Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 Harvard university press

Dispelling the lurid stereotypes portrayed in fiction, Alain Corbin depicts prostitution in nineteenth-century France not as a vice, crime, or disease, but as a well-organized business Corbin reveals how the brothel served the sex industry in the same way that the factory served manufacturing: it provided an institution for the efficient and profitable sale of services.