‘Lovers of liberty’?Prostitution and the Politics of Choice in Emma Donoghue’s Slammerkin

Abstract

This article explores the way in which Emma Donoghue’s novel Slammerkin (2000) reflects long-standing feminist debates surrounding prostitution. We argue that not only does Donoghue’s portrayal of prostitution resist the pro versus anti dichotomy in which feminist perspectives on sex work are so often narrowly situated, but Slammerkin also foregrounds the complexity with which the politics of choice intersects with women’s decision to sell their bodies.

Keywords:

• Emma Donoghue
• Slammerkin
• prostitution
• choice
• feminism
• post-feminism
• gender
• sexuality

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹We recognize the ongoing debates surrounding the terminology ‘prostitution’ and ‘sex work’. We use these terms interchangeably in order to recognize the varied political perspectives on prostitution which Donoghue engages with in the novel and which, this article suggests, serve to elicit the very debates in question.

²Mary’s varied employment—from prostitute to trainee seamstress—is a reversal of the fortunes of M. (Moll or Mary) Hackabout in William Hogarth’s paintings and engravings series A Harlot’s Progress (1731), which follows M.’s journey from her arrival in London as an aspiring seamstress (as the scissors and pincushion on her arm suggest) to her ‘descent’ into prostitution and her death from syphilis at the age of 23.