Prison, punishment, prostitution: women in the 19th century

Abstract

At the end of the 19th century, in the face of preconceived ideas about the existence of a natural reality, there is a decisive change in the biological condition of women. The dissociation between sexuality and reproduction is the starting point against a system of assumptions that have associated both concepts in an unquestionable way. When we say "biological change of women", what do we mean? Not to a biological mutation, obviously, but to a change in what men and women have of biographical: from the social, historical, strictly personal point of view.

From the social model impregnated by Catholic doctrine the idea emerged that considered women beings prone to be led by lust and crime, beings who with their bad arts, as descendants of Eve, could drag man towards sinful behavior, toward new forms of original sin. These ideas would even lead to the nineteenth century saw emerge new theories about crime that would consider the woman a being whose evolution was less than that of man.

The penitentiary and penal treatment of women would be a subject discussed by the Spanish penitentiary reformism of the 19th century. There was a new spirit that wanted to change the previous penitentiary situation. During the nineteenth century the gender ideology would prevail in the different types of institutions to which women were derived because the treatment was based on the fact that on the one hand they were criminals and on the other they had to be corrected and return to their role of good women. It was the beginning of the change in the penitentiary regime.