“The Case of the Closely Watched Courtesans”
“Elite prostitution was treated differently. Certain brothels that catered to the male elite were allowed to operate. It was one duty of the vice unit’s inspectors to make sure the madams of these “authorized” brothels abided by certain rules, one of which was to supply the inspectors with a steady stream of information. But most of the unit’s energy was spent watching a particular group of elite prostitutes that worked as professional mistresses. Called kept women (the French term is dames entretenues), these women (and girls) provided sex, company, and sometimes even love for elite men in exchange for being “kept,” financially supported so that they could establish and maintain a household.
La galanterie, the practice of being or keeping a mistress, was not illegal, even while prostitution was…
Over the next eight years, Meusnier and his successor, Inspector Louis Marais, charted Varenne’s career. Marais’ final report, dated Feb. 26, 1762 found Varenne, after a decade of sex work, now in possession of significant wealth for someone of her background and on the verge of marrying her boyfriend, who was an army officer and a noble. She was stealing from her patron to pay for the nuptials. Did the marriage go through? The inspectors hoped it would not, fearing the social destruction of the officer. If it had, it would have represented a significant jump in social status for Varenne. But the real question is why did the police even care about the marriage, Varenne’s furniture, her love life, and her virginity?…
Everyone in early modern France was supposed to belong to a social unit such as a family, a household, or a guild, for example. Each unit theoretically occupied a niche in a larger social hierarchy. This system ensured each person was under what 18th-century political thinkers considered to be the “natural oversight” of their superiors, a hierarchy at the top of which sat the king. Being outside this system was highly problematic to the state because such a person was beyond social and political systems of control. For the police, controlling these populations meant keeping track of them, which in turn required developing the capacity to spy and manage information.”
Interesting; it’s easy to see how many of our perspectives and social institutions follow from these kinds of philosophies about society and order.
