Prostitution in the Victorian era

There were many prostitutes during the Victorian era.  Most were lower-class women, with the exception of mistresses kept by upper-class men.  According to Victorian standards, respectable women did not consider sexual intercourse pleasurable.  It was their duty to be intimate with this husbands and affairs were seen as disgraceful.  Men on the other hand enjoyed prostitutes as a lot of the time they did not enjoy their wives.  Prostitutes did not necessarily "enjoy" their sexual encounters with men, as Victorians tended to believe.  Prostitution was simply their means of survival.  Lower-class women did not become prostitutes because they wanted to but a lot of the time they were left with no other choice.  There were very few options that allowed a women to earn her own income, but once entered into the profession, they were not allowed to enter back into "respectable" society.

A new type of "slavery" had arisen during the Victorian era: Prostitution.  Respectable men and women would lure young women, usually from a lower-class background, away from their homes and sell them into prostitution.  These women rarely got the chance to go back to their families, not because they weren't free to go, but because they procurators and procuresses never allowed them a moment alone in public.  

Make-up was only really used in the Victorian era by prostitutes.  More respectable women saw wearing make-up as a far too flirtatious product used to lure men.  They would concentrate more on their extravagant hairstyles and hats, leaving the "rouge" and other forms of make-up to the world of prostitution.  

Anne Hathaway "Les Miserables" a Victorian ideal of a prostitute