In the last third of the eighteenth-century, Bristol and Nantes were two of the most active commercial ports of England and France, despite a slowdown of their economy. Their economies were based primarily on the maritime trade, but they developed alongside Atlantic industries that attracted many migrants, both male and female, from the surrounding countryside and from abroad. How prostitution is perceived in the context of social control and urban change is key to understanding the evolving attitudes to gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century. In this study Pluskota offers an analysis of the lives of prostitutes that looks beyond a purely criminal perspective, and which encompasses their roles within their families, relationships and social networks.
This book explodes the myth of the passive Victorian woman, and demonstrates how women rose to the challenges of the age of empire and industry. Queen Victoria herself had a profound impact on her female subjects. She strongly influenced their attitudes to marriage, motherhood and bereavement. It was during her reign that many pioneering women pushed back the boundaries of the masculine world, and fought for recognition of their skills as doctors, teachers, artists and adventurers. In addition, the daily struggles of countless working women are movingly presented, based on the evidence of novels, paintings and their own first-hand accounts