Hooker with a heart of gold

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This article is about the stock character. For other uses, see Heart of gold.

The hooker with a heart of gold (also the whore with a heart of gold[1] or the tart with a heart) is a stock character in which a fallen woman, usually a prostitute, is in fact a kindly and internally wholesome person. This character is often a pivotal, but peripheral, character in literature and motion pictures, usually giving key advice or serving as a go-between. She is sometimes established in contrast to another female character who is morally perfect but frigid or otherwise unyielding. Hookers with hearts of gold are usually reluctant prostitutes selling their bodies due to either desperation or coercion from a pimp. The stereotype might owe something of a debt to certain traditions surrounding the Judeo-Christian Biblical figures of Mary Magdalene and Rahab. But this stock character is pervasive enough in many myths and cultures in the form of a tragic story of the concubine who falls in love with her patron/client or, alternatively, young and often poor lover. Therefore, this might be considered not just archetype but also fairly universal, and somewhat indicative of many societies' complex ideas about sexual decency and moral character.

A variation on the theme, the dancer (stripper) with a heart of gold, is a tamer version of the character. A stripper is a sex worker but not a prostitute. Historically, social positions of dancers and actresses were low and their moral characters were often considered suspect. An example of this type is played by Nicole Kidman in the film Moulin Rouge!.

In opera and musical theatre, a hooker with a heart of gold is most often portrayed by a mezzo-soprano. The hooker with a heart of gold is portrayed in a tragic light and often dies a tragic death.

In television history, the "tart with a heart" has become an important archetype in serial drama and soap opera, especially in Britain. During the 1960s, the character of Elsie Tanner in British series Coronation Street set the mold for future characters such as Bet Lynch (also Coronation Street) and Kat Slater (EastEnders). Characters of this nature are often depicted as having tragic lives, but put on a front when in public to create the illusion of happiness. More often than not, these female characters are vital to their respective shows, and inevitably become some of the biggest stars in British Television.

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[edit] In popular culture

The stock character is referenced in;

Let me tell you something. I know Dean Keaton. I've been investigating him for three years. The guy I know is a cold-blooded bastard. L.A.P.D. indicted him on three counts of murder before he was kicked off the force, so don't sell me the hooker with the heart of gold.

  • the Firefly episode entitled "Heart of Gold", with the focus of the characters on a brothel by the same name.

[edit] Examples

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Ebert, Roger. "Man of La Mancha", Chicago Sun-Times, 1972-12-15. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "The only performance that really survives the movie is Sophia Loren's. ... She has kind of a thankless role (they've cast her as the whore with the heart of gold again)...." 
  2. ^ Brock, Wendell. "‘Little Dog Laughed’ @ Theatre in the Square", Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2008-04-03. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "And his hooker with a heart of gold is a sexually conflicted “rent boy” with a girlfriend on the side." 
  3. ^ Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth (Fall 1981). "Scarlett O'Hara: The Southern Lady as New Woman". American Quarterly 33. “Belle Watling, to be sure, is not a lady, but the classic whore with a heart of gold, a shrewd and successful business woman in her own right, has a far deeper sense than Scarlett of the essential qualities that informed true ladyhood.” 
  4. ^ Nava, David (2004). Othello, the Moor of Venice: Message from the director. The American Shakespeare Project. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. “Bianca, the "heart of gold" courtesan, deludes herself into believing that she can escape outsider status by an alliance with Cassio....”
  5. ^ Pradhan, Vidya. "Heart of gold, speckled with sin", The Hindu, 2008-01-21. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "Starting with Chandramukhi in Devdas, the commercial sex worker in Hindi movies has usually been depicted with a heart of gold, forced into her profession by circumstances beyond her control." 
  6. ^ Associated Press. "Molly Ringwald to take 'Sweet Charity' on the road this fall", USA Today, 2006-02-27. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "Molly Ringwald will portray Charity Hope Valentine, the dance-hall hostess with the heart of gold, when Sweet Charity goes out on the road this fall." 
  7. ^ Welky, David B.. "Stagecoach", St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Gale Group, 2002. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "Dallas (Clare Trevor), the prostitute with a heart of gold...." 
  8. ^ Sullivan, Catey. "Theater: Sweet Charity", Windy City Times, 2005-03-09. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "Ah, the hooker with the heart of gold. It’s a conceit that dates from Mary Magdalene to All My Children’s Donna Beck and beyond." 
  9. ^ Daly, Sean. "The Girl Next Door", Washington City Paper, April 9-15, 2004. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "Naturally, the budding porno princess with the heart of gold falls for nice guy Matthew—as he falls into her sin-soaked world and jeopardizes his button-down future." 
  10. ^ Wilonsky, Robert. "Color Bind", Dallas Observer, 2005-03-31. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "...the blood-red bed on which hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Goldie (Jaime King) gives herself to psycho killer Marv (Mickey Rourke)...." 
  11. ^ Trillin, Calvin. "Letter from Ecuador: Speaking of Soup", The New Yorker, 2005-09-05. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "That led, not unexpectedly, to my mentioning the noted Mexican actress Katy Jurado, who, of course, appeared in 'High Noon,' playing the role of what I think could be fairly described as `la puta con un corazón de oro.′" 
  12. ^ Gallo, Bill. "In Her Genes", Westword, 1995-11-08. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "The whore with a heart of gold and the punchy fighter with a rosin bag for a brain are not exactly new movie types--not even for that high Manhattan intellect Woody Allen." 
  13. ^ Leib, Mark. "The Half of It", Creative Loafing, 2005-05-25. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "He terrorizes London and confuses his friend John Utterson and his consort Lucy Harris (the prostitute with a - you guessed it - heart of gold)." 
  14. ^ "Loving Luenell: one on one with Borat's leading lady.(The Great Entertainers)", Curve, September 2007. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "In addition to a multiple-decade career in film, theater and stand-up, Luenell is best known for her recent appearance as the hooker with a heart of gold (also named Luenell) in Sasha Baron Cohen's 2006 controversial mockumentary, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." 
  15. ^ Garner, Dwight (1997-09-19). Too Little, Too Noir. Salon. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. “Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), a languidly glamorous hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold who resembles Veronica Lake....”
  16. ^ Johnson, Katie N. (2006). Sisters in Sin: Brothel Drama in America, 1900-1920 (pdf), Cambridge University Press, 7-8. ISBN 0521855055. “From the middle of the nineteenth century, no other character epitomized the demise of the goodhearted fallen woman better than Marguerite of La Dame aux Camélias, popularly known in the United States as Camille. ... Camille soon became the iconic hooker with-a-heart-of-gold whose story would seduce audiences every Broadway season.” 
  17. ^ Morris, Virginia B. (1985). Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, Barron's Book Notes. Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron's Educational Series, 14. ISBN 0764191616. “For many readers, Nancy is the most important character in the novel. ... In contrast, other readers insist that she is just a cliché -- the typical prostitute with a heart of gold.” 
  18. ^ Thomas, Colin. "Oliver!", Georgia Straight, 2007-11-29. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "Nancy, the whore with the requisite heart of gold...." 
  19. ^ Clark, Mike. "Flesh, fantasy run rampant in 'Sin City'", USA Today, 2005-04-03. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "Jessica Alba plays Nancy Callahan, a stripper with a heart of gold in Sin City." 
  20. ^ Queenan, Joe. "French kiss-off", The Guardian, 2001-09-01. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "Satine, the enigmatic hooker with a heart of gold, is obviously quite fond of the earnest but not terribly bright Christian." 
  21. ^ Maslin, Janet. "Lurching Through a Life Of Alcoholic Abandon", New York Times, 1995-10-27. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "Ms. Shue gives a daring and affecting performance, but she's essentially playing one more whore with a heart of gold." 
  22. ^ Wieland, Christina (2000). The Undead Mother: Psychoanalytic Explorations of Masculinity, Femininity, and Matricide. London: Karnac, 229. ISBN 1855759136. “It is in the person of Sonya, a young prostitute with a heart of gold -- the 'Holy Sinner,' one might say -- that Dostoyevsky glimpses the essential goodness, a goodness beyond the morality of a paternal super-ego, which will act as a good external object.” 
  23. ^ Macdonald, Moira. "The skinny: "Machinist" is daring, haunting experiment", The Seattle Times, 2004-12-03. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "'If you were any thinner,' says his call-girl girlfriend, Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh, playing a scratchy-voiced whore with a heart of gold), 'you wouldn't exist.'" 
  24. ^ "It's Suzie Wong Doing the Town", Chicago Daily Tribune, 1960-05-22, p. G70. "'Suzie' concerns the life, loves, and woes of the proverbial tart with the heart of gold, the variation being that this one is Chinese." 
  25. ^ Hagedorn, Jessica. "Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck", Ms., January/February 1994. "Suzie and all the other prostitutes in this movie are cute, giggling, dancing sex machines with hearts of gold."  Reprinted in Shirley Biagi & Marilyn Kern-Foxworth, Facing Difference: Race, Gender and Mass Media. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 1997. Pp. 32, 33.
  26. ^ Allende, Isabel (2003). My Invented Country: A Memoir, Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, New York: Perennial, 26-27. ISBN 0060545674. “Even though I don't consider myself an expert on the subject, I am not innocent of creating a whore with a heart of gold; mine, from my first novel, is named Tránsito Soto.” 
  27. ^ Baumgarten, Marjorie. "Milk Money", Austin Chronicle, 1994-09-02. Retrieved on 2008-05-26. "The movie takes a recurrent narrative theme -- the hooker with a heart of gold -- and mixes it up with a suburban setting and a bunch of adolescent boys, one of whom, Frank (Carter), decides that this prostitute named V (Griffith) would make a perfect mate for his widowed dad (Harris)." 
  28. ^ Lidov, David (2005). Is Language a Music? Writings on Musical Form and Signification. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 165. ISBN 0253343836. “To go back to the root, this is the story of a prostitute with a heart of gold....” 
  29. ^ Orr, John (1998). Contemporary Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 211. ISBN 0748608362. 
  30. ^ Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin (2003). "Community Policing and John Schools". Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 40 (2): 215-32. 

[edit] See also

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