Policing prostitutes: adaptations and reactions to Edmond de Goncourt's La Fille Elisa.(Critical Essay) From: Nineteenth-Century French Studies | Date: September 22, 2004| Author: Ashley, Katherine | COPYRIGHT 2004 University of Nebraska Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Edmond de Goncourt's 1877 novel, La Fille Elisa, is the story of a working-class prostitute who is jailed for life for murdering her soldier-lover following his attempt to rape her. Much of the novel is loosely based on actual events and stems from a visit by the Goncourt brothers to a prison at Clermont d'Oise, recounted in their Journal on 28 October 1862, and from legal cases reported in the Gazette des tribunaux in the 1860s (Ricatte, "Autour" 69). Like L'Assommoir, which was p...