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Tuesday, April 26, 2011
title: Memoirs Of Fanny Hill
author: John Cleland
genre: erotica/classic
pages: 106
published: 1749
first line: I sit down to give you an undeniable proof of my considering your desires as indispensable orders.
rated: naughty/X-rated
Memoirs Of Fanny Hill
has been called the first pornographic book and it is one of the most banned books ever.
I stumbled upon Memoirs Of Fanny Hill on my iTouch Classic Books app. Would I consider it a classic? I'd consider it classic porn, which is a genre I've never read.
The story is written in two parts. In the first part of the story we get to know Frances Hill and how she became a prostitute at a young age. She was born to a poor family in Liverpool. At age fifteen, both her parents died of smallpox.
She was brought to London by a family friend and is abandoned there.
Fanny is looking to work as a housemaid and stumbles unknowingly upon a whorehouse run by a Mrs. Brown who takes Fanny in and tells her her 'maidenhead' will fetch a good price.
On Fanny's first night, she has a sexual encounter with her female roommate.
Every part of me was open and exposed to the licentious courses of her hands, which, like a lambent fire, ran over my whole body, and thawed all coldness as they went.
After narrowly escaping being raped by a paying customer, Fanny is happy to be under Mrs. Browns care. Some time passes and she is told what is expected of her, the details of what she is to do with clients are explained to her by the rest of her housemates. She is afraid of sex at first, but after peeping in on a few couples having sex, Fanny can hardly wait to try it herself with a man.
Fanny unexpectedly meets Charles, a young man who is well-off, and he offers to take her away with him. She leaves the brothel with Charles the next day. She later refers to him as her Adonis and the sweet relenting murderer of my virginity.
Once Charles steps into the story, there are some romantic scenes as Fanny actually falls in love with him. Doesn't this sound like something out of the romance novels written today?
Charles had just slipped the bolt of the door, and running, caught me in his arms, and lifting me from the ground, with his lips glued to mine, bore me trembling, panting, dying with soft fears and tender wishes, to the bed; where his impatience would not suffer him to undress me, more than just unpinning my handkerchief and gowns, and unlacing my stays.
When Charles unexpectedly leaves Fanny, she is left three months pregnant, heartbroken and with no money.
Fanny continues to live the life of a prostitute, but as time passes, she becomes smarter. In the second half of the story we see a more experienced Fanny. By the end of the story, she is nineteen years old.
Throughout the book she recollects her many lovers and sexual encounters. There is plenty of sex in the plot. Same sex partners, light bondage and lashings, to a full-on orgy are all in the storyline. Voyeurism was a sort of past-time for a few of the characters in this story, they always seemed to find a peep-hole available. It's all very scandalous and shocking, especially considering this book was written in 1749. (way before my beloved Pride & Prejudice)
This was a spicy read, even by today's standards. I'm surprised that he wrote the story without any outright vile language.
I found the writing to be well done. John Cleland would definitely give some erotic fiction writers a run for their money. However, I did laugh at some of the word use. The author uses the funniest names while referring to the male form. The engine of love assaults, enormous machine, IT, staff of love and object of terror and delight, just to name a few.
He describes female pubic hair as the richest sable fur in the universe. I'm sorry, but I laughed out loud while reading that!
Like I said, some of the writing was really good, the sex scenes went on and on.
Here's an example:
Then began the driving tumult on his side, and the responsive heaves on mine, which kept me up to him; whilst, as our joys grew too great for utterance, the organs of our voices, voluptuously intermixing, became organs of the touch... how delicious!... how poignantly luscious!... And now! now I felt, to the heart of me! I felt the prodigious keen edge, with which love, presiding over this act, points the pleasure: love! that may be styled the Attic salt of enjoyment; and indeed, without it, the joy, great as it is, is still a vulgar one, whether in a king or a beggar; for it is, undoubtedly, love alone that refines, ennobles, and exalts it.
All in all, this was an unexpected read for me and I enjoyed it enough to keep reading. I finished it in two sittings. It was bawdy and scandalous and I did wonder what would become of Fanny.
I read that author John Cleland and the publishers and printer of Fanny Hill were arrested shortly after publication. The novel of course, continued to sell in pirated forms. Sex does sell, no matter what century we're in.
Lifted then to the utmost pitch of joy that human life can bear, undestroyed by excess, I touched that sweetly critical point, whence scarce prevented by the injection from my partner, I dissolved, and breaking out into a deep drawn sigh, sent my whole sensitive soul down to that passage where escape was denied it, by its being so deliciously plugged and choked up.
