(Main image: Edgar Degas, The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage, ca. 1874. )As the news has consi

(Main image: Edgar Degas, The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage, ca. 1874. )As the news has consistantly shown us, when it comes to the art world those with privilege have a habit of creepily exploiting young people. This was especially true in the Opera Garnier in Paris in the late 1800s, where members of the ballet corps were often subject to exploitation by wealthy men who provided provided money or patronage to ballerinas in exchange for sexual favours (sometimes encouraged by their parents to actively engage in sex work, as many of the ballerinas came from poorer backgrounds).To quote a History.com article about the subject:“Epic scenes took place backstage,” wrote the Comte de Maugny, who described the foyer de la danse as a kind of meat market. For subscribers, backstage was a kind of men’s club where they could meet and greet other power brokers, make business deals and bask in a highly sexualized atmosphere.(Second image: A painting by Jean Beraud of ballet dancers in the wings of the opera house, 1889)While it was possible that a ballerina could succeed within her field without engaging in sex work (the patronage of a rich creeper providing a shortcut for some), the fact that said rich creepers openly and actively linked ballet with sex work meant that for a time all ballerinas were just kind of assumed to be involved in it in some manner.With this in mind, it does provide some context behind a plot point within Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel the Phantom of the Opera, which takes place in the Opera Garnier during the 1880s, period most rife with this kind of stuff.Now, Leroux would have almost certainly have known about the exploitation that was afoot with the Paris Opera, as he was a journalist and drama critic who wrote in depth on the culture and building of the opera house itself. With this in mind, it makes the behaviour of one of the characters, Viscount Raoul de Chagny, make a kind of sense in context but makes him all the more insufferable regardless.See, within the novel Raoul notably acts in a very entitled, almost stalker-ish manner towards Christine Daae (the female lead) in a way that could be interpreted as him being terrible at talking to women… but in light of the context of the setting, there may have been a transactional element in play there. Indeed, Raoul’s subsequent flipping out and slutshaming Christine for having a patron (the Phantom) could DEFINITELY be seen as him assuming that the reason why Christine was declining his advances was due to her being in a transactional relationship with another wealthy person (as opposed to her being, I don’t know, being a professional person in a demanding job who at the time was being pestered by multiple wealthy people who were also expressing romantic interest in her once she became famous).So yeah, book!Raoul has layers of being awful, where in addition to being an entitled snob who gaslights Christine (when she tells him about the Phantom situation he laughs and tries to tell her that the Phantom doesn’t really exist), he’s also one of those people who assumes that a woman is a bad person because a) she’s potentially a sex worker, and b) won’t immediately reciprocate his feelings to her. -- source link

More pics about