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Miss Kitty: Difference between revisions
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|Chander on ''[[Friends]]'', playing barkeep to Joey dressed as a cowboy.}}
What is the fate of a [[Hooker with a Heart of Gold|Soiled Dove]] as she grows older? It all depends on how much she's been soiled and who was documenting the events. In early versions of the [[Romance Novel]], any soiling was [[Sex Is Evil|considered an impurity that could not be erased]], so [[Redemption Equals Death|death]] was a common ending to the story, usually with the Soiled Dove ending up addicted to alcohol and/or opiates and dying alone in some gutter. In [[Real Life]], though, many a Soiled Dove ended up marrying and leaving what was then called the Sporting Life. This was especially true in [[The Wild West]], where women were at a premium. Some ended up becoming a [[Determined Homesteader's Wife]]. Their former lives were generally not held against them, and the act of marriage bestowed social respectability on them.
Fiction provided another solution, though. The '''Miss Kitty''' is a Soiled Dove turned entrepreneur. She is the proprietor of the local drinking establishment, very often a [[Fish Out of Water]]. Sometimes, she has obtained her establishment through the circumstances of becoming a [[Determined Widow]]. She is always of a certain age. She is tough as nails. She has an unlimited supply of something that passes for whiskey, with sasparilla for the [[Determined Homesteader's Children]]. She has no tolerance for "rowdiness" in her establishment and very often has a shotgun handy to make certain that her policy is enforced. [[Mama Bear|She goes out of her way to make certain that no one mistreats her "girls"]]. She acts as mother-confessor for anyone in town and always has time to provide people with advice and common-sense wisdom. Occasionally, [[Preacher Man]] berates her for operating a Den of Iniquity, but most of the time he accepts her business as a necessary evil. She is almost always on the side of the angels.
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The trope was so pervasive in Western Canada in the post-World War I era that the phrasing "Miss Firstname" was (and to some extent, still is) used only to refer to madams and whores. This naturally surprises visitors from the southern US, for whom this phrasing is a respectable way for children to refer to adult women. Hilarity can ensue.
The [[Trope Namer]] is (of course) Miss Kitty, the proprietor of the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City in ''[[Gunsmoke]]''. Should not be confused with [[Everybody Remembers the Stripper|the burlesque dancer]] in ''[[The Great Mouse Detective]]''.
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
*
* Shunu, {{spoiler|Inari's mentor}}, from ''[[Fushigi Yuugi Genbu Kaiden]]''.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[Discworld]]'': [[Punny Name|Mrs. Rosie Palm]] is one, having risen to President of the [[Unusual Euphemism|Seamstresses']] Guild of [[Discworld|Ankh-Morpork]] after working as a Seamstress herself.
** Did she ever actually leave the life? Though presumably the head of the real-world Plumbers' Union doesn't [[A Worldwide Punomenon|lay much pipe either]].
** Seamstresses are referred to as "Miss" while the head of the guild is "Mrs". This causes Sir Samuel Vimes to commit a minor gaff in ''[[
*** [[Truth in Television]]- 18th and 19th century 'bawds' usually did adopt the honorific 'Mrs.' when they went into the management side, as it were. (Earlier than this, the respectful way to refer to any woman was as 'Mistress _', regardless of her marital status.) (It would also be part of a loose pretence- as Rosie Palm puts up when we first meet her- that the younger women in her house are her daughters. Allegedly it was also fairly common for the girls to address the madam as 'Mother'.) (Bear in mind that this was also adopted by senior servants- head cooks and house keepers- as a mark of respect for their seniority.)
* Cathy/Kate from ''East of Eden'' kills her mentor, who is one of these, and then takes over her brothel and becomes a completely vicious version of this trope.
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Bart discovers and eventually ends up working for one of these women on ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]].'' Even though the show is set in modern America, the matron of the house plays this trope completely straight and makes [[Moral Guardians|Marge]] look foolish by comparison. This episode led to the [[Crowning Music of Awesome]] -- "We put the
== [[Real Life]] ==
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** When Carrie Watson was a middle-class girl in Buffalo, New York, she saw her older sisters work for substandard wages as shopgirls, and became determined to avoid that fate. Since her career options were limited by social mores of the time, she decided on an unusual career plan: become a prostitute, learn the business end, and open her own house that would cater to a high-class, moneyed crowd. After an apprenticeship, she gained enough money to fulfill her dreams. Between the 1870s and 1890s, Watson's house was renowned for its women and its customer service. Customers were greeted by a talking parrot which said "Carrie Watson's. Welcome, gentlemen." (Watson was quite discreet; the parrot and a small brass plaque were her only forms of advertising.) Watson invested in real estate and became rich. Her treatment of her girls was renowned in the community at a time when prostitutes were regarded as virtual slaves. When pressure came to centralize prostitution in Chicago away from Watson's house, she decided to retire and quietly faded away.
** Vina Fields had two handicaps in the 1890s: she was not only female, she was African-American. Her houses specialized in providing African-American women for white customers, although she didn't discriminate. In order to insulate her daughters from how she made her living, she sent them to convent schools. During the Panic of 1893, she provided thousands of free meals daily for out-of-work men. When she left the business, her departure was much-mourned.
** The origins of the women who called themselves [[w:Ada and Minna Everleigh|Ada
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