When we refer to “respectable” women, then, we are referring to those whose bodies could not, under any conditions, be bought or sold. Their physical persons were hidden away and permanently relegated to some man’s domestic sphere; when they appeared in public veiled, they were effectively still ostentatiously walking around, even in public, inside such a sphere.53 Women who could be exchanged for money, on the other hand, must be instantly recognizable as such.
