Jamie Page's Prostitution and Subjectivity uses three case studies from different areas of Germany across the fifteenth century to recover the subjectivity of women involved in prostitution in the late medieval period. The result is compelling, surprising, and engaging. Each case offers a lucid picture of a late medieval city using rich description and contextual information, and then spins a dramatic tale of its inhabitants, “[allowing] the evidence to speak to wider debates on sex, gender, and social classification” (19).
Page begins with the case of a woman from Zurich known only as “Repplin,” suspected of infanticide in 1392 but likely also involved in prostitution. The case offers a fascinating treatment of social networks and their importance to women involved in illicit behavior: Page demonstrates how, when called as witnesses, Repplin's neighbors and clients attempted to shield her from the authorities. Painting a picture of Repplin's pregnancy as public knowledge, they suggested she had spoken frequently about the baby, countering insinuations that she had hoped to hide the pregnancy and dispose of the child quietly. Page considers how communities might have resisted institutional involvement in their affairs, and why they might have chosen to protect Repplin despite knowing she was involved in clandestine prostitution.
Throughout, Page shows an awareness of the ambiguities of such records: Repplin's status as a prostitute is crucial to the case but remains subtext throughout the record. The case ends without a satisfying resolution as Repplin dies in custody, leaving Page to read much between the lines—whether Repplin was indeed a prostitute, whether she was the mother of the deceased baby, whether her pimp was one of the men interviewed in the case. He supplements this, and the other case studies, with painstaking archival digging to chase subjects across decades and between archives, comparing them to similar cases and producing a holistic examination of these extraordinary records. For instance, he traces the occupancy of Repplin's residence in the years before and after her case, identifying a likely spinster cluster, potentially an informal brothel. This archival thoroughness enables Page to exploit sometimes fragmentary records.
Page argues that the origins of social disciplining lay in the late medieval period, well before the Reformation, and the book's other case studies support this argument. He suggests that gendered discourses of secrecy that promulgated misogynistic views of women led to a belief in the inherent danger posed by all women, but especially by prostitutes, who were seen to be deceitful by nature. Thus, a woman like Repplin was particularly mistrusted by the authorities. Page contextualizes this, and the other cases, in the longer-term development of attitudes toward prostitution, moving from a grudging tolerance of it as a social safety valve to a distaste for an institution believed to bring disorder, violence, and immorality to the community. Repplin's case fits neatly on this continuum as an early example of the discipline imposed on prostitutes by a system that had begun to view her, and others like her, as a threat.
The second case study centers on the women of Nördlingen's late medieval brothel and skillfully explores how medieval women might have conceived of their bodily autonomy and integrity, using a remarkable court case in which prostitutes recounted their abuse at the hands of the brothel manager. In spring 1471, this abuse reached breaking point when the brothel manager's partner/wife (her exact position remains unclear) forced one of the women to drink an abortifacient. Page uses James C Scott's concept of the “weapons of the weak” to analyze this case, showing how these women deployed gossip: they used their clients to bring the situation to the attention of the authorities by telling them what was going on, thus breaching the walls of the brothel. As Page articulates, the records demonstrate a significant awareness of contemporary debates and norms on the part of the collective of prostitutes—they knew what to say to provoke the desired reaction. For instance, the women repeatedly mention that they were forced to work while menstruating, were prohibited from attending church, and were coerced into working on Holy Days. These facts produced serious concern and quickly became a focus of the council's questioning, even appearing in the sentencing record after the close of the investigation. In carefully interpreting not just what was said but how it was said and by whom, Page offers a better picture of the subjectivity of these women—circumscribed, perhaps, but their agency shines through, thanks largely to the way in which Page examines the documents.
The third and final case study takes place in Augsburg. Page examines the case of Gerdrut, a woman whose entry into the city in 1497 provoked suspicion, and who was questioned as a potential prostitute. In many ways, this case study aptly represents the ambiguities inherent in discussing sex work that Page is so keen to highlight, and which permeate the book: it is never conclusively determined whether Gerdrut was a prostitute, and her relationship to the man who brought her to the city remains unclear. Page gives profound attention to the words and intentions of prostitutes themselves, carefully weighing the multiple meanings of words such as “dieren” (servant or prostitute) and considering the ways in which contemporary euphemisms might have altered the meaning of testimonies.
In his conclusion, Page points out that “where the concept of subjectivity is concerned, prostitution might create especially ambiguous terrain” (139). This is certainly true, but Page's book shows what can be done with records of this type. It also raises questions about the feasibility of accessing the subjectivity of prostitutes in the past—can we recover expressions of their agency? Do the sources provide a real account of their voices, or are they too filtered through the bureaucracy and patriarchy of the time? Can court records offer us a glimpse of the ordinary lives of prostitutes, or do they focus too much on the extraordinary, the exceptional? Page aims to offer a “nuanced vision of selfhood uncovered for women in other eras [but] largely foreclosed to the medieval prostitute” (15), and he has succeeded.
