Women of Ill Fame: Discourses of Prostitution and the American Dream in California, 1850 - 1890
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WOMEN OF ILL FAME: DISCOURSES OF PROSTITUTION AND THE AMERICAN DREAM IN CALIFORNIA, 1850 - 1890 Angela C. Fitzpatrick A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2013 Committee: Andrew Schocket, Advisor Wendy Watson Graduate Faculty Representative Ellen Berry Kimberly Coates © 2013 Angela C. Fitzpatrick All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Andrew Schocket, Advisor This dissertation explores representations of prostitution in California from 1850 to 1890 found in urban newspapers, political pamphlets, short stories, and novels. Employing feminist historical and cultural studies theories and methodologies, this dissertation interrogates the discursive relationship between prostitution and the American Dream understood as an articulation of desire for success and freedom inextricably linked to American exceptionalism. By demonstrating that prostitution was central to the social construction of power, identity, and difference in nineteenth-century California this dissertation contributes to existing scholarship on women’s history, the American West, and prostitution. Historians have long debated the role of prostitution in nineteenth-century social life and the degree of economic freedom and sexual independence prostitution provided for women. The multicultural California frontier, full of the promise of freedom and success to anyone who dared join the adventure of the gold rush, offers historians a unique case study for exploring nineteenth-century cultural responses to prostitution and the extent to which prostitution represented the American Dream for nineteenth-century women. I argue that from 1850 to 1890 Californians used discourses of prostitution to police sexual behavior, enforce strict gender roles, control women’s economic power, and limit immigration effectively constructing and dismantling various American Dreams. While middle-class Americans across the nation perceived prostitution as a social evil, the Californian middle class perceived prostitution as an even greater threat because this iv region contained more racial diversity, more gender ambiguity, and more economic mobility. In the absence of clearly defined social roles and power dynamics the need to draw lines around social differences was even greater. For middle-class Californians, prostitution represented economic exploitation and power, class and racial contamination, class and gender transgression, and sexual deviance therefore they believed prostitution had to be contained through criminal prosecution, state regulation, and moral reform. In their efforts to control prostitution, community leaders sought out “women of ill fame,” identified as such because of their failure to conform to normative gender roles. California magistrates, merchants, legislators, and newspaper editors effectively policed the behavior of all nineteenth-century Californians in their attempts to control prostitution. v To women of ill fame everywhere. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation journey has been a long one and I could not have survived without the support of my many mentors, colleagues, and family members. First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation advisor Andrew Schocket for his expertise, patience, and enthusiastic willingness to guide me through the difficult and exciting terrain of archival research and historical analysis. I would also like to thank my other committee members, Ellen Berry and Kim Coates, for mentoring me through graduate school and training me in feminist pedagogy and scholarship. I am a better feminist, teacher, and scholar because of their guidance. Lastly, I am indebted to Leigh Ann Wheeler, whose vigilant editing and careful commenting on early chapter drafts shaped my understanding of history, research, and writing. I was also fortunate to find many supportive colleagues along my journey. Thank you to the women of the BGSU Feminist Writing Group and Graduate Women’s Caucus, especially Clare Lemke for her insightful comments on multiple chapter drafts. This last year of writing would not have been possible without the support of my colleagues in the ABD writing group at Coastal Carolina University, organized by Dodi Hodges who provided the right amount of fear and encouragement to motivate dissertation stragglers such as myself. And, of course, I could not have made it through any of this without the insight and humor of my dearest colleague, friend, and dissertation cat, Cassandra Jones. I would also like to thank my parents, Joan Meidinger and Dan Fitzpatrick, who have always been my strongest advocates. I would not be where I am today if it were not for your love and support. Finally, I am eternally grateful for Adam Bowman, who relentlessly encouraged me to continue my journey. You are everything a person could ever hope for in a partner. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION .... ........................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I. “I CAME TO THIS COUNTRY TO MAKE MONEY” .............................. 40 CHAPTER II. “PERHAPS THE LESS SAID OF HER THE BETTER” ........................... 73 CHAPTER III. MAKING “LAWS FOR THE MAGDALENAS” ..................................... 115 CHAPTER IV. “FOOLISH VIRGINS” AND THEIR “VALIANT RESCUERS” ............ 153 CHAPTER V. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................ 191 REFERENCES ......... ........................................................................................................... 205 1 INTRODUCTION In the years following the 1848 discovery of gold in California, some sixty to seventy thousand individuals from China, Europe, South America, and the eastern United States, traveled to California where they hoped to strike it rich and create a better life for themselves and their families. As a space where fortunes could be made and new lives forged, frontier-era California represented dominant American cultural myths of meritocracy, upward mobility, and a classless society—all of which would later coalesce into the American Dream. The cultural landscape of nineteenth-century California was littered with images of successful self-made men and a few notorious self-made women, who dug for gold not in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains, but in the gold-lined pockets of lonely miners. These “women of ill fame,” as their contemporaries referred to them, have been integral to our understanding of the Wild West. Although prostitution has long existed in various regions throughout the United States, it is here in nineteenth-century California that the prostitute takes on a peculiar and complicated cultural significance. In this popular culture imaginary, the prostitute at times appears as a “fallen woman” to be pitied for her poverty and vice, and at other times as a heroic figure to be admired for her independence and gumption. Representations of prostitution in California are ripe for exploring women’s social and cultural positions in nineteenth-century America as they reveal something about how gender, race, class, and sexuality were constructed in a space where gender transgression was presumably more easily forgiven and success was more easily attained than in the East. By focusing on the transgressive women of the frontier, this dissertation lends insight into the discursive relationship between the American Dream—an articulation of desire for 2 success and freedom inextricably linked to American exceptionalism—and the categories of difference that have historically determined who has the power to realize such dreams. This dissertation is a feminist cultural history of how discourses of prostitution impacted nineteenth-century Californians and shaped their opportunities to realize freedom and success. Rather than recounting the lives of frontier prostitutes, this dissertation seeks to add to the historical record by offering a cultural history that engages with the meanings created by and embedded within representations of frontier prostitution in California newspapers, fiction, and political pamphlets from 1850 to 1890. Employing feminist historical and cultural studies theories and methodologies, I seek to answer the following questions: what stories did nineteenth-century Californians tell themselves about prostitution? How did various individuals or groups of people shape discourses of prostitution and to what ends? How did discourses of prostitution structure social difference and cultural power in nineteenth-century California? Did these various Californians perceive the frontier prostitute as truly different from the prostitute of other regions? If so, did the politics of gender, race, class, and sexuality that structured women’s social position(s) take on new meanings in this particular region? And finally, which of these stories have we carried with us into the present moment? By demonstrating that prostitution was central to the social construction of power, identity, and difference in nineteenth-century California this dissertation contributes to existing scholarship on women’s history, the American West, and prostitution. From the 1980s onward, historians have debated the role prostitution played in nineteenth-century social life and the degree of economic freedom and sexual independence prostitution provided for women. The multicultural, and presumably male-dominated, California frontier – full of the promise