The Freedom Of The Streets

by Wood, Sharon E.

• ISBN13: 9780807829394
• ISBN10: 0807829390
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-03-22
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Gilded Age cities offered extraordinary opportunities to women--but at a price. As clerks, factory hands, and professionals flocked downtown to earn a living, they alarmed social critics and city fathers, who warned that self-supporting women were just steps away from becoming prostitutes. With in-depth research possible only in a mid-sized city, Sharon E. Wood focuses on Davenport, Iowa, to explore the lives of working women and the prostitutes who shared their neighborhoods.The single, self-supporting women who migrated to Davenport in the years following the Civil War saw paid labor as the foundation of citizenship. They took up the tools of public and political life to assert the respectability of paid employment and to confront the demon of prostitution. Wood offers cradle-to-grave portraits of individual girls and women--both prostitutes and "respectable" white workers--seeking to reshape their city and expand women's opportunities. As Wood demonstrates, however, their efforts to rewrite the sexual politics of the streets met powerful resistance at every turn from men defending their political rights and sexual power.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction: The Belva Lockwood Club	1	(13)
Women in the City: Law, Reputation, and Geography	14	(16)
Women's Citizenship and the Problem of Employment	30	(18)
A Place in the City: The Working Woman's Lend a Hand Club	48	(31)
Lives without Choices: Prostitution as Employment	79	(23)
The Police Matron Campaign and the Reform of Urban Environments	102	(30)
Sporting Men and Little Girls	132	(26)
Making the City Safe for White Men: Regulated Prostitution	158	(28)
Protecting Men by Reforming Girls: Good Shepherd Homes	186	(27)
Women, Men, and the Businesses of Bucktown	213	(32)
Conclusion: The Popular Young Lady in Business Life	245	(14)
Notes	259	(26)
Bibliography	285	(20)
Index	305