Monticelso doesn’t admit it, but what is driving this rant is a fear of women, fear that they can wield power over men; they can ‘teach man wherein he is imperfect’. Here, a whore is not a sex worker, she is a woman who has authority over a man and must be shamed into silence at all costs.
Historically, ‘whore’ has been used to attack those who have upset the status quo and asserted themselves, usually in an attempt to reassert sexual control and dominance over her. But unlike the word ‘prostitute’, whore is not tied to a profession but to a perceived moral state. Which is why many powerful women, with no connection to the sex trade, have been attacked as ‘whores’; Mary Wollstonecraft, Phulan Devi, even Margaret Thatcher were all labelled whores. The word is an attempt to shame, humiliate and ultimately subdue its target, and your average woman on the street is just as likely to be called a whore as a world leader, perhaps even more so.
‘Whore’ is a nasty insult today, but calling someone a whore in the early modern period was regarded as such a serious defamation of character that you could be taken to court for slander.[1] By far the most frequent insult cited in these cases where a woman has been slandered is ‘whore’ and myriad creative variants thereon: ‘stinking whore’, ‘ticket-buying whore’, ‘drunken piss-pot whore’, ‘lace petticoat whore’ and ‘dog and bitch whore’ have all been recorded.{7}
In 1664, Anne Blagge claimed that Anne Knutsford had called her a ‘poxy-arsed whore’.{8} Poor Isabel Yaxley complained of a neighbour alleging that she was a ‘whore’ who could be ‘fucked for a pennyworth of fish’ in 1667.{9} In 1695, Susan Town of London accused Jane Adams of shouting to ‘come out you whore, and scratch your mangy arse as I do’.{10} In 1699, Isabel Stone of York brought a suit against John Newbald for calling her ‘a whore, a common whore and a piss-arsed whore… a Bitch and a piss-arsed Bitch’.{11} And in 1663, Robert Heyward was hauled before the Cheshire courts for calling Elizabeth Young a ‘salt bitch’ and a ‘sordid whore’. In court he claimed he could prove Elizabeth was a whore and she should just go home and ‘wash the stains out of thy coat’.{12}
In order to prove a case of slander, you would need a witness to the insult, to prove the accusation was untrue with a character witness, and to show how your reputation had been damaged by being called such names. The punishment for slander ranged from fines and being ordered to publicly apologise, through to excommunication (though this was rare). One example of punishment occurred in 1691, when William Halliwell was ordered to publicly apologise in church to Peter Leigh for defaming his character:
I William Halliwell forgetting my duty to walk in Love and Charity towards my neighbour have uttered spoken and published several scandalous defamatory and reproachful words of and against Peter Leigh… I do hereby recant revoke and recall the said words as altogether false scandalous and untrue… I am unfeignedly sorry and I hereby confess and acknowledge that I have much wronged and injured him.{13}
The accusation of ‘whore’ was particularly damaging as it directly affected a woman’s value on the marriage market. So when Thomas Ellerton called Judith Glendering a ‘whore’ who went from ‘barn to barn’ and from ‘tinkers to fiddlers’ in 1685, he was doing more than being abusive, he was preventing her finding a husband.{14} In 1652, Cicely Pedley alleged she had been called a ‘whore’ with the intention ‘to prevent her marriage with a person of good quality’.{15} It could even affect business. In 1687, a Justice of the Peace decided that calling an innkeeper’s wife a ‘whore’ was actionable because it had affected trade.{16}
There are numerous slander cases brought by a husband whose wife had been called a whore. Calling someone’s wife a whore was a particularly devastating insult as it not only insulted the wife, but also impugned the husband as a cuckold and questioned his ability to sexually satisfy the missus. In 1685, for example, Abraham Beaver was accused of ordering Richard Winnell to ‘get thee home thou cuckold thou will find Thomas Fox in Bed with thy Wife’.{17}
Although cases of men alleging slander were less frequent, they too were often sexual in nature. In 1680, Elizabeth Aborne of London was taken to court by Thomas Richardson for saying that his penis was ‘rotten with the pox’.{18} Men were also attacked as ‘whoremongers’, ‘cuckolds’, ‘bastard-getters’, ‘rogues’, and in one case a ‘jealous pated fool and ass’.{19} Men brought cases against people who had called them thieves, beggars or drunkards. In 1699, for example, Thomas Hewetson was brought before the courts in York for calling Thomas Daniel a ‘mumper’ (beggar): ‘he was a mumper and went about the Country from door to door mumping’.{20}
By the end of the seventeenth century, there was a notable decline in the number of slander cases brought before the Church courts. Historians have long debated why this may have been the case. It may be that as cities swelled and the population grew, the courts became more concerned with crimes other than women calling each other ‘hedge whores’ and ‘poxy-arsed whores’. It may just be that there was a shift in culture and taking your slagging matches before a judge became less the done thing. By 1817, UK law ruled that ‘calling a married woman or a single one a whore is not actionable, because fornication and adultery are subjects of spiritual not temporal censures’.{21}
As the above chart shows, since the seventeenth century there has been a notable decline in the use of the word ‘whore’. Until the end of the seventeenth century, ‘whore’ was still a legal term and turns up in no less than 163 trials at the Old Bailey from 1679 until 1800. Historians such as Rictor Norton have examined how ‘prostitute’ or ‘common prostitute’ came to replace ‘whore’ as the legal terminology for a person who sells sexual services.{22} I suspect the sharp decline in the usage of ‘whore’ at the end of the seventeenth century is linked to the linguistic shift from legal terminology to a pure insult.
Today, ‘whore’ is largely confined to abusive and coarse speech. However, like the word ‘slut’, ‘whore’ is also in a state of reclamation and can be used to directly challenge the shame the word has carried for hundreds of years. ‘Whore’ may be a term of abuse, but it is one rooted in fear of female independence and sexual autonomy. Its progression from meaning a woman who desires, to an insult seeking to shame that desire, traces cultural attitudes around female sexuality. I do not use ‘whore’ to shame, I use it to recognise all those who rattled cultural sensibilities enough to be called a whore. I use it to deflate the shame within it. I use it to remember that our language shapes how we view each other, and it is constantly evolving. Historically, if you desire, you are a whore; if you have sex outside of marriage, you are a whore; if you transgress and threaten ‘the man’, you are a whore. We are all historical whores.
1
Three excellent sources to read more about Tudor slander courts are Dinah Winch, ‘Sexual Slander and its Social Context in England