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2.95 AVERAGE
2.95 AVERAGE
No rating because... I don't even know how to rate this actually.
I don't think my setting/character/plot method works because it's mostly just smut. It's a weird collection of quasi-empowerment and shaming sex workers, of allowing women agency and weird homophobic (m/m) rants... I don't know. It also icks me out that an adult man was writing a young woman's sexual awakening (like, age 16 I think? She ends the book at just under 19 years old) and then goes, after writing smut, on a soapbox speech about how the only RIGHT way to be is to get married and only enjoy sex if married to someone you love. I really don't know.
I DO stand by being fascinated that this exists, though. Victorians.....
I don't think my setting/character/plot method works because it's mostly just smut. It's a weird collection of quasi-empowerment and shaming sex workers, of allowing women agency and weird homophobic (m/m) rants... I don't know. It also icks me out that an adult man was writing a young woman's sexual awakening (like, age 16 I think? She ends the book at just under 19 years old) and then goes, after writing smut, on a soapbox speech about how the only RIGHT way to be is to get married and only enjoy sex if married to someone you love. I really don't know.
I DO stand by being fascinated that this exists, though. Victorians.....
“It’s banned book week, you should read a banned book.” Suggested my wife.
So I picked Fanny Hill, because why not? I was expecting a raunchy novel with some plot or something to justify the facts that I’ve heard of it and it’s 250 years old. What did I get?
Raunch? More like full on porn. Like the porn today, it’s unrealistic, what with everything being so pleasurable; it’s trying to push boundaries without really knowing how and it’s clearly directed by a man who doesn’t understand women. Footnote, I am a man, I don’t pretend to understand women; but I’m pretty sure no women is reading Fanny Hill and thinking, that’s exact same thing happened to me.
Plot? No, this is porn, the only reason Pablo didn’t turn up to “clean the pool” is because that cliche isn’t as old as this novel. You’re told when the last sex sense begins, that’s it’s the last one, I really feel that’s to save you having to read the last 5 minutes of the book in which the story is wrapped up.
Should you read this book? I mean, do you like porn?
So I picked Fanny Hill, because why not? I was expecting a raunchy novel with some plot or something to justify the facts that I’ve heard of it and it’s 250 years old. What did I get?
Raunch? More like full on porn. Like the porn today, it’s unrealistic, what with everything being so pleasurable; it’s trying to push boundaries without really knowing how and it’s clearly directed by a man who doesn’t understand women. Footnote, I am a man, I don’t pretend to understand women; but I’m pretty sure no women is reading Fanny Hill and thinking, that’s exact same thing happened to me.
Plot? No, this is porn, the only reason Pablo didn’t turn up to “clean the pool” is because that cliche isn’t as old as this novel. You’re told when the last sex sense begins, that’s it’s the last one, I really feel that’s to save you having to read the last 5 minutes of the book in which the story is wrapped up.
Should you read this book? I mean, do you like porn?
Love this as an anti-Pamela response, very creative use of innuendo and euphemism to be as pornographic as possible without being explicit. Although there was some interesting exploration of women's pleasure and the b.s. of virginity/"virtue", I still found the narrative lens insidiously voyeuristic. Surprisingly (or maybe not!) I saw lots of links between this and Zola's 'Nana' which I read recently.
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
slow-paced
Interesting. But nothing exceptional. However context must be considered.
It's one of the most banned books and the first pornography in a novel form or something like that... i obviously had to someday get it... i also think that's enough erotica for this year. i'm gonna reread 50 Shades Of Freed next year. my brain can't take more of that right now
my edition is in Greek and it's split into two books *no idea why*, part a and b. part A was ok. i wish it had the illustrations.
i surprisingly loved the first part and it's a 4.8 for me. part two tho is meh and kinda offensive. what's his beef with gay men *there are rumors that he may have been gay and yeah it smells like self hate in here*?
THIS BITCH, who mind you had phenomenal lesbian sex, was later like ''haha i'm gonna get his semen to prove he's gay so they prosecute them for sodomy''. bitch get chlamydia and die, the fuck. part two Fanny is such a fucking cunt.
i would have given this a 4 but he annoyed me so it's a 3.
my edition is in Greek and it's split into two books *no idea why*, part a and b. part A was ok. i wish it had the illustrations.
i surprisingly loved the first part and it's a 4.8 for me. part two tho is meh and kinda offensive. what's his beef with gay men *there are rumors that he may have been gay and yeah it smells like self hate in here*?
THIS BITCH, who mind you had phenomenal lesbian sex, was later like ''haha i'm gonna get his semen to prove he's gay so they prosecute them for sodomy''. bitch get chlamydia and die, the fuck. part two Fanny is such a fucking cunt.
i would have given this a 4 but he annoyed me so it's a 3.
I don't think I've ever read a novel so explicit, and from the 18th C too! Cleland is giving us all the uncomfortable vibes of a man writing from the perspective of a 15 year-old girl prostitute and I am not here for it. Eeek!
(For clarity, I was asked to read this for university. I know right??)
(For clarity, I was asked to read this for university. I know right??)
A classic of erotic writing. Truly interesting to know how 18th century England society thought of sex and how men and women were suposed to behave in their roles. In this aspect, we have prety much an hyperbole of what still echoes today. Men are heroic figures, with big (sometimes irrealisticaly gigantic) penises, that lead what happens in bed and have an animalistic sexual energy. Women are dualistic. Trapped between the flesh temptations and very narrow spiritual path choices. They start as chaste, we could almost say assexual. Sex is something that frightens them, like the male sexual energy does. They are fragile and pure. And purity means not yet touched (tainted) by sex. And then they become sexual. And when that happens, they discover that they like it. And they like it a lot. Men have to lead them, from ecstasy to ecstasy, because they lose control. They can become hysterical.
Cleland writes a very exagerated book, a boring narrative unrelated to human sexuality, and by my modern standards and expectations, very unerotic. His style is intense and explicit, always trying to outshine himself in the next page, with descriptions of sexual acts that are even more emotional and leading to a paroxism of pleasure. Unlike Sade or Masoch, he does not wander into darker regions of human desire. What he does, quite repetitively, is to describe the lead character, Fanny Hill, as a pleasure starving young woman that achives the heigths of sexual enjoyment as she is being handled by her lovers. Interestingly there are some vague parallels with the lead character of The Lady of the Camellias, which would be published 1848, exactely 100 years later. This novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, is in no way erotic writting, but the lead character is also "tainted" by sex, becoming a woman that men go to for pleasure. And she also, like Fanny Hill, becomes madly in love, dreaming that her love will take her away from that life. Maybe these novels are the ones that created the stories that would make the myth that mitigates the guilt associated with the inability of dealing with the problem of prostitution. That myth is the one we see in the film "Pretty Woman", oddly considered by many the perfect romantic comedy.
This was a very hard book for me to read, and it is the first one that I am reviewing at Goodreads without finishing it (the last pages are left unread). It is, to a certain degree, dull and repetitive. To a point, it can be exciting, and entertaining, if our imagination goes back a few centuries. But it becomes too long, and the formula does not survive the length of the book.
Cleland writes a very exagerated book, a boring narrative unrelated to human sexuality, and by my modern standards and expectations, very unerotic. His style is intense and explicit, always trying to outshine himself in the next page, with descriptions of sexual acts that are even more emotional and leading to a paroxism of pleasure. Unlike Sade or Masoch, he does not wander into darker regions of human desire. What he does, quite repetitively, is to describe the lead character, Fanny Hill, as a pleasure starving young woman that achives the heigths of sexual enjoyment as she is being handled by her lovers. Interestingly there are some vague parallels with the lead character of The Lady of the Camellias, which would be published 1848, exactely 100 years later. This novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, is in no way erotic writting, but the lead character is also "tainted" by sex, becoming a woman that men go to for pleasure. And she also, like Fanny Hill, becomes madly in love, dreaming that her love will take her away from that life. Maybe these novels are the ones that created the stories that would make the myth that mitigates the guilt associated with the inability of dealing with the problem of prostitution. That myth is the one we see in the film "Pretty Woman", oddly considered by many the perfect romantic comedy.
This was a very hard book for me to read, and it is the first one that I am reviewing at Goodreads without finishing it (the last pages are left unread). It is, to a certain degree, dull and repetitive. To a point, it can be exciting, and entertaining, if our imagination goes back a few centuries. But it becomes too long, and the formula does not survive the length of the book.