Cocotte (prostitute)
{{short description|Historical term for high class prostitutes in France}}
{{About|French prostitutes||Cocotte (disambiguation)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2024}}
File:Bertall - cocotte.jpg from The comedy of our time: studies in pencil and pen, Plon, Paris, vol. 2, 1875.]]
Cocottes (or coquettes) were high class prostitutes (courtesans) in France during the Second Empire and the Belle Époque.{{cite web |last1=Rudorff |first1=Raymond |title=Courtesans and Prostitutes |url=http://www.indiana.edu/~paris10/ParisOSS/Day10_Sex_and_Gender/d8Rudorff_Courtsans_and_Prostitutes.html |website=www.indiana.edu |access-date=16 February 2019 |archive-date=17 February 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190217142433/http://www.indiana.edu/~paris10/ParisOSS/Day10_Sex_and_Gender/d8Rudorff_Courtsans_and_Prostitutes.html |url-status=dead }} They were also known as demimondaines and grandes horizontales.{{sfn|Rounding|2004|p=352}} Cocotte was originally a term of endearment for small children, but was used as a term for elegant prostitutes from the 1860s.{{sfn|Smith|2014|p=11}} The term was also used in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany from the turn of the 20th century (Kokotte).{{sfn|Smith|2014|pp=2, 13}}
Overview
For some women, becoming a cocotte was also a way to achieve financial comfort before settling down in marriage. Some managed their fortune, others died in misery, others finally, like Sarah Bernhardt, who in the beginning was a cocotte, became adulated actresses.{{cite web |last1=Laing |first1=Olivia |title=Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt by Robert Gottlieb {{!}} book review |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/24/sarah-bernhardt-robert-gottlieb-review |website=The Observer |access-date=16 February 2019 |date=23 October 2010}}
For a rich man of the period, keeping a cocotte was seen as a symbol of his status and virility. Cocottes were elegant, fashionable and extravagant, the papers reported on their clothing, parties and affairs.{{cite web |title=Prostitution in Paris (1850-1910) Prequel of the billet about Memoirs of a cocodette written by herself by Ernest Feydeau. |url=https://bookaroundthecorner.wordpress.com/2016/01/17/prostitution-in-paris-1850-1910-prequel-of-the-billet-about-memoirs-of-a-cocodette-written-by-herself-by-ernest-feydeau/ |website=Book Around The Corner |access-date=16 February 2019 |language=en |date=17 January 2016}}
Several authors of the 19th century wrote about cocottes,{{sfn|Chu|Dixon|2008|p=203}} for example Émile Zola with Nana. This novel describes the life and tragic fate of a street-walker who rises to become a cocotte, and whose ways lead to ruin the powerful men she meets.{{cite web |last1=Willsher |first1=Kim |title=Cocottes, courtesans and sex in the city: Paris celebrates art of the demi-monde |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/19/musee-orsay-prostitution-paris-exhibition-splendour-and-misery |website=The Observer |access-date=16 February 2019 |date=19 September 2015}}
Famous cocottes include Cora Pearl (1835-1886) (her patrons included Prince Napoleon and the Duke of Morny); Laure Hayman (1851-1932) (Paul Bourget, King of Greece{{which?|date=April 2024}}, Prince Karageorgevich and Prince Karl of Fürstenberg).{{sfn|Rose|2016|p=322}} Several mansions of Paris were built for "cocottes", such as that of Esther Lachmann, known as la Païva, on the Champs-Élysées.{{cite web |title=Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse Console for the Grand Salon in the Hôtel de Païva |url=https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire_id/konsole-des-grossen-salons-des-hotels-de-paiva-9591.html |website=www.musee-orsay.fr |publisher=Musée d'Orsay |access-date=16 February 2019 |archive-date=29 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181029231306/http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire_id/konsole-des-grossen-salons-des-hotels-de-paiva-9591.html |url-status=dead }}
References
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Bibliography
- {{cite book |last1=Balducci |first1=Richard |title=Les Princesses de Paris: L'âge d'or des cocottes |date=1993 |publisher=Hors collection (réédition numérique FeniXX) |isbn=9782258127975 |language=fr}}
- {{cite book |last1=Chu |first1=Petra ten-Doesschate |last2=Dixon |first2=Laurinda S. |title=Twenty-first-century Perspectives on Nineteenth-century Art: Essays in Honor of Gabriel P. Weisberg |date=2008 |publisher=Associated University Presse |isbn=9780874130119 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wGPPe8l-HmwC&q=Cocotte+&pg=PA202 |language=en}}
- {{cite book |last1=Feydeau |first1=Ernest |title=Souvenirs d'une cocodette |date=2013 |publisher=Numeriklivres |isbn=9782897173999 |language=fr}}
- {{cite book |last1=Guigon |first1=Catherine |title=Les cocottes : reines du Paris 1900 |date=2016 |publisher=Parigramme |isbn=9782840969983 |language=fr}}
- {{cite book |last1=Pratt |first1=Theodore |authorlink1=Theodore Pratt |title=Cocotte |date=1951 |publisher=Fawcett Publications}}
- {{cite book |last1=Rose |first1=David Charles |title=Oscar Wilde's Elegant Republic: Transformation, Dislocation and Fantasy in fin-de-siècle Paris |date=2016 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |isbn=9781443887632 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cwv5DAAAQBAJ&q=Karageorgevich&pg=PA273 |language=en}}
- {{cite book |last1=Rounding |first1=Virginia |title=Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-century Courtesans |date=2004 |publisher=Bloomsbury |isbn=9780747568599 |language=en}}
- {{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Jill Suzanne |title=Berlin Coquette: Prostitution and the New German Woman, 1890–1933 |date=2014 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=9780801469701 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1a8PAwAAQBAJ&q=Cocotte+prostitution&pg=PA11 |language=en}}
Category:Prostitution in France