Katie Hickman: Courtesans

Reviewed by SHONAGH LINDSAY


Sex, and extracting enormous favours for it, was the distinctive forte of the five lusty ladies Katie Hickman serves up here.

Hickman, who wrote the acclaimed Daughters of Britannia, about diplomatic wives in the far-flung British Empire, uses the same insightful research to bring to life the demi-monde of 18th- and 19th-century Paris and London in which these women plied their trade.

Courtesans have a long and colourful history, with perhaps the best documented being those of Venice and Rome during the Italian Renaissance. Those courtesans, like their later counterparts, mimicked the haute-monde in ostentatious dress and manner, to the extent that laws were passed to prevent them wearing precious jewellery. It had become difficult to distinguish the most successful from truly aristocratic women held within the confines of marriage or family.

But different they were, and no more so than in the quick-witted courage and independent spirit it took to rise to the top of their profession.

Hickman plainly likes these women, and although their faults often encompassed a seemingly insatiable desire for consumption, this enormous spending was a necessary investment in their business, that of being seen and desired. They had only a limited window of opportunity in which to extract the utmost from the beauty, wit and intelligence they survived on.

However, what most interests Hickman about these five ladies is that they were so much more than the sum of their charms.

As she writes in her conclusion: "...it was not merely financial and material independence, vital though that was, that they held so dear. Their moral and spiritual autonomy — the freedom to think and speak for themselves, even when their conclusions were deeply uncomfortable to the society around them — was every bit as precious."


* Shonagh Lindsay is an Auckland researcher and writer.

* HarperCollins, $34.99