The fear of pollution and corruption as represented by the prostitute was heightened by the fact that she broke all the rules surrounding women and commodities. She was consumed but she was never fully owned. For although she was, like any burgeoise, totally dependent on men, and was there to service them, unlike a wife, there was no way of binding her, she did not vow obedience, she was not forced into subordination and there was always another client. She was not fully under men's control, and indeed revealed their dependency and weakness.

//Felicity Edholm, The View from Below: Paris in the 1880s