Mapping the spaces of seduction: morality, gender and the city in early nineteenth-century Britain

The court case that arose after the seduction of Catherine Creighton provides a useful case study in exploring the ways that urban space was created through the interaction between the streets of the city and the gendered body. Tales of seduction fascinated the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century public, inspiring a genre of novels wherein the seduction of an innocent woman and her subsequent social fall was the central story arc. The narrative of seduction relied on a young, innocent female soiled by a calculating lover, who deprived her of her physical and emotional chastity by having her fall in love with him but ultimately not marrying her. The difficulty that Lieutenant Allan Maclean had in trying to articulate why both geography and time of day would justify the dishonourable seduction of a middle-class woman reflected the ambiguity of women's place within the city during the long eighteenth century.