demimonde

The demimonde, or demi-monde, is a term from French meaning half-world, used in English to describe a social group that inhabited a liminal space between respectable society and its margins. It refers to people who participated in fashionable urban life while remaining outside conventional respectability, most often associated with high-class kept women, courtesans, and others connected to the world of salons, patronage, and nightlife.

In 19th-century Europe, particularly Paris and London, the demimonde denoted a network of women who cultivated intimate relationships with wealthy or powerful men while operating beyond official social boundaries. They often lived in luxury funded by patrons, and they were celebrated in, or critiqued by, contemporary literature, journalism, and art. The term captured a tension between bourgeois morality and a cosmopolitan, sexually liberal modernity.

In literature and discourse, the demimonde came to symbolize both independence and peril: a space of female agency within constraints, and a reminder of the commodification of intimate relations in urban modernity. The phrase remains in use as a historical descriptor and is sometimes applied more broadly to refer to marginal or semi-respectable social circles or lifestyles associated with nightlife, fashion, or sex work.