A review by cara_selene
Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland

1.0

What an utter disappointment! A few years back I had seen a BBC adaptation of this novel and I liked it enough that when I found an inexpensive copy at a used book store, I immediately bought it. Finally beginning the read this week, I was stupidly expecting a somewhat intelligent romp into 18th Century sexuality and prostitution. Instead, if I had read the reviews here, I may have come to realize that this novel was, in fact, little more than badly written, plot-less porn (as porn so often is). Strangely enough, it actually began somewhat promising, in which the first half, or "letter", of the novel had my interest as Fanny was beginning to dive into these new exploits. Shortly into the second letter, I quickly realized how repetitive and senseless the whole thing really was. Each exploit is utter drivel as the same words, the same descriptors, even the same types of women are used ad nauseum. Variety was clearly not John Cleland's spice of life. The best part is that when Cleland seems to run out of adjectives to describe his lovely ladies, he falls back on his old staple, "perfect". Every thigh is "perfect", every breast is "perfect", even every facial expression in the heights of passion is, surprise surprise, "perfect" (to be fair, perfect was often interchanged with "white", what genius!). Most offensive of all is that the girls' descriptions of their first sexual encounters nearly all start off with a borderline rape and ends with the ladies in a state of bliss. Words like "torn and bleeding", "victim", "murder" and "attack" are used often to describe their virgin-less state. Cleland's opinion of women is that they are weak and often swooning (and thus are left completely at the will of men), and describes men as conquerors. This was clearly a novel written by a man, for the sheer purpose of entertaining other men of his time.