The narrative opens with the reflections of an older, wealthy, and isolated woman looking back on her childhood in the working-class suburbs of Vienna. Born in 1852, Josefine Mutzenbacher recounts how her awakening began at age five with a lodger and quickly escalated through illicit games with neighborhood children. She details a steady progression of encounters with peers, teenage boys, and older men, including a brutal soldier and a benevolent lodger named Ekhard. Mutzenbacher writes without remorse, viewing her sexuality as the singular vehicle that elevated her from crushing poverty into education, wealth, and sophisticated company.
She describes the mechanics and emotional intensity of these encounters with clinical precision and vivid detail, noting how her early initiation permanently altered her perception of men and women. The text explores the hidden underbelly of Victorian-era Vienna, where domestic spaces, cellars, and open fields served as clandestine backdrops for pervasive adolescent experimentation. Mutzenbacher's voice is pragmatic and devoid of moral panic, framing her promiscuity not as a tragedy, but as a calculated survival strategy that yielded both pleasure and power. As the memoir progresses into her adolescence, her initiation into prostitution becomes institutionalized through figures like the corrupt clergyman and local pimps, ultimately cementing her path. The text concludes just as she stands on the precipice of formal sex work, having fully embraced a life defined by unbridled carnal excess.
