Hooker with a heart of gold
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The hooker with a heart of gold (also the whore with a heart of gold or the tart with a heart) is a stock character in which a fallen woman, a prostitute who sells sex for cash or drugs, is in fact a kindly and internally wholesome person. This character is often a pivotal, but peripheral, character in literature and motion pictures, usually giving key advice or serving as a go-between. She is sometimes established in contrast to another female character who is morally perfect but frigid or otherwise unyielding. The stereotype owes a debt to Mary Magdalene.
A variation on the theme, the stripper with a heart of gold, is a tamer version of the character, a stripper and sex worker but not a prostitute.
Examples
- Donna Beck on All My Children
- Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha
- Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind
- Calpurnia in I, Claudius
- Gloria (Doris Dowling) in "The Lost Weekend"
- Iris Steensma (Jodie Foster) in Taxi Driver
- Lana (Rebecca De Mornay) in Risky Business
- Linda Ash (Mira Sorvino) in Mighty Aphrodite
- Poppy (Sissy Spacek) in Prime Cut
- Rose in the song "Bed of Rose's" by the Statler Brothers
- Sera (Elisabeth Shue) in Leaving Las Vegas
- Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin) in "Firefly"
- Chandramukhi (Madhuri Dixit) in Devdas
- Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) in Pretty Woman, that also shares traits of Cinderella and the Pygmalion myth.
- Never on Sunday shows a somewhat different character
- Jessica (Bridget Fonda) in Kiss of the Dragon