Essential Workers of the Palais-Royal: Prostitution and the Public Good in French Revolutionary Drama

Abstract: From 1789 to 1792, the issue of prostitution was absent from parliamentary debates, policy agendas, and journalism in France. This article looks to theater and pamphlet literature instead for examples that break the silence around prostitution, with special emphasis on the play, Le Serment civique des demoiselles fonctionnaires publiques du Palais-Royal (1791), in which prostitutes debate their status and duty in relation to a new Revolutionary decree on public workers. Using print and performance to intervene in public discourse and promote their interests, prostitutes of the Palais-Royal are shown as crafting a notion of citizenship based not on a discourse of natural rights, as prominent feminist activists of the period did, but rather based on their contribution to the public good as essential workers for the nation.