From the Street to the Brothel: Following the Go-Between

Abstract

One of the most recurrent female figures found in ancient and medieval literature was that of the go-between. Associated to the practice of gossip, bartering, display and selling of her trinkets around neighbourhoods and streets, the old woman was allowed into the female domestic spaces of late medieval Europe. In the role of the visiting old acquaintance she could therefore act as an intermediary between young would-be lovers in clandestine relationships, thus becoming a fundamental asset in many fictional accounts, where her age and sterility underscore her evil deviant nature. Carrying out her own alternative freelance enterprise in the local sex market, her busy disposition turns her doings into an alternative evil counterpart to the ecclesiastical effort to lead women into the frames and strictures of either virginity or marriage. As a merchant and capitalist economy develops in late medieval Europe, a readjustment of the boundaries between public and private spheres is enacted and the wandering go-between finds her definitive location within the brothel. My current concern is to analyse this figure and her dealings from the perspectives of gender and space, two paradigms deeply intertwined.