Cultural Depiction of Prostitution and Poverty in The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon and In Darkest London

Abstract

This discussion looks at two of the landmark texts on the themes of prostitution and urban poverty in late Victorian Britain: The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (1885) by W. T. Stead and In Darkest London (1889) by Margaret Harkness.  The paper will also look at how the two writers deal with the epidemic childhood sexualization, rampant poverty and institutional insensitivity by the established authority especially in the infamous slums of the East End in London. In this example by Stead, the story would serve as a weapon of investigative journalism that aims to induce outrage and arouse the moral anger of the people in order to create the necessary pressure that would succeed in changing the law.  Employing sensationalism of journalism and evocative language, Stead deliberately propagates a moral panic to reveal how female innocence is commodified and those with seemingly big power are accomplices to it.  By contrast, the difference between the literary style of Harkness and her realist prose with its explicit description of poverty-stricken life of people living in the urban area and the strength of these people contrasting the inefficiency of the existing institutions is quite startling.   The influence of the most visible themes in the two works is the gender aspects of social suppression, the commercial and feminine exploitation of female weakness, the hypocrisy of the moral meaning displayed by governing classes, and the failure of state and humanitarian monitoring.  By making use of thorough investigations into primary sources and interactions with secondary sources, the analysis determines that both Stead and Harkness apply journalistic sensationalism and social realism interchangeably, not only using these literary forms as the means of narration but as tools of social awareness and critical social thinkers.  Although the stylistic and ideological distinctions that distinguish between two authors are big, both of them are successful at turning their literary works into a kind of socio-political activism that reflects on the laxity of readers and highlights the institutionalized ills of Victorian London.