On a number of occasions in the novel, she becomes a mistress, or kept woman—in other words, a whore of high status. Her series of relationships with men highlights the common problems that led many women of the period to make a living with their bodies, and her matter-of-fact acceptance of her behavior indicates how readily extramarital sex (in exchange for financial support) was accepted in late-seventeenth- century England.
Actually, the late seventeenth century was a golden age for English prostitution. Of course, there were earlier and later advantageous periods too. Prostitutes had faced few legal troubles from 1161 to 1548, when London’s bordellos were licensed by the bishop of Winchester, and the practice proliferated in nineteenth-century Victorian London, which had some 3,000 brothels. But the years between 1660 and 1700 were a high-water mark for the profession: at no other time were prostitutes, as a class, so socially visible, nor was there ever a time when the highest class of prostitutes, such as the courtesans of King Charles II, were so celebrated and influential. The period following Charles’s restoration to the English throne in 1660 is known as one of the most cheerfully amoral in the history of England.
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