Freewomen, Patriarchal Authority, and the Accusation of Prostitution

by Stephanie Lynn Budin

Examining freewomen in Mesopotamian society, ancient Greek hetaira, Renaissance Italy courtesans, historical and modern Japanese geisha, and the Hindu devadāsī of India, Stephanie Lynn Budin makes a wide-ranging study of independent women who have historically been dismissed as prostitutes.

The purpose of this book is to rectify a well-entrenched misunderstanding about a category of women existing throughout world history--women who were not (and are not) under patriarchal authority, here called "Freewomen." Having neither father nor husband, and not being bound to any religious authority monitoring their sexuality, these women are understood to be prostitutes, and the terminology designating them appears as such in dictionaries and common parlance. This book examines five case studies of such the Mesopotamian ḫarīmtu, the Greek hetaira, the Italian cortigiana "onesta", the Japanese geisha, and the Indian devadāsī. Thus the book goes from the dawn of written history to the present day, from ancient Europe and the Near East through modern Asia, comparatively examining how each of these cultures had its own version of the Freewoman and what this meant in terms of sexuality, gender, and culture. This work also considers the historiographic infelicities that gave rise and continuance to this misreading of the historic and ethnographic record.



This engaging and provocative study will be of great interest to students and scholars working in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Women's History, Classical Studies, Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Studies, Asian Studies, World Cultures, and Historiography.

328 pages, ebook

Published May 30, 2021

Reviews

[Eustacia Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have ever found this book, let along read it, but when Mamapan (aka Hanfugirl) asks you to read something, you read it. And I’m glad she recommended this book because I never realised how many women have been unfairly classified as prostitutes throughout history.

As the title makes it clear, Freewomen, Patriarchal Authority and the Accusation of Prostitution examines how women in different periods of time and in different parts of the world have been called prostitutes because they are freewomen, a woman the book defines as “a female who is not under patriarchal authority. That is, for whatever reason, she has no father (or is not under a father’s authority) and no husband (or is not under a husband’s authority).” The freewoman is not only not under patriarchal authority, she is often a culture bearer, sexually active, but is not a prostitute, in that she does not sell her body for money. The women examined in this book are:

Arimtu (Ancient Mesopotamian)
Hetaira (Ancient Greece)
Cortigiana (Renaissance Italy)
Geisha (pre-modern to modern Japan)
Devadasi (from 300BCE to modern India)

While Budin makes a strong case that all the women in these five countries and time periods are not prostitutes (although they may have been driven to prostitution by the accusation of prostitution or have been conflated with prostitutes), the strongest chapters in the books are the ones on Arimtu and Hetaira, which makes sense because according to her page on the Archaeological Institute of America, Budin’s focus is typically Ancient Greece and the Near East. I really enjoyed how she looked at the interpretation of words and how an uncharitable interpretation can lead to a misreading of who these women really were.

I’ve not read up on the Cortigiana or the Devadasi, but I have read up on courtesans in Japan so I want to talk a bit about them. Going by the Notes and Bibliography, Budin is limited to sources in English, and this may be why in her history of the geisha, she talks about the imayo being sung in the Heian period and the Shirabyoushi but does not mention the Yuujo (遊女). From what I read in 中世遊女 by 辻浩和, in medieval Japan (mid 9th to 16th century), there was a class of women called Yujo which be subdivided into three types: Yuujo, Shirabyoushi, and Kugutsuko. This subdivision is based on the type of art they specialised in but basically as a whole, before the Kamakura period, the Yuujo were valued for both their artistic beauty and their bodies but from the latter half of the Kamakura period onwards, they were increasingly seen as prostitutes, possibly because the imayou starting falling out of favour, with only the Shirabyoushi retaining their status as artists. I thought this rise and fall based on the popularity of the art form was interesting and I’m hoping to be able to learn more about this aspect and how the Yuujo connect to Oiran.

Anyway, I’ve digressed a bit but basically, I thought it was interesting that Budin also connects the Geisha to Kabuki and the women who sang Imayo (I’m guessing these are the Yuujo) because that’s what I’ve been thinking while reading up on the Yuujo. I’m not really surprised that the Yuujo wasn’t discussed in depth because I think most of the research is in Japanese, and I think that there was a lot to talk about if we’re just looking at how the Geisha came to be seen as prostitutes anyway.

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating book! I’ve been quite narrowly focused on Japan for the Hanfugirl’s project, so it’s interesting (and also infuriating) to see how the same patterns have been repeating themselves throughout history and in various cultures.

This review was first posted at Eustea Reads

[Pan Pan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such an important and illuminating book that goes into such fine details on courtesans across civilisations and throughout history, and how the systemic oppression made them turn to different ways to find their art and their own living. Very very good research!