CORA PEARL : READ HER MEMOIR HERE! : MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

photo from GOOGLE IMAGES

This month we celebrate the 19th century prostitute?/ courtesan/? mistress? CORA PEARL, born Emma Elizabeth Crouch.


Cora has been the subject of a number of blogs and articles on the net, and because she's so popular and so covered, I hesitated. Finding Cora's own memoir, which she wrote herself, on Google Books convinced me to go ahead and elect Cora. I'm linking to this book, which you can read on line. Cora's memoir was published in London but I think it was translated from French.

So click on the title or at the bottom of this post to the link, and you'll soon be reading it and learn not only about her life and her world view but the way women who started out poor lived in the 19th century!  

Cora tells the story that she was 15 when she was taken to bed by a man who could have been 35, who she first saw in a market. Later, though she started out curious, she was disgusted. In Cora's day many poor women were considered to be unmarriageable because they didn't have a dowry or, out of innocence or hunger, they found sex to be the only way to resolve their destitution and couldn't marry because they had lost their virginity before marriage, even if they were molested or raped.

Today women, especially in Western Countries, have so many more opportunities to become educated, have businesses, or make their own way in life. Many women today have no need or desire for marriage. In those days even a honorably married woman, who became a widow and who didn't find another husband quickly, unless they inherited money, went to the street. (There were probably more loveless marriages in those situations than there are today.)


Cora was a serial mistress known for her dinner parties.  She would have herself brought out on a large silver dish, naked and reclining on a bed of violets, as "desert." That Cora captures our imagination a century later says something about her appeal.

This month we'll read what other authors have also said of Cora.

GOOGLE BOOKS - CORA PEARL's OWN MEMOIR  updated January 2016

C 2012 Mistress Manifesto / Missy Rapport All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights