Dangerous Beauty is a tale which justifies a women turning to prostitution in an environment which robs her of her voice and potential because she is female. The only other option for advancement is money—either inheriting or marrying it. Veronica Franco is similar to the women in the Bronte sister novels who are disdainful of the restrictions placed on them by the social norms and power structure of their era. Veronica is without money because her father drank it all away, so her mother, a former courtesan trained by her grandmother, trains her to become a courtesan. In a scene meant to justify her choice of occupation, we are swept along with her in the library, a place which was unavailable to women who were not courtesans in an era when women were to be beautiful not educated. Her mother tells her “Courtesans are the most educated women in the world.” She will diminish herself by becoming a prostitute in order to fulfill her desires for education, security, and an identity other than the one her era mandates women adopt. Her becoming a courtesan is diminishing to the self, but it is a less diminishing than the artificial and servile roles men have defined for her in society. It is like the same process being discussed by the speaker in “Poems by Women” when the speaker discusses the self-hatred that comes from being continually oppressed, “It is a feeble voice, crude and mutilated / that comes from a long way off, from beyond / history, from the hell of the exploited. / A hell which does not improve people / as is believed, but makes them lazy, / sick, and enemies of themselves.”
The speaker in the above poem and Veronica feel that they had no choice but to end up “feebled” by their era, Veronica says when asked by her lover why she did what she did, “I had no choice.” However, while the speaker in “Poems By Women” is all one-note and seemingly resentful and bitter abo
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