Fanny Hill by John Cleland (1748)

The scholarly introduction to the novel Moll Flanders, which I reviewed last month, mentioned a couple of other early novels about prostitutes. I decided to read these, too, to compare them to Defoe's novel, which I considered to be hypocritically sanctimonious. The writer of the introduction even remarked that Fanny Hill was thought to have been written as a direct response to Defoe's treatment of the subject of prostitution.

The two are different, for sure.

Defoe only told the reader that his heroine engaged in prostitution, reserving his detailed descriptions for her various ingenious thefts and scams. Cleland shows the reader, in detail, scenes from his heroine's life as a prostitute. I was surprised to find myself reading, as it turns out, perhaps the first pornographic novel.

I can't speak for how readers in the 18th Century perceived the novel, but for a modern reader (at least this one), instead of being titillating it is delightfully funny. The humor, which might be somewhat intentional and might be from an effort to circumvent censorship, comes from Cleland's highly imaginative use of an extensive variety of euphemisms and metaphors to describe every aspect of the sexual act. He is particularly inventive in describing the male sexual equipment, never using either a scientific or a vulgar term. It is interesting to note that the author was 22 at the time and was writing while in jail.

The whole of the plot is just a filler to get from one amorous event to the next. At the end, Cleland allows Fanny to moralize a bit about how much better it is to live a virtuous life, but her comments are obviously tongue--in-cheek.

Fanny Hill was banned from publication in the United States until 1963. I can't imagine why. As pornography it is really not very effective. As literature, it is at least better than Moll Flanders, primarily because of its creative circumlocution.