Fallen woman

But o'er the deadly blight Of love deflowered and sorrow of none avail, Which makes this man gasp and this woman quail, Can day from darkness ever again take flight?

Its use was an expression of the belief that to be socially and morally acceptable, a woman's sexuality and experience should be entirely restricted to marriage, and that she should also be under the supervision and care of an authoritative man.

Used when society offered few employment opportunities for women in times of crisis or hardship, the term was often more specifically associated with prostitution, which was regarded as both cause and effect of a woman being "fallen".

The term is considered to be anachronistic in the 21st century,[3] although it has considerable importance in social history and appears in many literary works (see also Illegitimacy in fiction).

The idea that Eve, from the biblical story in the Book of Genesis, was the prototypical fallen woman has been widely accepted by academics,[4] theologians and literary scholars.

[5] Eve was not expelled from Eden because she had sex outside of marriage; rather she fell from a state of innocence because she ate forbidden fruit from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

As the term narrowed to imply any socially unauthorized sexual activity, including premarital or extra-marital sex, whether initiated by the woman or not, it concealed the different reasons for such a "falling" out of God's and society's favor.

Whatever the case may be, female fallenness as it appears in each of these renderings was the result of a woman's deviation from social norms, and in turn strongly linked to moral expectations.

[16] As a genuine social concern as well as a metaphor for artistic explorations of vice and virtue, the theme of the fallen woman has a notable place in art and in literature.

Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine, Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste, Of virtue to make wise; what hinders then To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?"

[19][20] Where is honour, Innate and precept-strengthen'd, 'tis the rock Of faith connubial: where it is not - where Light thoughts are lurking, or the vanities Of worldly pleasure rankle in the heart, Or sensual throbs convulse it, well I know 'Twere hopeless for humanity to dream Of honesty in such infected blood, Although 'twere wed to him it covets most; An incarnation of the poet's god In all his marble-chiselled beauty, or The demi-deity, Alcides, in His majesty of superhuman manhood, Would not suffice to bind where virtue is not; It is consistency which forms and proves it; Vice cannot fix and virtue cannot change, The once fall'n woman must forever fall; For vice must have variety, while virtue Stands like the sun and all which rolls around Drinks life, and light, and glory from her aspect.

I, lines 378-398 [21] Lord Byron uses the idea of the fallen woman to relate vice and virtue and consider the effects of infidelity and inconsistency in his poem Mariano Faliero, Doge of Venice.

Conceived in 1851, it was described by his niece Helen Rossetti as follows: "A young drover from the country, while driving a calf to market, recognizes in a fallen woman on the pavement, his former sweetheart.

"[24] The character of Esther, who becomes a prostitute in Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Mary Barton (1848) is an example of a fallen woman being used to illustrate the social and political divide between rich and poor in Victorian England.

The novel is set in a large industrial town in the 1840s and it "gives an accurate and humane picture of working-class life ... Esther is presented as something other than merely a bad girl; the abyss into which she falls is the same gulf that separates Dives from Lazarus".

Written somewhat in reaction to Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles,[28] George Moore's 1894 novel Esther Waters deals with the experiences of a kitchen maid in a large house who is seduced and then abandoned by one of the footmen.

Tolstoy uses the sequence of misfortunes that result from her pregnancy to write a critique of late Imperial Russian society, focusing particularly on the justice and penal systems as Katerina and her abuser experience them.

Later, Christie starts work for the Sterlings, helping the son David with his flower business and taking care of domestic chores the mother is unable to do.

The films sometimes intended to convey a moral lesson; sometimes they were a social commentary on poverty; sometimes they explored the idea of redemption or the consequences of coercion; and sometimes they were about self-sacrifice.

These contrasts, such as innocence and experience; sin and redemption; vice and virtue, as well as ideas about corruption, class, exploitation, suffering and punishment, build on themes in earlier literature.

The Jungle (1914)[36] and Damaged Goods (1919)[37] consider the element of coercion, whereas poverty is important in Out of the Night (1918),[38] The Painted Lady (1924),[39] and Die freudlose Gasse (Joyless Street, 1925).