Prostitution and the Rewriting of Victorian Gender Stereotypes in Matthew Kneale’s Sweet Thames and Faye L. Booth’s Trades of the Flesh

Abstract

The two chosen contemporary novels, Matthew Kneale’s Sweet Thames and Faye L. Booth’s Trades of the Flesh represent women from different point of view, not the well-known Victorian gender stereotypes. The works recycle the typical Victorian stereotypes of femininity, including the figure of the prostitute and the middle-class wife but they also question them.