Actresses and Whores: On Stage and in Society

ISBN-13: 9780521541022 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 228 str.

Kirsten Pullen

Opis

The categories of "whore" and "actress" have overlapped over centuries. Actresses are assumed to be sexually available and promiscuous, and prostitutes are assumed to perform for their clients. Employing historical biographies as well as interviews with contemporary sex workers, this book compares actresses and prostitutes from Nell Gwynne to Mae West. Ranging from the seventeenth century to the present, Kirsten Pullen offers many new insights to theater historians and scholars of cultural, social and gender studies.

Recenzje

'… Pullen's close attention to both contemporary and current accounts of each of her studied figures ensures this book is authoritative and successful in its exploration of this subject. Actresses and Whores is a comprehensive study of the questions surrounding the prostitute/performer dynamic which is both illuminating and intriguing.' Theatre Notebook

Spis treści

List of illustrations; 1. Prostitution, performance, and Mae West: speaking from the whore position; 2. Betty Boutell, 'Whom All the Town Fucks': constructing the actress/whore; 3. Memoir and masquerade: Charlotte Charke, Margaret Leeson, and eighteenth-century performances of self; 4. Burlesque, breeches, and blondes: illegitimate nineteenth-century cultural and theatrical performance; 5. 'We need status as actresses!': contemporary prostitution and performance; 6. Afterpiece: millennial prostitution; Bibliography; Index.