Folklore and Women
A Social Interactional Analysis of the Folklore of a Texas Madam
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2798544 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robbie Davis Johnson (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1973 |
| Volume | 86 |
| Issue | 341 |
| Pages | 211 |
| Publication date | 1973-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American Folklore (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8715 • E-ISSN: 1535-1882 |
| Publisher | University of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/539151 |
| OpenAlex | W2326168548 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
act of the Second Congress, Republic of Texas, on December 13, 1837Its people were largely Bohemian and Slovakian in origin. In 1839 the first school in the town was organized, in 1840 the first chartered college was established nearbyand in 1845 the first whorehouse in the county opened its doors to the public. This institution floated from place to place until 1915 when it settled in its present location; today it is the oldest continuously operating nonfloating whorehouse in Texas. It lies within a half-mile of the highway outside of town-a rambling onestory white clapboard building with green trim and numerous windows covered by heavy louvers. The house, which also shall remain nameless, was built in Early American Haphazard, that is, one room at a time, the first madam expanding it as business required. Today it contains two front waiting rooms, a dining room and kitchen, and eleven bedrooms, one for each girl. The present madam, whom I will call Miss Hilda, worked as a prostitute for sixteen years of her life (she is 45), nine of them at the House. In 1962 the old madam died and Hilda bought the House from her estate. She has remained madam for eleven years. Her term for herself is not madam but landlady, partly because for income-tax purposes she is landlady of Ranch-Boarding House-the girls who live there are not her employees but her boarders; they simply pay her for meals and for the use of their rooms. The situation I am investigating is Hilda's strategic and tactical use of folklore in social interaction-her role as a verbal performer. I interviewed her at the House on three separate occasions, with another graduate student, Rita O'Brien, who concentrated her study on the girls, not the madam. I will occasionally bring in data from her study to illustrate my points. My analysis will be organized around the interrelationship between Hilda's role as a social controller and her
Archaeology · Art history · Estate · Folklore · Girl · Institution · Madam · Political science · Porch · Supper · White (mutation) · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,12 |
| Citation span | 1976 - 2009 (34) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |