Damned Whores And God's Police By Anne Summers

Annotation

Anne Summers book, Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonisation of Women in Australia has shown that in the first fifty years of Australian settlement, the notion of fostering whores opposed to wives was prominent. From 1788 until the 1840s, almost all women were categorized as whores, or ‘damned whores’ as Lieutenant Ralph Clark called them. Summers uses terms like “whores”, “disgusting” and “disgraced” in order to understand how women were portrayed through the eyes of white Australian settlers. This categorization was initially based on the fact that virtually all of the white women to come to Australia in the first two decades of colonization were transported convicts, but it was constantly reinforced by the social structure

which evolved in the penal colony. Thus even female convicts who had served their sentences had little chance of having their status redefined and the stereotype came to be applied to many other women in the colony who had not been transported. This book displays a double standard between men and women, and that standard ends up defining the women. Women had no means of escaping this fate, so they made the best out of the situation, with the circumstances they were given. Women had no rights, no protection and no matter their status, even if they had children, they were still considered whores. This poses the question, when was the turning point from whores to wives?

Literature Review

Australian women convicts are seen as damned whores, free labor, and possibly a second chance at life.

These are three very different views on women and authors have provided efficient evidence to argue, some better than others, that each avenue is plausible. All the authors are women and some tend to have a feminist take on how women convicts were perceived. This in turn has made their research portray this view to one extreme or the other, whores or looking for a second chance.

Authors such as Joy Damousi and Anne Summers swayed the argument to show that men in the late 1700s viewed the convict women as “damned whores” and animals that they were disgusting and “disgrace to ther Whole Sex”. Throughout several sources these terms are used and women are degraded down to nothing to show their place in a white man settlers world. Women were assigned only one main function, they were there primarily as objects of sexual gratification. Convict women were scared and given close to nothing, this negative connotation of being whores shouldn’t be a defining term because society forced them into that life, in order to afford accommodation for the night, women would have to whore themselves for enough

money.

On the other side of the argument are authors like Babette Smith, Kristine McCabe and Kay Daniels, who saw women as optimistic and more of women roles in the Factory, at homes and their ability to reproduce and become a wife.

These feminist historians have taken a bad situation and tried to show the good that these women were doing with their lives. Babette displays the rebellion of women that stand their ground in order to have some control over their lives. Although women were still oppressed by degradation such as, cutting their hair really short to deprive women of their sexuality, depriving the necessities that make a woman, a woman, that did not define them. As the years went on the view of women also changed, from whores in the late 1700s, to determined, opportunistic, working-class women in the mid 1800s. Feminist writers do not see only a degraded role for women in colonial society but more of what they did for society and how they helped shaped the women’s role for the future, women had a core value that was limited to them, reproduction. That turned into a valued contribution to the

community.

Each author holds a strong argument for their case on how women were viewed. And it might as well be that throughout time, the view of women has changed from whores, to a valued asset to the community. One interpretation doesn’t have to be more persuasive because every historian is accurate in the time that they are looking at women in society. Joy Damousi looks at the women who are first coming over to the new land and there isn’t really a set role for them in society, other to be at a man’s beck and call. As time progresses women are needed for more than that, and they are capable of taking on responsibilities. History proves both views to be accurate and both persuasive.