In 19th century Europe stalking was an accepted courtship method, not usually welcomed by the target, but not shameful or illegal. When Alice James visited Paris she was astonished find that one of her French friends, a married woman, was reluctant ever to leave the house unaccompanied, for fear of being followed by a masher. (This is everywhere in the fiction: Kierkegaard, Gogol, Dostoevsky, everyone). The old word “streetwalker” was based on the assumption that all unaccompanied women were available.
The plot of James’s “Daisy Miller” turned on the fact that America was not like this. Why? Because American guys were sexually repressed Protestants alienated from their bodiesand didn’t feel obliged to fuck everything in sight. But then Erich Fromm came along, and we got Norman Mailer.
Haquelebac 