Fallen woman

The idea that Eve, from the biblical story in the Book of Genesis, was the prototypical fallen woman has been widely accepted by academics,[4] theologians and literary scholars.[5] Eve was not expelled from Eden because she had sex outside of marriage; rather she fell from a state of innocence because she ate forbidden fruit from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That is, Eve and then Adam reached for knowledge, but in reaching for it, they disobeyed God and lost their original innocence, as shown by their sudden awareness of and shame at their nakedness. The temptation offered to Adam and Eve in the story was to know what God knows and to see what God sees. It was a temptation based on covetousness and a desire to be like God. (See: Prometheus) Thus, theologically speaking, there is a metaphor that is related to the Fall of Man from a state of grace as well as to the expulsion and subsequent fall of Lucifer from heaven.

The term "fallen" was nevertheless most often conflated with sexual "knowledge" (i.e., experience), particularly for women at a time when the social value of their sexual inexperience was insisted upon. As the term narrowed to imply any socially unauthorized sexual activity, including premarital or extra-marital sex, whether initiated by the woman or not, it concealed the different reasons for such a "falling" out of God's and society's favor. "Fallen" was therefore an umbrella term that was applied to a variety of women in a variety of settings: she may have been a woman who had had sex once or habitually outside the confines of marriage; a woman of a lower socioeconomic class; a woman who had been raped or sexually coerced by a male aggressor; a woman with a tarnished reputation; or a prostitute. Furthermore, prostitution was defined in a range of ways and the "reality was that hard economic times meant that for many women, prostitution was the only way to make ends meet. Many ... were only transient fallen women, moving in and out of the profession [of prostitution] as family finances dictated."[6]

In some cases, a woman may have been regarded as fallen simply because she was educated, eccentric, or elusive. Whatever the case may be, female fallenness as it appears in each of these renderings was the result of a woman’s deviation from social norms, and in turn strongly linked to moral expectations. In the mid 19th century, for example, "For middle-class men seeking to establish a different basis for authority, from that which had been used by the nobility, moral authority became the key issue, evident in the power exercised by a man over the nuclear or bourgeois family and in his ability to regulate women's sexuality through her protection and containment in the domestic sphere."[7]

Female dancers and performers have been regarded as deviating from social norms that expect women to stay away from the male gaze, and hence have been described as belonging to the class of "fallen women". In Europe, women dancers were not socially acceptable and in Arabia, "the unveiled ghawazi, who performed publicly for men, were not respected".[8]

One of the effects of the rapid urbanisation resulting from the Industrial Revolution in England was that a large number of prostitutes were working in the capital, London.[9] This was assumed to be a large problem for the city and for the women themselves. Therefore it prompted many rescue and rehabilitation efforts, especially by middle-class women inspired by religious conviction or egalitarian principles or both.[10] Some people worked on changes to legislation or served on committees to raise funds for charitable initiatives. Josephine Butler, for example, in the context of her efforts against the Contagious Diseases Acts wrote:

You must know there are many good men and women in our country who have devoted their lives to the work of reclaiming prostitutes, and of offering protection and aid to women and young girls, who through poverty, ignorance, or evil companionship are in danger of falling into sin. And because several persons working together can do more than each working alone, societies have been formed for this purpose, one of which, the Rescue Society, has in the last seventeen years, opened the doors of its various Homes to no less than 6,722 fallen women and girls, of which number seventy out of every hundred have been restored to a virtuous life, whilst lack of funds has compelled it reluctantly to refuse admission to many others who implored its aid.[11]

Many of the homes were "strict, punitive and vengeful"[12] but Urania Cottage, set up and managed by Charles Dickens with the help of his rich, philanthropic friend Lady Burdett-Coutts was "more agreeable", run with "good sense and good will."[12]

Most famously, the Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone worked directly with fallen women to try to rescue them from their circumstances. At considerable risk to his political career, Gladstone spent a great amount of his own money and time on this effort, assisted by his wife, Catherine Gladstone. "There are more entries in Gladstone's diaries about prostitutes than there are about political hostesses, more recorded visits to the fallen women on the streets of London than recorded attendances at the balls and soirées of the grandes dames of polite Victorian society."[13]

Rescue work among prostitutes was also part of the missionary work done by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), whose members also petitioned against alcohol and opium.[14] In a speech to the National Purity Congress in 1895, WCTU temperance campaigner and social reformer Jessie Ackermann said:

From time immemorial we have read of fallen and outcast women, forms of speech used only in reference to our sex. To my mind the time has now come when we should apply the same term to sinful man ... the great weakness of our rescue work in the past has been its onesidedness. It has busied itself in reclaiming women, while men have been passed by.[15]

What "amounted to conventional Victorian 'rescue work' for 'fallen' women" was carried out in the Philippines during the Philippine–American War on behalf of the United States government as part of much broader "social purity" campaigns to prohibit prostitution and alcohol and other "social evils".[16]

As a genuine social concern as well as a metaphor for artistic explorations of vice and virtue, the theme of the fallen woman has a notable place in art and in literature.[17] In some cases, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Blake, the artist/author has produced companion pieces in both forms. The theme continues in historical fiction such as John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman.

In cinema, the fallen woman is one of the earliest representatives of the female prostitute, and the theme had great appeal during the silent era.[30] By the mid 20th century, when women had access to a variety of jobs and their sexual activity was no longer necessarily associated with moral corruption, the fallen woman as a theme was no longer relevant. The films sometimes intended to convey a moral lesson; sometimes they were a social commentary on poverty; sometimes they explored the idea of redemption or the consequences of coercion; and sometimes they were about self-sacrifice. These contrasts, such as innocence and experience; sin and redemption; vice and virtue, as well as ideas about corruption, class, exploitation, suffering and punishment, build on themes in earlier literature. Some films, such as The Red Kimono (1925)[31] in which the fallen woman was allowed to live happily at the end, were subject to severe censorship.[30] The Road to Ruin (1928)[32] was banned.[33] Protect Us (1914)[34] and The Primrose Path (1931)[35] are films that emphasize the fault of the woman. The Jungle (1914)[36] and Damaged Goods (1919)[37] consider the element of coercion, whereas poverty is important in Out of the Night (1918),[38] The Painted Lady (1924),[39] and Die freudlose Gasse (Joyless Street, 1925).[40]

• Women as theological figures
• Women in Christianity
• Magdalene asylum
• Genealogy of Jesus: Tamar, Rahab, and Bathsheba