The Whore
In my last post, I mentioned that I had a few misgivings about The Warrior Prophet (and the book that precedes it in the series, The Darkness that Comes Before). First among them was that the feminist in me wondered why every female character was some form of prostitute.
I can understand why The Whore is so appealing to authors. Her profession offers the thrill of the illicit and forbidden; it speaks of the demi-monde, the underground, the bohemian. She can be exceedingly glamorous or exceedingly downtrodden (or both), and it’s easy to give her a dark or mysterious past. She has more mobility than the housewife or the schoolteacher; the better to accompany the men on their epic treks or high-stakes adventures. She usually has the opportunity to bed every male character of note, a handy plot device indeed.
As a love interest, she is ideal. Since she is sexual, she is probably beautiful (when it comes to books, a woman is seldom the former without also being the latter). She is physically available for plenty of sex scenes but her emotional inavailability, as well as the presence of her customers, provides conflict and tension. Living in a society that exploits and shames her has given her a tough and cynical exterior but preserved the vulnerable interior - she desires True Love (and possibly babies) but has seen too much of men and the world to believe it is possible.
Of course, I have nothing against characters who are prostitutes. I loved Esmenet in The Warrior Prophet, even though she embodies many of the tropes above. But it bothers me when characters like this come up again and again as the primary - or only - representation of womanhood in novels where the male characters are interesting and diverse.
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