La Grisette

A grisette from "La Physiologie de la Grisette" by Jules Janin

The name grisette is believed to be derived from the French word for grey, or gris. This dull color was worn by seamstresses when they were at work. The grisette is a prostitute of working-class background, often working as a seamstress, embroiderer, or tailor. The most common customers for the grisette were young men studying in Paris and in need of a woman to keep house in their apartments. Grisettes would exchange sex work for a stable home, protection, and pay from their young suitors. The grisettes’ job in the fashion industry brought them into contact with women of higher classes. The grisettes would create or embellish clothing for these women and so had an interesting interaction with style during this time. The interactions with high class women inspired some grisettes to aspire to climbing social classes. Being a grisette was not a lifetime commitment, and women often strived to reach the highest level of courtesan, the highest rank of prostitute. Many, however, never made it past the status of lorette, or aspiring courtesan.

Grisettes and the students they lived with did not have purely romantic relationships, although they were typically monogomous (or serially monogomous). Their exchange was one closer to servitude than passion; grisettes were in charge of cleaning the house, cooking meals, and managing other household tasks. This exchange was necessary due to the grisettes' lack of social standing; women who engaged in prostitution at this time often did so to reach some elevated socioeconomic level or simply to make ends meet, textile work being poorly paid. The following translated excerpt is from Jules Janin's study of social types, "La Physiologie de la Grisette":

"When he [the student] entertains his friends, it’s she who, before presiding over the feast, cooks the cutlets and sets the table. One must sing the praises of the grisette who wonderfully gives herself over to all the household tasks, which makes her indispensable and gives her the air of a married woman." (1)

The grisette's service was close to what a married woman would do during this time period. The grisette would not, however, have the social stability or financial benefits of a married woman. It was not uncommon for grisettes to be forced to switch from one student to another, changing lovers with the academic seasons that Parisian institutions followed. 

Understanding why grisettes lived with students, and enjoyed little to no rights in the household, is important. Prostitutes, like grisettes, often came from very poor backgrounds, and aimed to work the system in order to gain some financial security or, for the more ambitious, some status in society. The following translated passage is taken from Parent-Duchâtelet's De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris au XIXeme siècle, published posthumously in 1836. Although Parent-Duchâtelet acknowledges that poverty and financial need are among the primary reasons why women turn to prostitution, he also blames women's vanity and desire for the finer things in life:

"[...] The vanity and the desire to shine under lavish clothes are, along with laziness, another of the most common causes of prostitution, particularly in Paris; when simplicity, and more so ratty clothes, are in our current customs a reproach, is it so shocking that so many young girls are letting themselves be seduced by clothes that they desire so much as to leave the station they were born in, and that allow them to mix with a class who scorns them. Those who know to what point the love of adornment moves certain women will appreciate easily, in Paris, this cause of prostitution. (2)

This description would more often be associated the lorette than with the industrious and hard-working grisette. The lorette's knowledge of clothing and fashion made her a clever social impostor, capable of attracting the eye of well-to-do bourgeois suitors. A lorette would not be drawn to a young student in Paris, because lorettes wanted to escape work, not engage in it. Grisettes, on the other hand, often help young bachelors in their homes, either readying their clothing, preparing dinner, or doing other domestic chores. They typical student was young, inexperienced, and often newly arrived in the city, having just stepped out of their parent's provincial home for the first time. Grisettes differ greatly from both women that worked in maisons closes (brothels) and from the common street-walking fille publique.