'Femme Publique':The brothel sex worker as anti-Flaneuse in the television series Maison Close.

Artt, Sarah

Abstract

The figure of the prostitute has long been associated with the city and although prostitution may take place anywhere, the connection between female prostitution and the city remains prevalent across literature, film, television and fine art. The prostitute is a nexus of anxiety for discourses surrounding the place of women in public in the nineteenth-century. The television series Maison Close (2010-2013) offers us a particular image of the public woman of the nineteenth-century in the figure of the licensed, Parisian, brothel prostitute. The prostitute here is a woman known by her legal status as a femme publique (literally, 'public woman'), whose movements and dress are highly codified by law, and by the walls of the licensed brothel that is both home and workplace. This chapter will explore the idea of the sex worker as anti-flâneuse, a woman whose gaze is limited by the walls of the brothel, and will argue that the gaze of the sex worker anti-flâneuse is important to our understanding of the place of women in public.

• Acceptance Date: Mar 23, 2017
• Publication Date: Jan 29, 2018
• Deposit Date: Dec 13, 2017
• Publisher: Universitätsverlag Winter
• Pages: 91-106
• Book Title: Transforming Cities
• ISBN: 978-3-8253-6749-7
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/930314