A Harlot's Progress

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A Harlot's Progress (also known as The Harlot's Progress) is a series of six paintings (1731, now lost) and engravings (1732) by William Hogarth. The series shows the story of a young woman, Mary (or Moll) Hackabout, who arrives in London from the country and becomes a prostitute. The series was developed from the third image: having painted a prostitute in her boudoir in a garret on Drury Lane, Hogarth struck upon the idea of creating scenes from her earlier and later life. The title and rich allegory are reminiscent of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

In the first scene, an old woman praises her beauty and suggests a profitable occupation, procuring her for the gentleman shown to the back of the image. She is a mistress with two lovers in the second, has become a common prostitute on the point of being arrested in the third, and is beating hemp in Bridewell Prison in the fourth. By the fifth, she is dying from venereal disease, and she is dead aged only 23 in the last.

The protagonist is named after the heroine of Moll Flanders and Kate Hackabout. Kate was a notorious prostitute and the sister of highwayman Francis Hackabout: he was hanged on 17 April 1730; she was convicted of keeping a disorderly house in August the same year, having been arrested by Westminster magistrate Sir John Gonson.

The series of paintings proved to be very popular, and Hogarth used his experience as an apprentice to a silversmith to create engravings of the images, selling a "limited edition" of 1,240 sets of six prints to subscribers for a guinea. Pirate copies of the engravings were soon in circulation, and Hogarth procured a 1735 Act of Parliament (8 Geo. II. cap. 13) to prohibit the practice. Soon after, Hogarth published his second series of satirical and moralistic images, A Rake's Progress, followed some years later by Marriage à-la-mode.

The original paintings were destroyed in a fire at Fonthill Abbey, the country house of William Beckford in Wiltshire, in 1755. The original plates survived, and were sold by Hogarth's widow, Jane, to John Boydell in 1789; by him to Baldwin, Cradock and Joy in 1818, and then to Henry Bohn in 1835. Each produced further copies.

Contents

[edit] Gallery with description

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Plate 1 – Moll Hackabout arrives in London at the Bell Inn, Cheapside.
Plate 1 – Moll Hackabout arrives in London at the Bell Inn, Cheapside.

[edit] Plate 1

Moll Hackabout arrives in London at the Bell Inn, Cheapside. Throughout the series, those items on the viewer's right are the sitter's left, the sinister side, while those things on the viewer's left are the sitter's dexter side, and Hogarth divides good and bad on the left and right. On the right side of the frame, where the buildings are in decay, notorious rake Colonel Francis Charteris and his pimp, John Gourlay, compete with the pox-ridden Elizabeth Needham (known as "Mother" Needham), a notorious procuress and brothel-keeper, to secure Moll for their prostitution. Charteris fondles himself in expectation. On the left side of the frame, where the buildings are solid, Londoners ignore the scene: indeed, a mounted clergyman ignores her plight, just as he ignores his horse knocking over a pile of pans. Meanwhile, the bawd palpates Moll as if buying a horse. A hint is contained in the goose, which is addressed to "My lofing cosen in Tems Stret in London": this "cousin" might have been a recruiter or a paid off dupe of the bawdy keepers.

The image is filled with potential puns and double meanings. The inn sign, with a picture of a bell, may refer to the belle (French: beautiful woman) newly arrived from the country, and also echoes the skirted shape of Hackabout and Needham. The scissors and pincushion hanging on Moll's arm suggest that she is a seamstress by profession, and the dead goose hints at her gullibility. The teetering pile of pans alludes to Moll's imminent "fall".

Plate 2 – Moll is now a kept woman, the mistress of a wealthy merchant.
Plate 2 – Moll is now a kept woman, the mistress of a wealthy merchant.

[edit] Plate 2

Moll is now a kept woman, the mistress of a wealthy merchant. She has numerous affectations of dress and accompaniment, as she keeps a West Indian serving boy and a monkey. The boy and the young female servant, as well as the monkey, may be provided by the businessman. She has jars of cosmetics, a mask from masquerades, and her apartment is decorated with paintings illustrating her sexually promiscuous and morally precarious state. She pushes over a table to distract the merchant's attention as a second lover tiptoes out.

Plate 3 – Moll has gone from kept woman to common prostitute.
Plate 3 – Moll has gone from kept woman to common prostitute.

[edit] Plate 3

Moll has gone from kept woman to common prostitute. Her maid is now an old and syphilitic jade. Her bed is her only major piece of furniture, and the cat poses to suggest Moll's new posture. The witch hat and birch rods on the wall suggest either black magic, or, much more likely, that her profession requires her to perform role-playing and sadomasochism. Her heroes are on the wall: Macheath from The Beggar's Opera and William Sacheverell, and two cures for syphilis are above them. The wig box of highwayman James Dalton (hanged on 11 May 1730) is stored over her bed, suggesting a romantic dalliance with the criminal. The magistrate, Sir John Gonson, with three armed bailiffs, is coming through the door on the right side of the frame to arrest Moll for her activities. Moll is showing off a new watch (perhaps a present from Dalton, perhaps stolen from another lover) and exposing her left breast. Gonson, however, is fixed upon the witch's hat and 'broom' or the periwig hanging from the wall above Moll's bed.

Plate 4 – Moll beats hemp in Bridewell Prison.
Plate 4 – Moll beats hemp in Bridewell Prison.

[edit] Plate 4

Moll is in Bridewell Prison. She beats hemp for hangman's nooses, while the jailer threatens her and points to the task. Moll's servant smiles as the jailer's wife steals clothes from Moll, and the servant appears to be wearing Moll's shoes. The prisoners go from left to right in order of decreasing wealth, with a gentleman who has brought his dog with him next to her (a card-sharp whose extra playing card has fallen out), a woman, a child who may suffer from Down's Syndrome (belonging to the sharper, probably), and finally a pregnant African woman who presumably "pleaded her belly" when brought to trial, as pregnant women could not be executed or transported. A prison graffito shows John Gonson hanging from the gallows. The jailer's wife literally winks at theft, and the inmates are in no way being reformed, despite the ironic engraving on the left above the occupied stocks, reading "Better to Work/ than Stand thus." The person suffering in the stocks apparently refused to work.

Plate 5 – Moll dying of syphilis.
Plate 5 – Moll dying of syphilis.

[edit] Plate 5

Moll is now dying of syphilis. Dr. Richard Rock on the left and Dr. Jean Misaubin on the right argue over their medical methods, which appear to be a choice of bleeding (Rock) and cupping (Misaubin). A woman, possibly Moll's bawd and possibly the landlady, rifles Moll's possessions for what she wishes to take away while Moll's maid tries to stop the looting and arguing. Moll's son sits by the fire, possibly addled by his mother's venereal disease. He is picking lice or fleas out of his hair. The only hint as to the apartment's owner is a Passover cake used as a flytrap, implying that her former keeper is paying for her in her last days and ironically indicating that Moll will, unlike the Israelites, not be spared. Several opiates ("anodynes") and "cures" litter the floor. Moll's clothes seem to reach down for her as if ghosts drawing her to the afterlife.

Plate 6 – Moll's wake.
Plate 6 – Moll's wake.

[edit] Plate 6

In the final plate, Moll is dead, and all of the scavengers are present at her wake. A note on the coffin lid shows that she died aged 23 on 2 September 1731. The parson spills his brandy as he has his hand up the skirt of the girl next to him, and she appears pleased. Moll's son plays ignorantly as Moll's madam drunkenly mourns on the right with a ghastly grinning jug of "Nants" (brandy). A "mourning" girl (another prostitute) steals the undertaker's handkerchief. Another prostitute shows her injured finger to her fellow whore, while a woman adjusts her appearance in a mirror in the background, even though she shows a syphilitic sore on her forehead. Moll's son is innocent, but he sits playing with his top underneath his mother's body, unable to understand (and figuratively fated to death himself). Only Moll's maid is upset at the treatment of the dead girl, whose coffin is being used as a tavern bar. The house holding the coffin has an ironic coat of arms on the wall displaying a chevron with three spigots, reminiscent of the "spill" of the parson, the flowing alcohol, and the expiration of Moll.

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