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cetian 's review for:
Fanny Hill
by John Cleland
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.