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2.94 AVERAGE
2.94 AVERAGE
Yeah... I feel that I need to read more classics, and to take something completely different for a break in my current Bronte binge, I picked up this book. It's basically porn from the 1700s. As they write in the introduction, you'll be disappointed if you're looking for four lettered words, but otherwise it is very graphic in the flowery detailed sense. It hops from sex scene to sex scene with such descriptions it gets to the point of phallus worship, and just gets a bit repetitive and dull at times. On the one hand, to read about women actively taking part in and enjoying sex is something I hadn't quite expected from the attitudes of the time. But it's pleasure from a man's point of view, that these girls are insaisable nymphomaniacs, never are not-in-the-mood, always want it whenever and with whoever and some aspects of real life don't seem to happen. This is the merry-go-land where STDs don't happen, women don't have periods to get in the way, despite all the sex there's only one pregnancy mentioned, prostitutes never get beaten up or have to take several clients a night or walk the street looking for them... and however liberating you may think this seems, they are merely sex objects and playthings, and they are being paid for this. It's how they put food on their table. Although in Cleland's world they're so sex mad the money is incidental.
Yes, yes, yes, it's a farce and I'm taking it all too seriously.
So Fanny shags her way through a variety of men and is a kept woman. Initially turning up to London as a naive teenager and recently orphaned, she is taken on as a 'maid' by Mrs Brown, at her house of trade, where Phoebe breaks Fanny in the first night. She eventually sneaks out to be the live in lover of Charles, before his father sends him off to the South Seas or whereever it is he went. She then hops through some other men who keep her; one throwing her out when she is unfaithful, another dying after a drinking binge in Bath, then finds her way to Mrs Coles, another madam who is actually nice. There she hangs out with three other working girls, has a lot of mad sex before eventually being reuinted with her one true love, Charles.
Now, I know it's a child of its time, and the law and attitudes were different things to what they are today but somethings make for uncomfortable reading. Thirteen year olds having sex which is near to rape (but told in a jolly way because they want it really) (and I think back then you had to be 14 to get married); Fanny's disgust at homosexuals; or the particularly disturbing seduction of a village idiot by Fanny and one of the other girls at Mrs Coles' house.
I'm just left a bit... well, partly bored, partly eyebrows raised, and goodness, the illustrations. If the writing gets a bit flowery and makes you wonder, 'did he really mean that...', then the illustrations leave you in no doubt.
Yes, yes, yes, it's a farce and I'm taking it all too seriously.
So Fanny shags her way through a variety of men and is a kept woman. Initially turning up to London as a naive teenager and recently orphaned, she is taken on as a 'maid' by Mrs Brown, at her house of trade, where Phoebe breaks Fanny in the first night. She eventually sneaks out to be the live in lover of Charles, before his father sends him off to the South Seas or whereever it is he went. She then hops through some other men who keep her; one throwing her out when she is unfaithful, another dying after a drinking binge in Bath, then finds her way to Mrs Coles, another madam who is actually nice. There she hangs out with three other working girls, has a lot of mad sex before eventually being reuinted with her one true love, Charles.
Now, I know it's a child of its time, and the law and attitudes were different things to what they are today but somethings make for uncomfortable reading. Thirteen year olds having sex which is near to rape (but told in a jolly way because they want it really) (and I think back then you had to be 14 to get married); Fanny's disgust at homosexuals; or the particularly disturbing seduction of a village idiot by Fanny and one of the other girls at Mrs Coles' house.
I'm just left a bit... well, partly bored, partly eyebrows raised, and goodness, the illustrations. If the writing gets a bit flowery and makes you wonder, 'did he really mean that...', then the illustrations leave you in no doubt.
Actually I red a 1996 edition from Hertfordshire, Great Britain, Wordsworth but could not find it in the long list of published editions. "Expressed in the language of the period, Fanny Hill is a light-hearted book of considerable literary merit." p. 5
There's nothing like a good dirty book to clear the mind. This book is a classic for a great reason, which is that it is as dirty as they get without curse words. Don't go looking too deeply into the plot or try to figure out what's going on in anyone's mind - just go with the flow.
Other readers have tried to spin this book into social satire, but don't go there either. If Cleland had meant it to be a commentary on anything related to reality, why doesn't any character fear pregnancy? Why are every character's morals so flexible? Some people just can't take a book for what it is.
Other readers have tried to spin this book into social satire, but don't go there either. If Cleland had meant it to be a commentary on anything related to reality, why doesn't any character fear pregnancy? Why are every character's morals so flexible? Some people just can't take a book for what it is.
Very bawdy. Very repetitive, but there are some moments of absolute delightful and insightful writing, which is refreshing of a woman in 18th century literature.
Rating: 0/5
It's a mystery to me why this book is on Boxall's list because I'm pretty sure no one needs to read this before they die. No one could really call this literature: it's porn disguised as literature. Not to say that erotic novels can't be literature, of course they can, but this isn't (it's not even erotic, in my opinion). It's just a series of sex scenes strung together by the flimsiest and most convenient of plots. If there are even fifty pages of plot in this book, I'd be surprised.
I do give Cleland some kudos for acknowledging that women have sexual needs, but he doesn't acknowledge that for women's sake: he does so for the sake of his narrative, which seems like some kind of wish-fulfilment for his own desires (and his male readers). If Fanny isn't ashamed of her need for pleasure, it's only because that's what Cleland needs. I also had issues with how she realised her need for pleasure - it just didn't work, especially because it was basically rape.
I don't know how many instances of rape there are in this book: several anyway, and Cleland seems to be saying that rape is ok as long as the woman's unconscious, or the man is sorry, or the woman gets pleasure from it. Ugh!
The hypocrisy here was also mind-blowing. Cleland is clearly homophobic, but only when it's two men together: two women together is perfectly fine. And he has no problem describing male beauty in detail.
So, porn, but not even well written porn. I'd recommend giving this one a pass for anyone else who's reading through Boxall's list.
It's a mystery to me why this book is on Boxall's list because I'm pretty sure no one needs to read this before they die. No one could really call this literature: it's porn disguised as literature. Not to say that erotic novels can't be literature, of course they can, but this isn't (it's not even erotic, in my opinion). It's just a series of sex scenes strung together by the flimsiest and most convenient of plots. If there are even fifty pages of plot in this book, I'd be surprised.
I do give Cleland some kudos for acknowledging that women have sexual needs, but he doesn't acknowledge that for women's sake: he does so for the sake of his narrative, which seems like some kind of wish-fulfilment for his own desires (and his male readers). If Fanny isn't ashamed of her need for pleasure, it's only because that's what Cleland needs. I also had issues with how she realised her need for pleasure - it just didn't work, especially because it was basically rape.
I don't know how many instances of rape there are in this book: several anyway, and Cleland seems to be saying that rape is ok as long as the woman's unconscious, or the man is sorry, or the woman gets pleasure from it. Ugh!
The hypocrisy here was also mind-blowing. Cleland is clearly homophobic, but only when it's two men together: two women together is perfectly fine. And he has no problem describing male beauty in detail.
So, porn, but not even well written porn. I'd recommend giving this one a pass for anyone else who's reading through Boxall's list.
I reviewed this up on my blog: http://paperfruit.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/fanny-hill/
Notwithstanding the fact that this book was published in 1748 nor the fact that one might choose to call it "erotica" this is, in fine, a dirty book. It is neither more nor less than that, really. I don't know if it is possible to write a truly literary work about sex; it is too repetitive an act and the anatomy of it too similar from one person to another (within the same sex, that is) to admit of much in the way of variety or interest beyond the prurient. Not that Mr. Cleland does not give it the old college try. His various descriptions of male and female anatomy range from the ridiculous to the sublime, though they never reach the truly poetic.
Don't get me wrong, I am aware that many authors from Anais Nin to Roth to Nabokov to Henry Miller have included magnificent and quite accomplished descriptions of sexual acts of great variety in their works and that these are truly works of merit. But this book really is purely for the purpose of describing several acts of what is actually rather pedestrian heterosexual sex and, to be honest, that just gets plain boring after awhile if one is not a teenage boy (having been one quite some time ago, I am fairly certain this is true).
It is also rather laughable that Cleland writes as a woman here, since he seems to be rather ignorant of the parts of a woman which truly lead to sexual pleasure. I find it amusing, as well, that he flatters himself and those of his sex by asserting that women, even those who do it for a living, are constantly panting for the touch of a man's hands and organs. And what organs! Except for one unfortunate man (who also quite conveniently has a deplorable personality) all of the penises described in this book are quite gargantuan and ready for work. How modest of John to attribute such acumen to so many of us.
Perhaps even more amusing is the high dudgeon that Fanny, our licentious narrator, finds herself in when she witnesses an act of (gasp!) homosexual sex between two men. She is in a state of such moral outrage that she proposes to denounce the men to the whole inn in which she is staying and is kept from it only by the expedient of an unfortunate accident which knocks her senseless. A little silly, isn't it, John, for a whore to deplore this act so thoroughly? It also strikes me as odd that Fanny has no familiarity with anal or oral sex herself, nor do any of her fellow inmates at the houses she works from seem to, as if they were the most Calvinist prostitutes alive. Mr. Cleland might have been sad had he known what he was missing!
Ah, well, it's all good fun. That this is sometimes esteemed a classic work is a bit of a head-scratcher. I like a dirty story as well as the next guy and few are the novels for adults that don't contain at least some sexual content; I would miss it if it were cut from them. But this is, as I said, your run-of-the-mill dirty book and not much more than that.
Don't get me wrong, I am aware that many authors from Anais Nin to Roth to Nabokov to Henry Miller have included magnificent and quite accomplished descriptions of sexual acts of great variety in their works and that these are truly works of merit. But this book really is purely for the purpose of describing several acts of what is actually rather pedestrian heterosexual sex and, to be honest, that just gets plain boring after awhile if one is not a teenage boy (having been one quite some time ago, I am fairly certain this is true).
It is also rather laughable that Cleland writes as a woman here, since he seems to be rather ignorant of the parts of a woman which truly lead to sexual pleasure. I find it amusing, as well, that he flatters himself and those of his sex by asserting that women, even those who do it for a living, are constantly panting for the touch of a man's hands and organs. And what organs! Except for one unfortunate man (who also quite conveniently has a deplorable personality) all of the penises described in this book are quite gargantuan and ready for work. How modest of John to attribute such acumen to so many of us.
Perhaps even more amusing is the high dudgeon that Fanny, our licentious narrator, finds herself in when she witnesses an act of (gasp!) homosexual sex between two men. She is in a state of such moral outrage that she proposes to denounce the men to the whole inn in which she is staying and is kept from it only by the expedient of an unfortunate accident which knocks her senseless. A little silly, isn't it, John, for a whore to deplore this act so thoroughly? It also strikes me as odd that Fanny has no familiarity with anal or oral sex herself, nor do any of her fellow inmates at the houses she works from seem to, as if they were the most Calvinist prostitutes alive. Mr. Cleland might have been sad had he known what he was missing!
Ah, well, it's all good fun. That this is sometimes esteemed a classic work is a bit of a head-scratcher. I like a dirty story as well as the next guy and few are the novels for adults that don't contain at least some sexual content; I would miss it if it were cut from them. But this is, as I said, your run-of-the-mill dirty book and not much more than that.