43.


The Lady of Joy


Even prostitution, in the long run, may become a more or less
respectable profession, as it was in the great days of the Greeks.
That quality will surely attach to it if ever it grows quite
unnecessary; whatever is unnecessary is always respectable, for
example, religion, fashionable clothing, and a knowledge of Latin
grammar. The prostitute is disesteemed today, not because her
trade involves anything intrinsically degrading or even disagreeable,
but because she is currently assumed to have been driven into it by
dire necessity, against her dignity and inclination. That this
assumption is usually unsound is no objection to it; nearly all the
thinking of the world, particularly in the field of morals, is based
upon unsound assumption, e.g., that God observes the fall of a
sparrow and is shocked by the fall of a Sunday-school
superintendent. The truth is that prostitution is one of the most
attractive of the occupations practically open to the sort of women
who engage in it, and that the prostitute commonly likes her work,
and would not exchange places with a shop-girl or a waitress
for anything in the world. The notion to the contrary is
propagated by unsuccessful prostitutes who fall into the hands of
professional reformers, and who assent to the imbecile theories of
the latter in order to cultivate their good will, just as convicts in
prison, questioned by tee-totalers, always ascribe their rascality to