Madeleine An Autobiography - Essay Example

A Critical Analysis of the Socioeconomic and Cultural that Forced her to be a Prostitute In the book, “Madeleine: An Autobiography”, Madeleine Blair, the author-narrator, describes the events, of her life, what compelled her to take prostitution as a profession to support herself. During the post-civil war period, she had been more of a victim of the circumstances than a traditional prostitute was. Her society, her socioeconomic condition, the social values about gender and sexuality, the industrialization-induced changes in her contemporary society’s culture and belief and the decay of the agrarian rural society –all these together had compelled her to take up prostitution as a means of living. Madeleine lived in a society which would rather abhor social digresses like Madeleine than treating the cause of digression. Being a woman of the late Gilded Age, Madeleine had to suffer from the social problems such as gender discrimination, moral decay, the rapid collapse of the rural economy, etc which were directly related to industrialization and urbanization. Though the Gilded Age experienced the boom of the mechanized urban economy, it was not prepared enough to face the commotions and moral decay that the collapse of the rural decline. Women, of affluent social status, like Madeleine, could hardly bear the insult which the society inflicted upon for them for the moral digression. But the society could do little to protect them from the lust of their male counterparts. Therefore, being forced by circumstances, they choose prostitution to save their own lives. Being raised with pure Christian teachings in an economically affluent family, Madeleine could have fairly managed a decent way of living for herself. “She was brought up in a strict heaven-and-hell belief” (Madeleine 34). Even her great-grandfather was quite well-known for his religiosity. He was “often quick to anger, she said, but he was also quick to repentance, and if he had offended relative or friend he asked his pardon and the pardon of God before he slept.” (Madeleine 45) Though Madeleine’s religious background and teaching were few of psychological strengths which could protect her from being a prostitute. But ironically her family background and religious teachings contribute to the growth of self-reproach, for her juvenile pregnancy, so strongly that she took a wrong decision to run away from Mrs. James’s house in Missouri. Even if she could remain with her mother in her hometown, she might have received her mother’s proper attention. She needed parental support in her home. She “needed both her parents” (Madeleine 23). She “had neither” (Madeleine 23). Her mother was “tied hand and foot by ill health, poverty, a sickly baby, and the care of a large family” (Madeleine 25). But it was the poverty in her family which deprived her of these motherly cares. The poverty which her family gradually plunged into after her father's runaway, forced to take the offer of the job in a factory. When her pregnancy was revealed in Mrs. James's house, her pride of "better birth and breeding" made her the most reproachful to herself and provoked her to take the wrong decision of running away from Mrs. James's house. Indeed her decision to run away to hide the shame was her first step towards prostitution, as she describes her decision as following: “A sudden resolution came to me: I must go away. Where, I had not the least idea, but I must get away from these humble friends and bear my disgrace alone.” (Madeleine 56) The social, moral and religious values, which she was raised with, played a crucial role driving the adolescent girl away from her shelter. She describes her sense of pride as well as the lowliness of her juvenile delinquency as following: “I, who in my secret heart had felt so superior to these illiterate working-girls, must become a byword to them, because, despite my better birth and breeding, I had lost that jewel of virtue which they still retained” (Madeleine 45). As a country girl, Madeleine was profoundly taught to value her chastity. Rather in Mrs. James’s house, she was “a green little country girl, to be patronized and instructed in the ways of the city” (Madeleine 36). If she were properly accustomed the urban and industrialized culture of the town Missouri, she could have taken her juvenile pregnancy lighter. But her religious teachings and sexual morality which she received in her family made her mentally vulnerable to the possible reactions of those around her in Mrs. James’s home. Indeed, it was her assumption about the moral code on sexuality, chastity, and propriety which affected her the most. In her hometown, she had been accustomed to the life of a social outcast because of her father's behavior. When Madeleine was eleven years old, she, for the first time, learned about the social taboo on sexuality and male-female relationship. When she was playing with their housemaid's son in the hay-stack, her father "administered such a terrible beating that for weeks [her] body was a mass of bruises. It was years before [her] nervous system recovered from the shock." (Madeleine 38) If her father had taken a lenient course to teach her daughter about proper gender and caste-relationship, she might have been assured by Mrs. James’s promise to keep her affair secret and not have run away from the house to become a prostitute. Largely, Madeleine is a victim of the industrialization-induced urbanization and shift in the economic balance between the rural and the urban economy. From the description of her family in the first chapter of the book, it can be assumed that Madeleine came from a very wealthy background, as she tells about her family: “In the social, political, and business life of our town he was a conspicuous figure…our friends were always telling us that we were a mighty fortunate one, and no doubt we were.” (Madeleine 3) But soon her family lost all of the fortunes and plunged into sheer poverty. As a member of the once well-known and wealthy, she had to suffer an outcast situation during their poverty. Though Madeleine does not clearly tell why her family got plunged into poverty, she simply hints that her father’s habit of drinking liquor brought them to such condition. Their poverty forced them to live with the lower-class people, though she “was never permitted to forget [her] position” (Madeleine 9). She “made a terrific effort to keep above the level of my environment” (Madeleine 8). In language, lifestyle and behavior, Madeleine and her family tried to maintain the difference as much as possible. She and her older brother tried to read books, novels, etc. when possible. Obviously, such condition made her socially isolated. But it was also the time when she was reaching her puberty: “The mating instinct was developing strongly” (Madeleine 10). During these days of poverty in her hometown, she made the juvenile mistake of getting pregnant which later makes her an easy-prey of male-lust and forced to resort to prostitution for livelihood. The problem of the industrialization of the Gilded Age was that along with the growth of a commercial environment, it also commoditized sex as well as the female body as an object of consumption. Madeleine, a high-spirited and sensitive girl who had descended from aristocracy to poverty moved to St. Louis in order to work as an industrial worker. But soon her juvenile mistake of getting pregnant led her to such a position where she could earn her livelihood only in return for selling her body. She lived in a society where women were considered only good for having sex, giving birth to and raising children within the boundary of the social institution of marriage. It is the society where Madeleine’s mother lived at the mercy of her husband. “She was powerless to change conditions. She was powerless to change him, but she could meet any fate with a calm exterior” (Madeleine 34). After Madeleine ran away, she learned, for the first time, that if she "could not work, [she] must starve” (Madeleine 33). But she also learned that her society made it easy for a woman to sell her body. Works Cited Madeleine Blair. Madeleine: An Autobiography. New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1919. Available at Read More