The Purity of Whores and the Taint of Happy Memories: Exploring the Inversion of Taboos in Whores for Gloria Emily Price College

In a world where happy stories become sad stories and sad ones are transformed into happy ones, where “once upon a time” begins a tale of a police decoy on a drug bust, inversions of what is considered normal come to be expected. This world is San Francisco’s Tenderloin District in the 1980s as depicted by William T. Vollmann in his novel Whores for Gloria. The novel was partly based on a series of interviews Vollmann conducted with the local prostitutes, and it deals with the gritty and dangerous world of sex workers of this time and place. Their world is in stark contrast to the world outside of it, and because of this contrast there is a reversal of what is “normal” - that is, what the rest of society considers normal to desire or partake in - and what is taboo.

Taboos are generally considered to be things that are wrong or immoral to desire, with examples being sadomasochism, bestiality and incest. They are forbidden in polite society. However, Vollmann has a different explanation of “taboo” in his novel; he writes, “it was taboo to change a wig in public... for the same reason that women don’t show their cunts to everybody (95).” According to him, taboo is not something that is wrong so much as something that is obscured...