What price virtue? Coding women's value in the eighteenth-century novel

While marriage is often presented as a woman???s fate in the eighteenth-century novel, the\ud proliferation of prostitution narratives in the period offers an alternative plot. Both of\ud these plot lines abound in early novels, though the fixed, linear nature of the marriage\ud narrative sharply contrasts with the dynamic possibilities of a prostitute???s story with its\ud many possible resolutions. Discussions of a woman???s virtue become inextricably tied to\ud her value, turning sexuality into a commodity fit for exchange. The obsession in\ud eighteenth-century British print culture regarding the components of women???s virtue and\ud value links both prostitution and marriage narratives together, problematizing the notion\ud that virtue and chastity are synonymous. Examining three novels???Pamela (1740) by\ud Samuel Richardson, Memoirs o f a Woman o f Pleasure (1748-9) by John Cleland, and\ud Sophia (1762) by Charlotte Lennox???I trace representations of women and virtue and\ud how both become commodified. Drawing on other contemporary prostitution narratives\ud for context, I show how these works call into question the actual differences between\ud prostitution and marriage as a woman???s fate since both narrative types remain entangled\ud in truth claims, narrative structures, tangible representations of intangible qualities, and\ud questions of agency