Prostitution In The American West

In the middle of the nineteenth century, America experienced a boom of expansion and development. Miners in pursuit of gold and riches raced across the country, establishing mining and frontier towns along the way. A lot of these towns or settlements had high populations of men, like miners and army garrisons. With a rise in these developments, the West also experienced a rise in prostitution. Prostitution is defined as the contractual relation in which sexual services are exchanged for a sum of money (Davis, 1937). Prostitution in the early West was a cutthroat business. Predominantly a female occupation, many women, including those from overseas, were often forced into the lifestyle and found it very difficult to leave the profession (Oharazeki, 2013). Due to the skewed gender role expectations in the nineteenth century American West, female prostitutes often experienced abusive masters, pitiful wages, and an overarching poor quality of life. In the nineteenth century American West, women’s employment options were often limited by society’s expectations of the female’s role in the household

Many women became prostitutes as a result of their skills no longer being needed, and they needed a way to provide for themselves. So, women found one aspect of themselves that society told them they could sell. Unfortunately, prostitution was a bleak affair. Occasionally, a woman got lucky and bought her way out of the profession, but she was the exception. Most lived and died in poverty. Furthermore, because of the destructive nature of the profession, most prostitutes grew to be disheartened and disillusioned, many even diseased. Prostitutes were socially ostracized, victims of the gender roles that were placed upon them. Women who lived the life of a prostitute often faced harsh realities, far from the promised lure and attraction of the American