising the policing of society.
This was a time when self-control was advocated in place of self-expression, and when the privileged site of sexuality became the family, rendering all other practices — including homosexuality and extramarital intercourse — dangerous or destabilising. As a result, language was moderated (few women now would have had the audacity to speak the word ‘whore' in a public court), and sex became private. Modesty and secrecy became the watchwords. In the words of the leading British medical journal following a series of press exposes revealing the degradation of the London underworld: ‘The publicity which has recently been given to the subject of sexual sin... is in itself an enormous evil... There are things “done in secret” which “should not be so much as named” in family circles or in newspapers which have an entrance into private houses.'11 In public sex was moderated and sanitised.