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A review by roxanamalinachirila
Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland
3.0
If you are at all a sexual creature, "Fanny Hill" might send you into flights of erotic fancy where you won't read the book, but merely stare through it. There's only so much purple prose that one's brain can take before it starts hallucinating in self-defense.
I'm kidding... or am I?
I've encountered the word "vermillion" a few times, I've read about "oval reservoirs of genial emulsion", the phrase "compressive exsuction" (sic) has made its appearance in a smut scene. A man's... instrument is so large that you can roll dice on its width. I would normally not copy-paste explicit passages, but the explicitness is obfuscated below:
So many unusual and pompous words. Such long sentences. So many commas.
For a book that's over 250 years old, though, it has something of a historical interest. So never mind the 18th century style, what's the book about, right?
It's about a girl, Fanny, whose parents die when she's 14, and who is promised a good life in London by an acquaintance, Esther. However, Esther soon deserts her and she is taken in at a brothel. Before she can be sold for the first time, she falls in love and runs away with Charles, a young man who loves her in return and who keeps her as his mistress.
When his father sends Charles out to sea, Fanny is left behind without any money, and ends up being a kept woman for a living. Still young and foolish, she enrages her keeper by cheating on him when he cheats on her, which sets her on another course again.
To make things short, Fanny becomes a prostitute, and has various affairs, mostly with clients. She finds a madam who is capable of maintaining a select clientele, and often enjoys her job. Her adventures are painted in a very optimistic light. In her world, disease is barely mentioned, and pregnancy doesn't feature even as a possibility. Many clients are nice - except a dupe who's into virgins, but even he isn't demeaning.
And aside from all that, Fanny gets a fairy tale ending: she inherits a fortune from a rich, elderly client who dies suddenly and conveniently; she re-encounters her first love, Charles, who is now poor and whom she can bestow riches on now; and she gets to preach to us about Virtue and its... virtues. What more could an 18th century girl want?
I'm kidding... or am I?
I've encountered the word "vermillion" a few times, I've read about "oval reservoirs of genial emulsion", the phrase "compressive exsuction" (sic) has made its appearance in a smut scene. A man's... instrument is so large that you can roll dice on its width. I would normally not copy-paste explicit passages, but the explicitness is obfuscated below:
Description too deserts me, and delivers over a task, above its strength of wing, to the imagination: but it must be an imagination exalted by such a flame as mine that can do justice to that sweetest, noblest of all sensations, that hailed and accompanied the stiff insinuation all the way up, till it was at the end of its penetration, sending up, through my eyes, the sparks of the love-fire that ran all over me and blazed in every vein and every pore of me; a system incarnate of joy all over.
So many unusual and pompous words. Such long sentences. So many commas.
For a book that's over 250 years old, though, it has something of a historical interest. So never mind the 18th century style, what's the book about, right?
It's about a girl, Fanny, whose parents die when she's 14, and who is promised a good life in London by an acquaintance, Esther. However, Esther soon deserts her and she is taken in at a brothel. Before she can be sold for the first time, she falls in love and runs away with Charles, a young man who loves her in return and who keeps her as his mistress.
When his father sends Charles out to sea, Fanny is left behind without any money, and ends up being a kept woman for a living. Still young and foolish, she enrages her keeper by cheating on him when he cheats on her, which sets her on another course again.
To make things short, Fanny becomes a prostitute, and has various affairs, mostly with clients. She finds a madam who is capable of maintaining a select clientele, and often enjoys her job. Her adventures are painted in a very optimistic light. In her world, disease is barely mentioned, and pregnancy doesn't feature even as a possibility. Many clients are nice - except a dupe who's into virgins, but even he isn't demeaning.
And aside from all that, Fanny gets a fairy tale ending: she inherits a fortune from a rich, elderly client who dies suddenly and conveniently; she re-encounters her first love, Charles, who is now poor and whom she can bestow riches on now; and she gets to preach to us about Virtue and its... virtues. What more could an 18th century girl want?