Evidence suggests Loy composed this play prior to writing The Pamperers. According to Sara Crangle, Loy wrote The Sacred Prostitute in 1914 while living in Florence, as a burlesque of her affairs with the Futurists, but Loy’s letters indicate that she continued to revise the play well into 1915, experimenting with different forms (play, review, conversational review) and titles (“Conversational Sex – Love Review,” “The Prostituted Paradox”). She repeatedly urged Van Vechten to secure a venue for its publication but was unsuccessful, possibly because of its audacious title and sexual content. The title deconstructs the division between virgin and whore, distilling an idea from her “Feminist Manifesto”: “The first illusion it is to your interest to demolish is the division of women into two classes the mistress, & the mother” (Loy, Mina. “Feminist Manifesto.” The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy, edited by Roger Conover. New York, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1996, p. 154.).

In letters, Loy refers to the play as a satire of the “sex war”, telling Van Vechten that “The first scene is irrational—intentionally—people may miss the significance of each point being negated by the next— But it’s most important— the psychological portent … is big— & new—” She also refers to a dedication: “To Those Who Are No Better Off—” It’s not clear if she’s referring to this draft or a previous one, as the dedication does not appear here. (Mina Loy. Letters to Carl Van Vechten. Carl Van Vechten Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Loy, Mina: Yale University Library Digital Collections.  The first quotation can be found on image 40; the second on image 36.)

(Suzanne W. Churchill. “Courting an Audience: Loy’s Plays,” Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde, edited by Churchill, Linda A. Kinnahan, and Susan Rosenbaum, University of Georgia, 2020. Courting an Audience: Loy’s Plays. Accessed 4 June 2024.)