OH, FANNY! WHAT A DEEP VOICE YOU HAVE: MASCULINIST NARRATION IN JOHN CLELAND'S FANNY HILL OR MEMOIRS OF A WOMAN OF PLEASURE

by

Ilana Cohen

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida

August 1997 OH, FANNY! WHAT A DEEP VOICE YOU HAVE: MASCULINIST NARRATION IN JOHN CLELAND'S FANNY HILL OR MEMOIRS OF A WOMAN OF PLEASURE

by

Ilana Cohen

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. David Anderson, Department of English, and has been approved by the members ofher supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

Chairperson, Department of English

n, the Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities

Date

11 ABSTRACT

Author: !lana Cohen

Title: Oh, Fanny! What a Deep Voice you Have: Masculinist Narration in John Cleland's Fanny Hill or Memoirs ofa Woman ofPleasure

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. David Anderson

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 1997

John Cleland, author of Fanny Hill or Memoirs ofa Woman ofPleasure, employs a female narrative voice, but his novel reinforces traditional gender roles of male domination and female submission. By co-opting his female narrator, Cleland makes Fanny appear to be a willing and available sexual partner. His pornographic novel depicts sexual situations that raise virile men to the position of authority and devalue both men and women who are submissive, not "masculine." The most devalued and objectified character in the novel is Fanny herself, even though the novel portrays her as happy and satisfied.

lll TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... l

Chapter One Male Fantasy ...... lO

Chapter Two Fresh Goods ...... 24

Chapter Three Sex and Love ...... 30

Chapter Four Female Gaze, Male Vision ...... 37

Chapter Five This Foolery from Woman to Woman ...... 43

Conclusion ...... 51

Notes ...... -...... 54

Works Cited ...... 57

lV Introduction

The narrator of John Cleland's Fanny Hill or Memoirs ofa Woman ofPleasure wears a dress and petticoats and exhibits female attributes --except for her voice.

What Fanny Hill says takes on a decidedly masculine slant; the female protagonist verbalizes masculine fantasies of sexual dominance, aggression and satisfaction.

Throughout her sexual escapades, Fanny is the yielding female made rapturous by the unfailing potency of her virile male lovers. Although she speaks in the first person, she speaks in the voice of a male describing sexual fantasies in which he literally divides and conquers. In this masculine fantasy, the male occupies the dominant sexual and social position, while his female partner is non-threatening, willing, eager and submissive. Sometimes Fanny initiates sexual acts, but she always allows her partner to do what he pleases.

Fanny's compliance allows her to represent the ultimate sexual partner for the pleasure-seeking male. Fanny is a fantasy figure for many reasons. She attracts men because she is acquiescent. Except for her euphemistic vocabulary, she is not learned. She is even-tempered, immediately accessible and sexually enthusiastic. As a prostitute, she is readily available and never a challenge to bed. She is physically

1 attractive, free of disease and children (so far as we know), and she enjoys her work.

She never bemoans her situation; rather, she delights in her sexual experiences. She

is the archetypal sexual object, the player and the plaything. Cleland reduces her to a sexual toy. He objectifies her in various ways: cataloging her body parts, depriving her of an education, selling her to various exploiters, and reducing her to the status of sexual property.

Fanny's objectification continues throughout the novel, even in romantic, as

opposed to pornographic, episodes. The novel's love model is in accordance with

the sex model, since Fanny is rendered incapable of any nonsexual behavior,

thoughts, or emotions. Cleland does not separate love and sex. Instead, he minimizes love to objectify Fanny, and she reenters prostitution when Charles her first and only disappears.

The fantasies in the novel focus on male power and sexual authority. Cleland belittles feminized men to emphasize the fantasy of male virility. Examples of such virility occur constantly, reinforcing masculine sexual ideals, and yet Fanny is ironically the medium for this male domination fantasy. Cleland's potent men, transcending in some cases their low class status or intellectual ability, all dominate women.

Fanny Hill has been the subject of much critical discussion over the years.

One group of critics has focused upon the question of Fanny Hill's literary merit.

2 Typically, they deny that the novel is pornographic. JoAnn Houston argues that

Fanny Hill's literary merit transcends its pornographic nature. Her approach allows her to compare Fanny Hill to other eighteenth-century novels. In her dissertation,

Houston argues that Fanny Hill has literary merit because it is in fact a didactic novel like Clarissa, Pamela and Tom Jones ( 6). Houston sees Fanny as a remorseful narrator who intends to turn vice into virtue (9). Fanny's remorse relieves her of the guilt caused by her life of prostitution. In addition, Houston notes that the text's lack of the vulgar language (typical of pornography) confirms the novel's literary ment.

In "What is Fanny Hill?," an article published a year after the Putnam edition of Fanny Hill, B. Slepian and L.J. Morrissey argue that "by a study of the novel's structure, themes and especially its rhetoric, it can be proven that the Memoirs is not just pornography, but that it has real literary worth" (65). Their approach to establish the literary merit of the novel is consistent with other critics. They do so by analyzing the literary techniques of the novel, focusing on the euphemisms, the symbols and the plot.

The novel's diction has attracted considerable attention from critics who contend that Fanny's language elevates the novel above pornography. In the novel, euphemisms replace four letter words, 1 so "not one obscene word appears in

Cleland's novel. Historically, the novel's claims to a literary, rather than a merely

3 pornographic value have rested on this stylistic point'' (Kibbie 573). Unlike My

Secret Life, which is specifically male in viewpoint and full of vulgar diction, Fanny

Hill contains no obscene language. Maurice Charney devotes a chapter in Sexual

Fiction to contrasting My Secret Life with Fanny Hill. He states that "Fanny Hill depicts joyous, pastoral, euphemistic sex with dirty words and thoughts rigorously excluded; My Secret Life records almost a grim, daily round of sexual activity, mostly in urban settings, and with a remarkably accurate eye for physiological detail" (71).

Fanny Hill's use of euphemisms to make the novel comic and paradisaic, distinguishes it from other pornographic works.

Since the euphemisms in the novel distinguish it from other pornographic works, critics have discussed how Fanny's language affects the sexual scenes she describes. Such criticism includes John Hollander's analysis of the euphemisms and metaphorical language that Fanny uses to describe her sexual adventures. Hollander believes that Cleland avoided taboo words in order to avoid prosecution. In his article "The Last Old Act," Hollander praises the language of the book as one of "its greatest virtues" (70). Although the sex scenes are graphic, poetic language is used to describe them. For example, when Fanny is sexually initiated into Mrs. Cole's household: "Kisses, squeezes, tender murmurs, all came into play, till our joys, growing more turbulent and riotous, threw us into a fond disorder'' (161). The language idealizes and glamorizes sexual acts, elevating them out of the lewd realm

4 of vulgar pornography. The language lends an appearance of cleanness and purity to the sexual relationships. Cleland's use of euphemisms in describing sexual acts creates images that are artistic images reminiscent of paintings and sculptures. As a result of this transcendence, the text can be viewed and appreciated as literature as well as pornography. The novel contains the elements of "sexual activities that can be seen pornographically and literary effects that can be seen aesthetically" (Shinagel

233).

Other critics have side-stepped the question of the novel's literary merit, focusing instead upon its key place in the development of the novel. Fanny Hill is most often compared to Richardson's Pamela as a source text for Cleland to parody.

Pamela cowers and frets over her relationships and dealings with men, but Fanny delights and indulges in heterosexual relations. Cleland joins Fielding in mocking

Pamela as Fanny Hill becomes "an extreme extension of the comic treatment of sex" in Fielding's Shamela (Shinagel215). Critics also compare the epistolary form of both novels, although Fanny's narrative consists of just two very long letters. Ann

Louise Kibbie provides an explanation of this use of letters; "The pornographic project of The Memoirs ofa Woman ofPleasure asserts that the destination of Fanny

Hill's letters is the desiring body of the reader. The model for this relation between reader and text is found in Pamela, as B.'s desire for the heroine's person is diverted to the letters that come to stand for her body'' (576). When Fanny shifts from the

5 past tense to the present tense to describe sexual encounters, Cleland joins Fielding's mocking of "Richardson's awkward 'writing to the moment' epistolary technique, when Shamela writes 'in the present tense"' (Shinagel213). In addition to parodying Pamela, Cleland also mocks Richardson's Clarissa. At one point in that novel, Clarissa "loses the ability to write ... 'I must drop my pen"' (Taylor 85). A year later, in 1749, Cleland's Fanny drops her pen while she recalls a sexual incident.

Unlike the doomed Clarissa, Fanny lives and prospers, financially and emotionally.

Edward Copeland attempts to place Fanny Hill in a context with other eighteenth­ century novels. Of Clarissa and Fanny Hill, Copeland notes that "these two improbably paired works have surprisingly much in common" (343). Another contrast to Clarissa is the treatment of the sexual act. Sex in Clarissa is horrific and frightening, while in Fanny Hill "the erotic fantasies are modulated by Fanny's own breezy good sense" (Copeland 350).

Fanny Hill has also been compared to Defoe's Moll Flanders, by critics who cite similarities of plot and character. Myron Taube states that Moll's character is more fully developed than Fanny's: "Moll has doubts, fears, worries; Fanny has only orgasms and transports . .. Moll is engaged in the serious business of life; Fanny is playing a game of musical beds." Furthermore, Moll's story focuses on money, while

Fanny's focuses on sex. Drawing parallels between their respective educations,

Nancy Miller remarks that "like Moll, Fanny's education in matters or morals is a

6 non-education; innocence is only a function of ignorance. And like Moll again,

Fanny codes the vicissitudes of her own experience within the text of the feminine

condition in general" (52). The most obvious differences between the two novels

are Fanny Hill's "elements of unreality," "exaggeration," and "illusion" (Taube 76).

Although both works can be considered "whore biographies," Moll Flanders contains

elements of realism that Fanny Hill ignores.

Since some of the sexual scenes (Mrs. Brown and her horse grenadier, the

drunken sailor) are humorous, some critics have categorized Fanny Hill as a comic

novel. Malcolm Bradbury's study of the comic rhetoric of the novel argues that

Cleland "parodies literary seriousness in order to serve the erotic and pornographic

possibilities of his story" (264). Bradbury calls the scene involving Mrs. Brown

"brisk, comic, spoofmg" (269). Fanny becomes a mock epic heroine because she

uses high language to describe low events, and this language creates "what Fielding would call a comic 'diction"' (265). Michael Shinagel argues that the euphemisms also contribute to the comic tone of the novel; "By consciously employing such extended and bold-faced metaphors, Cleland is clearly highlighting the comic

rhetorical content of his prose at the expense of the erotic content of the scene he is describing" (226). Because Fanny Hill is a memoir, a recollection of past events

rather than an account of ongoing, present action, her older and wiser self keeps

"these events in comic perspective" (Copeland 345).

7 Some critics have studied the narrative voice of the text, noting that Cleland becomes a transsexual author masquerading as a female narrator, but this approach to the novel has yet to be fully explored because critics often use this observation as an avenue to other arguments, never completely developing the idea. This thesis will attempt to do that. I will argue that Cleland employs the technique used by other eighteenth-century novelists such as Richardson and Defoe by co-opting a female narrator. Fanny, a female character, expresses a masculine ideology that shows women in the submissive position-- sexually, socially and fmancially. She is co-opted because she speaks in the voice of a woman who is happy and content to be ruled and controlled by male sexuality. In addition, financial reliance on men and madams creates Fanny's identity as sexual property; therefore, she is exploited by her own story. Her sexual and ultimately social compliance strengthens and validates the male fantasy that she prefers the domination of men to independence.

By recognizing the ways Fanny is co-opted, we gain insight into how male authors objectify female characters through their own narratives. Cleland takes a stock female character, one who rivals others in her beauty and naivete, and provides his own twist. He oppresses her into a submissive sexual and social position in the beginning of the novel, but he does not kill or her allow her to bemoan her plight.

Instead, she feels content and grateful. At the novel's denouement, Cleland rewards her with financial gain and a joyous reunion with her lost love, Charles. Because

8 Fanny willingly accepts domination and objectification, Cleland can co-opt her voice and characterize her sexuality as a commodity to be used by sexual predators, and the narrative rewards her compliance.

9 Chapter One

Male Fantasy

The sexual episodes in Fanny Hill contain various elements of heterosexual fantasy: beautiful women, dominance and submission, male sexual superiority and female sexual enjoyment. All the sexually desirable female characters are exquisitely beautiful, and Cleland uses their physical beauty to invoke sexual desire in his male characters and readers. Dominance and submission also characterize many of the novel's sexual episodes. Virile men and masculinized women sexually dominate women and feminized men. Consistently, Cleland gives heterosexual males sexual superiority. To indicate this superiority, he describes male genitals with dozens of aggrandizing metaphors, while he describes female genitals using images that indicate delicate smallness. The phallus always brings Fanny and the other female characters to a level of pleasure that homosexual relationships and masturbation cannot match.

Fanny's existence focuses entirely on sexual activity. She is a kept woman and prostitute, and she lives this existence without protest. In fact, Fanny enjoys much

10 of the sexual pleasure in the novel herself. In Cleland's text, "the woman who fulfills

every man's dream also fulfills herself; Fanny's gratification inevitably coincides with

male gratification" (Spacks 275). Her lovers' bodies and actions make her swoon

and transport her to ecstasy. In her enjoyment, she embodies the male fantasy of the

ideal sexual being-- willing, eager, and orgasmic. Cleland organizes his novel so that he never portrays Fanny receiving sexual pleasure without emphasizing the male's ability to give pleasure. Fanny's sexual pleasure stems wholly from her interaction with her male lovers. Only with men does Fanny have intense sexual reactions. The males in the novel consistently satisfy Fanny and the other women characters.

Because the novel depicts fantasy images of sex, there is no room for disappointment or impotence except when the man is feminized. The satisfied woman is the novel's consummate sexual creature; without her, the element of fantasy would diminish and possibly disappear altogether. Cleland renders his female characters as unfailingly orgasmic in order to justify glorifying his male characters' sexual power. The female enjoyment solidifies Cleland's ideas that only the man can satisfy the ever impassioned woman, and Cleland minimizes any variation in this equation that could undermine male fantasy.

Much of the narrative focuses on fantasy images of sex where physical features are idealized: the novel takes place in "a never-never land of well-bred gentlemen and elegant whores; it's a fairy-tale world of golden lads and rose-lipped maidens

11 presided over by good fairies who are madams" (Taube 77). The first fantasy figure whom Cleland presents is Fanny, a beautiful country girl, uneducated without protective parents. Cleland's Fanny is an air-brushed, artful figure, well- proportioned, young, soft and healthy:

I was tall, yet not too tall for my age, which, as I before remarked, was

barely turned of fifteen, my shape perfectly straight, thin waisted, and light

and free, without owing anything to stays. My hair was a glossy auburn and

as soft as silk, flowing down my neck in natural buckles, and did not a little

set off the whiteness of a smooth skin. My face was rather too ruddy,

though its features were delicate, and the shape was a roundish oval, except

f where a pit in my chin had far from a disagreeable effect; my eyes were as

black as can be imagined and rather languishing than sparkling, except on

certain occasions, when I have been told they struck fire fast enough; my

teeth, which I ever carefully preserved, were small, even, and white; my

bosom was finely raised, and one might then discern rather the promise than

the actual growth of the round, firm breasts that in a little time made that

promise good. In short, all the points of beauty that are most universally in

request I had. (Cleland 52)

Cleland's figurative dismemberment of Fanny's body reduces her to a pile of sexual attributes to be consumed separately by the male reader. She "presents them [her

12 physical charms] primarily as objects designed for men and valorized by them"

(Todd 82). With her description, she turns herself into a commodity. Cleland's focus on provocative body pans (hair, eyes, skin and breasts) identifies Fanny as the sexual object that she will be for the rest of the novel. Each "point of beauty'' is sexually alluring. Cleland elevates Fanny's beauty to such artful perfection as to make her an object of lust. As Robert Markley notes, "Beauty itself becomes a system of representation that unveils, describes, and anatomizes the human body, fmally elevating it into the seemingly timeless realm of art'' (346). Fanny ends her description by observing that her commodified beauty is universally desired.

Not only is Fanny beautiful but so also are the other prostimtes: Polly

Phillips, Emily, Harriet, and Louisa. Polly Phillips "came out of the hands of pure nature, with her black hair loose, and a-float down her dazzling white neck and shoulders, whilst the deepened carnation of her cheeks went off gradually into the hue of glazed snow ... she was evidently a subject for the painters to court her sitting to them for a pattern of female beauty, in all the true pride and pomp of nakedness" (Cleland 6 7). Cleland's description of Polly elevates her also to the timeless realm of an; she too is a fantasy. When Fanny first meets Emily, Harriet and Louisa, she observes that "three beautifuller creatures could hardly be seen. Two of them were extremely fair, the eldest .. . was a piquant brunette whose black sparkling eyes and perfect harmony of features and shapes left her nothing to envy in

13 her fairer companions" ( 131). The images of these other female characters reinforce

Cleland's theme of praising female bodies to indulge masculine fantasies.

In addition to physical beauty, the novel's women characters are submissive, dependent, and pliant. By contrast, the novel values men who are strong, dominant, authoritative, virile, and sexually aggressive. Fanny never crosses any of the sexual boundaries that the novel creates for women. The rule of the novel is to have Fanny sexually dominated by men regardless of their class. Charles, a poor gentleman, dominates Fanny during their first sexual encounter to set a precedent for her future sexual encounters. With Charles, Fanny receives what she has been longing for: a man with an "engine of love assaults" (77). As he becomes the "sweet relenting murderer of [her] virginity'' (78), Charles controls their sado-masochistic encounter.

Since Charles bloodies Fanny when he deflowers her, and Cleland labels him a

"murderer," the encounter symbolizes the ultimate dominance of male sexual power; the pain the woman experiences indicates her femininity. Cleland repeats the image of painful, bloody sexual intercourse with other submissive female characters: Emily,

Harriet, and Louisa.

Cleland furthers this theme of dominance with Mr. H. Although Fanny begins her relationship with him with apprehension, their first sexual encounter results in satisfaction, although not to the level that she has had with Charles:

All my animal spirits then rushed to that center of attraction, and presently,

14 inly warmed and stirred as I was beyond bearing, I lost all restraint, and

yielding to the force of the emotions, gave down, as mere woman, those

effusions of pleasure, which, in the strictness of still faithful love, I could

have wished to have held up. (101)

Cleland labels Fanny a "mere woman," suggesting that she is controlled by her sexual organs. She notes that despite her love for Charles, she cannot resist the sexual power of a man, and she appreciates Mr. H's "system of manliness" ( 101). Cleland shows that sexual satisfaction caused by a dominant man will even overcome love.

When Fanny assumes the masculine position of sexual dominance, it is either with a sexual deviant, or temporary--she reverts back to her submission midway through the encounter. When Cleland places Fanny in the dominant role during an act of fetishism, he feminizes the submissive Barvile's appearance:

He was exceedingly fair, and smooth-complexioned; and appeared to me no

more than twenty at most, though he was three years older than what my

conjectures gave him; but then he owned this favourable mistake to the

habit of fatness, which spread through a short, squab stature; and a round,

plump, fresh-coloured face gave him greatly the look of a Bacchus ... His

light brown hair was pretty thick, uncurled, and looked as if it had been

trimmed with a bowl dish. (182)

Barvile's physical appearance is soft and babyish; Cleland describes him as literally

15 "submitting'' to Fanny while she "ties[ s] him slightly hand and foot'' (183). By

having Fanny dominate a feminized man, Cleland shows her limited potential for

any more legitimate sexual power. Fanny's power with Barvile is not legitimate

because she takes no initiative or control; it is his fetish that determines their sexual acts. Barvile is not the type of man the novel considers valuable. Unlike sexually potent men, Barvile does not have the ability to satisfy Fanny; consequently, Cleland mocks his masculinity by providing him with a feminine appearance, a timid personality and an inability to be aroused in conventional ways. In addition to his appearance, Barvile becomes the weak male because he assumes feminized sexual characteristics such as a submissive, bound posture, and stimulation caused by

receiving pain. Barvile is necessary in the sexual economy of the novel because, like the homosexual couple, he reemphasizes the devaluation of the feminine. Women's sexuality, too, is defined by the reception of pain and sexual submission. The only time Fanny dominates is when she takes on the masculine attribute of inflicting pain.

To have Fanny dominate this weak male implies that she does not have the capacity, or perhaps the desire, to dominate the strong males whom the novel worships. After the night with Barvile, Fanny expresses her discomfort. She remembers that it was

"somewhat in the manner of a dose of Spanish flies" (189). 2 In addition to women,

Cleland includes this feminized, deviant man to further contrast with all the excessively masculine men, thus intensifying the fantasy of male virility.

16 Fanny's encounters with Will and Good-natured Dick show that gender is more important than class or intelligence in the sexual politics of the novel. Cleland does not allow Fanny to remain dominant during her encounters with Will and

Dick, because they each possess the symbol of ultimate power in the narrative: the aggrandized penis. Since the text's pornographic nature limits Will's and Dick's characterization, they are also fetishized, for their value comes strictly from their genitalia. She initiates her encounter with Will, but soon her "thighs disclose themselves and yield all liberty to his hand" (110). Will can overcome his bashfulness because he possesses "a maypole of so enormous a standard that, had proportions been observed, it must have belonged to a young giant'' (109). Because

Will has exaggerated genitalia despite his low class status and shy personality, the novel allows him power status in his relationship with Fanny. Her reaction to Will's penis expresses her masculinized voice --she gives Will power despite his lowly class.

So even though he is a servant, he has power because he is a man with a large penis.

Fanny relents after removing the simpleton Dick's clothing, for she "had sincerely no intention to push the joke further than simply satisfying [her] curiosity with the sight of it alone" (199). Louisa goes through with the act with Dick, and, like Barvile, "she suffered with pleasure and enjoyed her pain" (201). Again Cleland intertwines physical pain with sexual pleasure. Although Louisa and Fanny intend to control the encounter with him, Cleland gives the simpleton "the force of mettle"

17 (201) to dominate and satisfy Louisa. In these scenes, though Fanny voluntarily takes the role of the sexually aggressive woman with a servant and simpleton, two socially inferior men, they fmally dominate her. Cleland follows his pattern of having his female characters pleasurably overwhelmed by virile males despite their lack of class status or intellectual ability. The women remain obediently within their prescribed submissive sexual roles.

The sexual deflowering episodes narrated by Emily, Harriet, and Louisa also reinforce the novel's quintessential male fantasy of domination. Each tale reinforces various male parables that characterize females as resigned, passive sexual objects, mirroring various aspects of Fanny's own experiences: virginal pain that transforms into pleasure, rape and masturbation. All these women share a common female experience: tales of sexual deflowerings that follow the thematic pattern of the rapturous female succumbing to the ever potent male.

Emily tells how, as an innocent virgin, she was unknowingly seduced by a young man equally as innocent. She does not fear him; she believes she will not be harmed. Afterwards she thinks: "nothing on earth could be dearer to me than this rifler of my virgin sweets" (137). He takes advantage of her naivete, yet he seems to be operating by primal sexual instinct rather than intentional malevolence. Perhaps

Emily is less a victim than the other women because the boy is more of an innocent suitor than a predator. Although he penetrates her before she realizes what is

18 happening, by her own admission she feels quite receptive to his advances. Despite her initial shyness and cringing, she enjoys their union. Her story parallels Fanny's experience of the physical pain caused by the loss of virginity that transforms instantly into sexual pleasure. In fact, pain seems indistinguishable from sexual pleasure. Although Emily's seduction is less dramatic and traumatic than Harriet's and Louisa's, it contains major elements of male fantasy: the compliant, innocent, easily seduced maid, first fearing then loving her seducer and the virile young man whose sexual advances will not be stopped.

Of the three tales, Harriet's rape shows the clearest example of male domination and female submission. Her experience is an extreme version of what happens to all the women in the novel. She is not as lucky as Fanny, who escapes her rapist Crofts. Instead she falls in love with her attacker. When Harriet falls

"down in a deep swoon," she is "taken at such an advantage in [her] unresisting condition that he had actually completed his entrance into [her] body'' (140-141).

Although she acknowledges that what has happened to her is a "violation" under

"aggravating circumstances," she recalls, "my anger ebbed so fast, and the tide of love returned so strongly upon me that I felt it a point of my own happiness to forgive him" (141). Cleland excuses her attacker by making him unaware of what he has done, but rape becomes another method of male domination. Harriet is so enthralled by heterosexual sex that she is willing to disregard the violation. Her rape

19 shows that the men in the novel are so sexually powerful that the violent means they use to have sex with women become justifiable. In addition to the consensual sex that Fanny engages in, Harriet's rape shows that it is unnecessary for the woman to give permission. The rape fantasy occurs because the novel's sexual politics dictate that men have the right to sexually abuse women. Since the novel caters to masculine authority, Harriet's assent to her rape reinforces the fantasy of male sexual domination over women.

The rape works in the context of the novel by following the pattern of the virile male and the passive female. The difference is that Harriet is unconscious during the act, voiceless and motionless, an object. Her literal muteness represents the submissiveness that characterizes all the women in the novel. Here, Cleland shows immoral, violent behavior against women as being without consequence or punishment. He sanitizes and romanticizes the rape episode so that it can surpass the boundaries of its brutal definition and fit neatly into the other sexual fantasies of male domination.

As a young girl Louisa masturbates, never able to satisfy herself, echoing

Fanny's early experience. One morning Louisa awakens to find the proud owner of a "king-member'' who will now have "full possession of [her] whole body and soul"

(148). The phrase "king-member'' gives the penis sovereign power. Cleland provides Louisa with a man who dominates her and causes "delicious ruin ... the

20 pain melting fast away into pleasure" (148). Again Cleland uses female masturbation to demonstrate that autoerotic stimulation is inferior to heterosexual sexual intercourse. Louisa directly parallels Fanny as virile males rescue both of them from their, as Cleland asserts, unsatisfactory autoeroticism.

Like Fanny, Emily and Harriet, Louisa experiences the pain of losing her virginity, as Cleland carries male dominance as far as bloodshed and hurt. "Ritually torn to pieces, these women patch themselves up to serve again--an herbal bath works wonders" (Flynn 293). Consistently, these women instantly recover to fall into sexual ecstasy; Fanny arrives "at excess of pleasure through excess of pain" (80). 3

The parallel reactions of these women to their separate deflowerings show male sexuality as so transcendent that it has the capability to cause these women to enjoy their pain. Their immediate recovery and consequent orgasms provide the novel with its strangest element of fantasy. For Fanny to assert that these women would react in such a manner surely demonstrates Cleland's projection of his masculine

VOICe.

During her encounters with virile men, Fanny uses poetic language to aggrandize the various phalluses: "grand movement," (68) "fierce erect machine,"(68) "king-member," (148) "weapon,"(151), images symbolizing masculine power and strength. The pornographic nature of the text focuses the readers attention on the often celebrated penis. Fanny's language reinforces male

21 sexual importance. This constant praise comprises much of her narrative; it becomes the unifying theme of the text and shows where Fanny's sympathies lie. In addition,

Cleland's descriptions are "military ... gustatory ... and nautical" (Shinagel 225).

"Machine," (62) and "maypole" (109) describe the male organ, while "minute opening," (148) "little maiden toy," (68) and "virgin slit" (63) denote the female organ. The language used to describe the male evokes images of strength, domination, and worship, as well as a source of violence, as Fanny often praises the appearances and performances of the army of phalluses. These images contrast with the female representations: "theater," (64) "soft labaratory (sic)," (154) "tender, small part,"(65) and "wound" (79), all images that suggest sensitivity, fragility, innocence and smallness. We see that "Cleland uses the metaphor of military contest to express the engagement between man and woman" (Braudy 31). In addition to the military metaphors, Fanny describes the male organ as "a treasure bag'' (82) while her own is a mere worthless "bauble" (69). The genitals are synecdoches, indicating that Cleland believes men to be of greater worth than women. With

Fanny's obsessive descriptions, Cleland creates an archetypal male who expresses his character and identity through his sexual organ and its astonishing size and ability.

The vocabulary of worship is voiced by a male author through a female consciousness; Cleland's praise of the male body connotes male narcissism, a man idolizing himself for being a man.

22 Cleland intends to create traditionally submissive and beautiful female characters in order to satisfy "fantasies of male mastery and female submission"

(Simmons 45). A strong female figure would not suit his pornographic intent, for she would be more of a threat than an enticement. Fanny's repression into a traditional female sexual role reveals Cleland's masculine identity. The placement of her and the other women in submissive roles clearly reveals Cleland's male agenda.

23 Chapter Two

Fresh Goods

Fanny's gender and poverty are necessary to her commodification when she comes to London. As the novel progresses, she becomes the property of her various madams and masters. Her sexual partners control where she lives and with whom she associates because she is their sexual property. Thus, although Fanny's submissive behavior is seen primarily in sexual situations, it extends to all aspects of her life. Fanny's willingness to accept her commodified status as property is another means by which Cleland co-opts her voice to articulate a male fantasy. Men and women seduce her easily, without her protest, because they pay for her; continually, she represents the male sexual fantasy because she is so available and agreeable.

Fanny is a prostitute, a wife, and by the novel's end, a mother. In each of these roles, her identity comes primarily from her sexual relationships with men.

Her objectification forces her identity to emanate entirely from her sexual functions, and her sexual activity confmes her to become what male pornography requires: a submissive, objectified woman. Pornography requires a female character who cannot and does not function outside her sexual world, and the traditions of the

24 genre require that she enjoy all sexual encounters. Since her only marketable skill is as a sex partner, her value lies within her ability to perform sexually and her genitalia are her most important capital. She is the reflection and creation of what men want sexually from her, and her identity comes from her high level of sexual activity.

As an uneducated, orphaned country girl with no money, Fanny has few employment options. Her education is limited to "reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary plainwork'' (40) . Fanny's lack of education keeps her unaware and thus mute; she does not know enough to resist becoming property. Because she is in this economic situation, she becomes a prostitute when the madam Mrs. Brown notices after "one glance over [her] figure" that Fanny

"seemed too slightly built for hard work" (44). Mrs. Brown uses this line to lure

Fanny into prostitution. Fanny's need for money and housing forces her to obey and to become the property of Mrs. Brown, and later Mr. Hand Mrs. Cole.

Mrs. Brown takes Fanny into her brothel when Fanny is unaware of the workings of the city's sexual scene. Unlike other more moralistic versions of this tale such as The Harlot)s Progress, Cleland shows Fanny as happy with her fate. His version attests that it is safe for an enterprising woman to come into a city poor, alone, and uneducated. Because Fanny is not doomed like Hogarth's harlot, Cleland can employ her to voice masculine ideals. If she were damaged by prostitution, his glorification of the masculine could not have the same effect. Although sexual

25 predators make a direct line for her, she remains alive and becomes prosperous.

Moralizing about the dangers of prostitution would contradict Cleland's efforts to show a female character content in her submission.

Mrs. Brown's brothel will always require an influx of women valued primarily for their sexual wares. Upon her arrival in the intelligence office where Esther Davis leaves her, she remembers Mrs. Brown's sizing her up:

She looked as if she would devour me with her eyes, staring at me from

head to foot, without the least regard to the confusion and blushes her

eyeing me so fixedly put me to and which were to her, no doubt, the

strongest recommendation and marks of my being fit for her purpose.

After a little time, in which my air, person, and whole figure had undergone

her strict examination, which I had, on my part, tried to render favourable

to me by priming, drawing up my neck, and setting my best looks, she

advanced and spoke to me with the greatest demureness. (44-45)

This early example foreshadows Fanny's imminent identity as property; Mrs. Brown looks at Fanny like a piece of meat. Cleland uses the term "devour" to further the image of Fanny's consumption by the procuress. Fanny, as her older wiser self, acknowledges the demand for "fresh goods" when she provides an image of the economics of prostitution: "this was a market where Mrs. Brown, my mistress, frequently attended on the watch for any fresh goods that might offer there, for the

26 use of her customers and her own profit'' (45). This line swnmarizes Cleland's general attitude towards Fanny and the prostitution market; she is an object to be bought and sold for sexual purposes.

Mrs. Brown "rigs out'' Fanny. Her pleased reaction to her new outfit as her

"little coquette-heart fluttered with joy at the sight'' is a clear image of male domination tricking women into prostitution with fme material things (51). Cleland

"carefully underscores her country innocence by showing her fascination for fme clothes, her naivete about money, her unsuspecting attitude toward people, her utter helplessness once she arrives in London" (Shinagel219). Male fantasy acting through a female madam further demonstrates the co-opting of a female character.

"Dressing and tricking [her] out for the market'' (51) makes her an easier sell. 4

Fanny's delight at being sold as property comes from the illusion of glamour the new clothes impart in an oppressive situation.

Mter Mrs. Brown dresses Fanny in her London fmery, she brings in the lecherous old Crofts to deflower her. When he forces himself on her, he manages to push her "petticoats over [her] head" (56). After leaving Mrs. Brown's brothel, when Fanny loses her virginity to Charles, she alleviates her agony by biting her petticoat "which was turned up over [her] face" (78). Facelessness suppresses

Fanny's identity, dehwnanizing her for the brief moments when she has sex. Her identity is reduced to what is below her neck and she has the anonymity of "goods."

27 Although Charles does not own Fanny in the same sense as Mrs. Brown,

Fanny's submissiveness to him corrupts her love. The novel's love model does not

differ from the sex model in that both stem from keeping women for sex. During

their first meeting, Charles asks Fanny if she would be "kept by him" since "he had

been sometime looking out for a girl to take into keeping'' (73-74). At the public­

house in Chelsea, the landlord is sure that Fanny is "a fresh piece" (76). This further evidence of her objectification shows that even though Charles does not own Fanny she is always labeled as property.

As her relationship with Charles illustrates, Fanny needs men to support her.

Fanny's sexual partners function as her benefactors, forcing her into the role of the weak, fmancially dependent woman, even though it is she who is "working." Fated to become a prostitute and dependent on men for her survival, she cannot exist without their assistance. Fanny claims to love only one man, Charles, yet she has sex with many men for money. The economics of prostitution compel Fanny to submit to her male lovers. Like them, Cleland places his female character in situations where men can control them financially through sexual transactions. In order for men to dominate Fanny sexually, they must also control her outside the boudoir by controlling her access to money and housing. Charles, Mr. H., and Mr. Norbert all control where they live, but Fanny must live where they do because they keep her.

Fanny's dependence on men reinforces masculine fantasies of the dependent female

28 as the ideal sexual partner. Typically Cleland represents Fanny as grateful to be the property of men.

Fanny functions as property throughout the novel until she inherits a fortune and reunites with Charles, now destitute, "reduced and broken down to his naked personal merit'' (217). After they consummate their relationship and she has "totally taken in love's true arrow'' (220), she becomes a faithful wife and mother. Cleland reverses her and Charles' fmancial roles and joins them in a moral, joyous union to end Fanny's phase of being property.

Fanny's status as an object, commodity and property denotes the low social position that she must occupy in order to have a masculinist voice. She is owned and objectified in sexual and romantic situations. Her social position allows the men and women in the novel to dominate and own her. Because Cleland objectifies her, he renders her incapable of escaping her submission, for her objectification is required for Cleland to co-opt her voice.

29 Chapter Three

Sex and Love

Cleland dispenses with morality to create his pornographic male fantasy.

Although his novel idealizes sex by using elevated poetic language, the prostitutes and their clients debase sex because they use it for fmancial gain. Besides using sex for fmancial gain, Fanny also uses it to manipulate others. She has no other means to assert power in her relationships, so she resorts to the power of her sexual allure.

Fanny knows that she is beautiful, and she validates her sexuality by seducing Will for revenge and simple Dick for cruel amusement. When Fanny has such relations with men other than Charles, Cleland undercuts the love theme in the novel with his treatment of sex. The novel, by demonstrating that sex is a more immediately gratifying experience, depreciates the value of love. The novel deprecates love and ignores moral lessons so that it can create pornographic fantasy figures . Fanny's redemption at the novel's end represents the sexual morality of the text. Her transformation into a wife and mother demonstrates Cleland's morality. Since Fanny

Hill is a pornographic male fantasy novel about a compliant prostitute, "Cleland hardly finds the language for moral intensity as readily as he does that for sexual

30 intensity'' (Bradbury 273).

Fanny's use and abuse of sex minimizes its value within the context of continuing and stable relationships. According to the novel, sex can be used for fmancial support, then later translated into love. Fanny is never punished for her immoral behavior; instead, Cleland redeems and rewards her with "society's highest prize: marriage with money'' (Todd 69). Fanny's "fate is a prosperous one and thus a mocking parody of Defoe's and Hogarth's warning moralism" (Wagner 237).

Cleland parodies Defoe and Hogarth by allowing his prostitute to live and be physically and emotionally healthy, unscathed by unwanted pregnancy and disease.

As a result, Cleland's novel creates a guilt-free, although not necessarily an anxiety­ free, environment for sex.

The novel shows sex without negative consequences, another aspect of its masculine fantasy. For example, only Charles--the man she loves-- impregnates

Fanny. She narrowly avoids rape, and she reunites with her true love in the end.

Sex treats Fanny well. It feeds and clothes her, and she benefits greatly from it.

Except for the episode with Crofts, Fanny never encounters any danger during her sexual escapades. Even the encounter with the drunken sailor never has any bad consequence of disease, regardless of Mrs. Cole's admonishments. Despite Fanny's sexual recklessness, she always remains safe and free from harm. By placing Fanny in secure surroundings, Cleland shows sex in an idyllic context. Fanny romanticizes

31 and idealizes sex in the world of prostitution, by making it appear clean, safe, pleasurable and most importantly without consequence. Fanny's male lovers do not harm her (except Charles and her virgin gore); they only delight her and bring her to ecstasy with their sexual power. Fanny's sexual adventures fall into the category of male fantasy, because the novel rarely shows the negative side of heterosexual sex.

Unwanted pregnancy and disease are realistic aspects of promiscuous sexual activity, especially before modern birth control and medical treatments, but these consequences never occur in the novel.

Even when Fanny uses sex for revenge, she enjoys it. The nature of Fanny and Will's relationship allows us to see an example of how the novel reduces complex human interaction to sex. She seduces Will because she has the ulterior motive of taking revenge against Mr. H ., her master. Mr. H.'s infidelity with Fanny's maid inspires her to retaliate in the same manner, but Fanny continues her relationship with Will because of the pleasure she experiences. In this case, Fanny has self-serving motives. Cleland seemingly gives Fanny power and control, since she initiates the encounter; however, her power is false and superficial because if she were not Mr.

H's property, she would not be forced to retaliate against him. She only appears to have power because she seduces Will, but her seduction cannot give her independence. Her participation in a dishonest act, moreover, contrasts with the genteel language that she uses to describe the episode.

32 The relationship with Will is one of many Fanny has while Charles is away.

Although she claims to love Charles, Cleland's representation of love is merely rhetorical. Fanny repeatedly tries to persuade her reader that she loves Charles, yet her actions after he disappears contradict her claims. Fanny cannot legitimately love

Charles, since she reenters prostitution so willingly and then enjoys sex with multiple partners so thoroughly. Instead, Cleland exploits love in order to portray Fanny as the cliched "damsel in distress." At the end of the novel, Cleland uses love and marriage as a way to justify Fanny's behavior and tie up the plot's loose ends. The novel mocks and devalues love, because it interferes with the novel's real fantasy -­ sex with multiple partners.

Cleland simplifies love for Fanny. One morning she happens upon her true love, her soul mate sleeping in the garden of her brothel. Charles is a deus ex machina, and his rescue of Fanny represents love in the novel. She does not consciously bemoan her servitude, yet Cleland brings in Charles to save her, because she cannot save herself:

I was so thoroughly, as they call it, brought over, so tame to their whistle,

that, had my cage door been set open, I had no idea that I ought to fly

anywhere sooner than stay where I was; nor had I the least sense of

regretting my condition, but waited very quietly for whatever Mrs Brown

should order concerning me. (60)

33 Cleland contrasts Fanny's helplessness with Charles' masculine strength. Since it is the man who possesses the ability to save, Cleland asserts the notion that it is masculine to be the savior and feminine to be helpless.

Charles' primary function in the first part of the novel is to deflower Fanny, readying her for her sexual career. By portraying Fanny as a prostitute who has her first heterosexual experience with a man she loves, not a man who pays for her virginity, Cleland continues his fantasy. When she is not raped by Crofts in the brothel, and Cleland temporarily suspends her life of prostitution in order to take her virginity in the context of love, he romantizes Fanny's deflowering so that it corresponds with the prettified pornography of his text.

After Fanny and Charles' escape, the depiction of their love is, not surprisingly, highly sexualized. As with her previous relationships where men dominate her, her love for Charles is "so great that she yearns for him in what seems to be a fairly submissive way'' (Braudy 37). Their relationship, which is uneven in gender power, demonstrates the novel's primary illustration of heterosexual love. As with sexual relations, Charles is dominant and Fanny acquiescent.

Charles disappears, and Fanny reenters the world of prostitution. Fanny's life of promiscuity is sandwiched between her time with Charles. This distinction in the novel between first love that leads to marriage versus sex for money, emphasizes the novel's masculine fantasy of a woman who can disregard love in order to continue as

34 a sexual object. She is not emotionally invested in her sexual relationships which makes it possible for her to have multiple partners at little cost to the men. Fannys double life, where she consistently remains objectified, deprives the novel of any emotion.

Love and sex intersect during her relationship with Charles, but sex takes precedence and Charles vanishes. Fanny uses sex to express her love for Charles, but love is almost forgotten when Charles leaves and Fanny returns to prostitution.

Cleland's treatment of love demonstrates the unreality of the novel and the mismatched morality of the happy ending. Cleland portrays Fanny and Charles as being in love to create a spirit of happiness and good fortune, and he later emphasizes this spirit when Fanny marries Charles and bears his son.

Fanny indulges in sexual adventures with multiple partners but later enjoys a happy, loving marriage. Cleland departs from the standard presentation of prostitutes, for she has it both ways. She becomes the beneficiary of prostitution when it rewards her with financial gain that allows her to leave the life in order to marry. When Charles conveniently disappears and Fanny refocuses on her sexual activity, we see Cleland's cynical perception of love. Fanny loves Charles so much that her memories of their sexual involvement cause her to drop her pen ( 220), yet she easily suppresses these intense emotions in order to have sexual relationships with many other men. Although Charles' departure clearly upsets Fanny, she continues

35 with her life of prostitution as though he had never existed. Judging by Fanny's behavior, love and sex are two parallel elements and "unlike the standard heroine of pornographic fiction [Fanny] is always distinguishing for herself and the reader the essential difference between love and lust'' (Shinagel220). Since the novel is driven by male fantasy, it adheres to the pornographic intent by favoring sex for money over love.

36 Chapter Four

Female Gaze, Male Vision

We can see that Fanny is a figure of male fantasy from the way she is sexually aroused. Whether she is watching or participating in a sexual act, her arousal often derives from what she sees. Cleland often uses the vocabulary of sight in her narrative. Fanny is visually aroused by heterosexual activity, and repulsed by homosexual activity. Much of the narrative centers on Fanny's visual descriptions of sexual activity and the male body. During almost every sexual encounter, Fanny rhapsodizes in extraordinary detail about her partner's body, especially his genitalia.

She describes sexual acts in florid language. Because Fanny focuses so much on what she sees, her arousal assumes masculine traits (although it is not exclusively masculine), and her perspective seems decidedly masculine in its convictions.

Voyeurism is a key component of the masculine visual sensibility, and Cleland uses voyeurism as an integral part of Fanny's sexual initiation. Male fantasy in its physical, visual manifestation pervades many of Fanny's sexual encounters. The novel focuses primarily on the sights and images rather than the emotional aspects of sexual activity. During her first act of voyeurism, Fanny foreshadows her future

37 reactions to the introduction of the penis onto the scene: "But I soon had my eyes called off by a more striking object, that entirely engrossed them ... for the interest my own seat of pleasure began to take furiously in it, I stared at with all the eyes I had" (62). Cleland models the rest of her sexual response on this initial impression.

Since the sight of sexual activity and body pans contributes a great deal to Fanny's excitement, she assumes masculine characteristics for sexual stimulation.

Modern theories of human sexuality contend that sight plays a principal role in the sexual stimulation of men. 5 In Fanny's sexual encounters, where she goes into extraordinary detail about what she sees rather than what she feels, her reactions conform to the male model.

Fanny is not the only character stimulated by sight. Cleland co-opts Pheobe as well:

'No! (Says Phoebe) you must not, my sweet girl, think to hide all these

treasures from me, my sight must be feasted as well as my touch -- I must

devour with my eyes this springing bosom, -- suffer me to kiss it -- I have

not seen it enough -- Let me kiss it once more -- What firm, smooth, white

flesh is here-- How delicately shaped! --then this delicious down! Oh! let

me view the small, dear tender cleft! (SO) .

Cleland uses the vocabulary of sight frequently throughout the text. After

Fanny describes Mrs. Brown and the horse grenadier the "sight of which thrilled to

38 the very soul of me," she states that such a sight gave the last dying blow to my naive innocence" (62-63). When she first sees Charles resting in the garden, she declares:

"What a sight ... But on seeing his shirt collar unbuttoned .. . I could not stay with him, and might not even ever see him again" (72-73). During Charles' postcoital nap, Fanny "devoured all his naked charms with only two eyes, when [she] could have wished them at least a hundred, for the fuller enjoyment of the gaze" (81). By repeating terms associated with sight at this stage of the novel, Cleland establishes the physical catalysts for sexual desire that will excite Fanny throughout the novel.

Since the novel concentrates on what bodies look like and what physical actions are taking place, these sights of sexual activity indicate a masculine preoccupation with sight, which caters to the novel's male readership.

During virtually all the sexual encounters which Fanny either watches or participates in, she focuses her immediate attention on the male genitalia; then, she devotes time, energy and exclamation points exhaustively to describe it from every angle. Cleland disregards all distractions that could stifle her sexual arousal, and he directs her attention on the penis in order to activate sexual activity. Her instantaneous arousal at the sight of the penis is a key example of a male fantasy.

Although Fanny is initially frightened by the size and strength of these penises, soon she swoons and delights in them. Her identity is reduced to her sexual response. A line from her encounter with Will summarizes her attitude toward the penis: "it

39 stood an object of terror and delight" (109). Cleland provides the men in the novel with gorgeous physiques and incredible penises to substantiate their manliness, and

Fanny has no choice but to fall spellbound at the sight of these "machines." Fanny's awed reaction at the sight of her male lovers undermines her self-control, and consequently elevates their dominance.

Because the novel is narrated in the first person, Fanny's visual perspective filters all the sexual action. Her eyes see men in a wholly flattering light. The prime example is Charles. He is not a mere man, but a piece of art, as perfect and air­ brushed as Fanny herself. She exalts his physical beauty and her sexual relationship with him. She loves Charles primarily because of his physical attractiveness. While waiting for him, she recalls, "he was such a beauty'' (75). By giving him godly stature, she lowers herself in contrast. Charles is a prince and a savior, and Fanny wants him for her lover because of his appearance. Her reaction and desire for his physical beauty is masculine in its operation. She feels strongly about him because of how she views him.

The novel causes the reader to become a voyeur, because the descriptions of bodies and sex acts are so intensely visual. Because much of the language is concrete rather than abstract, the sexual episodes play out like moving visual images and artistic views of bodies. Pornography must excite and titillate its readers in order to validate itself. Therefore, Cleland rarely closes the curtain on his play. Most sex

40 scenes are shown from beginning to end with countless close up views, and the reader cannot help but participate as a third party observer, beholding Fanny and her partners as fantasy figures.

Opening the novel to almost any page reveals Fanny in the midst of one of her many sexual escapades. When Fanny herself is the voyeur, the reader watches along with her. Then the perspective shifts to the first person when Fanny participates in sexual activity and the reader watches her. The sight of the sex act between Mrs. Brown and her horse grenadier determines Fanny's future as woman of pleasure, as "voyeurism plays an important role in Fanny's education and initiation into the life of a prostitute" (Simmons 59). Fanny assumes masculine characteristics for sexual arousal during early parts of her sexual career when she is still fairly innocent and naive. Her naivete provides Cleland with a legitimate reason for having Fanny witness the sexual activity of others. He establishes her innocence with

Phoebe's seduction: "This was new, this was odd, but imputing it to nothing but pure kindness, which, for aught I knew, it might be the London way in that manner,

I ... returned her kiss and embrace with all the fervour that perfect innocence knew''

(48). Cleland creates Fanny as an innocent figure so that the sight of sexual activity has a more significant influence on her. Cleland uses voyeurism in her sexual education as a bridge between her unsatisfactory homosexual experience with Phoebe and the desired heterosexual activity. Her first voyeuristic act of watching a

41 heterosexual encounter excites her and causes her to dismiss her encounters with

Phoebe. Her longing shows Cleland's approval of heterosexual activity. She recounts that after watching Mrs. Brown with her horse grenadier, she lay upon the bed

"ardently wishing, and requiring any means to divert or allay the rekindled rage and tumult of my desires, which all pointed strongly to their pole, man" (64).

In the second half of the novel, Mrs. Cole puts Fanny through a rite of passage by having her watch Emily, Harriet, and Louisa having sex; then they watch her. These voyeuristic scenes also necessarily emphasize the visual. She states that they, men and women alike, are aroused "by all the moving sights of the night''

(160). Voyeurism creates "impressions of burning desire, from the lively scenes

[she] had been a spectatress of'' which cause her to be "perfectly fevered and maddened with their excess" (161). These examples of voyeurism as a method of sexual initiation are analogous to Fanny's earlier introduction to heterosexual sex.

The numerous descriptions of male bodies, praised by a masculinist voice masked with a female narrator, create images of virile heterosexual males as they dominate during sexual encounters. The novel stresses voyeurism because the images of sexual intercourse must be seen and appreciated by its female narrator so that Cleland can co-opt her voice to illustrate her masculinized sexual stimulation.

42 Chapter Five

This Foolery from Woman to Woman

The novel depicts two types of sexual activity: homosexual and heterosexual.

Because the novel strives to praise heterosexual activity, it must condemn male homosexuality as it does not conform to the paradigm of male domination over women. Since Cleland positively portrays male domination of submissive women and negatively depicts male homosexuality, except when Fanny is used as a conduit for same sex desire, we see that he intends to show heterosexuality as "right."

Cleland portrays homosexuality so negatively to contrast and to denote the homophobic implications of the text. He favors heterosexuality as long as it conforms to his male fantasies, and finally he exalts procreation with Fanny's joyous, happy ending when she gets "snug into port" with Charles and their son (223).

Fanny Hill falls primarily into the erotica category of pornography, while containing some elements of exotica. 6 Cleland directs most of his attention to heterosexual activity, which has the potential (however unlikely for a London prostitute) to blossom into love and marriage. Cleland's language elevates and praises sex between men and women with males dominant. The novel portrays same

43 sex encounters between both men and women, but Cleland depicts and judges each quite differently. Female homosexuality in the novel serves the purpose of fulfilling male voyeuristic fantasy. However, Cleland labels male homosexuality as "criminal"

( 195). Male homosexuality is condemned because it portrays men as feminized and submissive, behaviors that the novel devalues. Female homosexuality is casually dismissed, but not castigated because it does not violate the depreciated role of women, and it portrays them as creatures who want sex.

Cleland includes a same sex encounter as part of Fanny's sexual education. In the early part of the novel, Phoebe introduces Fanny to sex. The sexual relationship between Fanny and Phoebe is not legitimately homosexual because Fanny is actually heterosexual and Phoebe appears to be bisexual. Fanny observes, "Not that she hated man or did not even prefer them to her own sex; but when she met with such occasions as this was, a satiety of enjoyments in the common road, perhaps to a secret bias, inclined her to make the most of pleasure wherever she could fmd it, without distinction of sexes" (49-50). Phoebe just wants sex, regardless of the gender of her partner. Cleland includes same sex encounters between women in the novel to show women who are insatiable in their sexual desire, so much so that when there are no men available they will have sex with each other. By illustrating female homosexuality as an inadequate substitute for heterosexuality, Cleland exploits lesbianism for male fantasy. The episode between Phoebe and Fanny lends itself to

44 voyeuristic passivity, for its readers watch women having sex without men. The novel is not concerned with the pleasure of women, except as a response to the prowess of men. As Philip Simmons notes, there is "the social fact that the production and consumption of pornography occurs within a male controlled discourse serving male interests" (48). The relationship between Fanny and Phoebe exists solely to fulfill male fantasies.

Initially these encounters with Phoebe excite and thrill Fanny; she "was more pleased than offended at her proceedings" (Cleland 49). Although their trysts fascinate and satisfy her, she soon witnesses sex between men and women, causing her to long for greater things. Cleland devalues female homosexuality by having

Fanny grow dissatisfied with her relationship with Phoebe. Their relationship is not about their attraction to each other, but rather a plot device to show highly sexualized women. The sight of men and women being intimate inspires Fanny's own sexual arousal, and she becomes dissatisfied with Phoebe's advances.

Masturbation provides temporary relief of her newly discovered ache, but even this is not enough: "I now pined for more solid food, and promised tacitly to myself that I would not be put off much longer with this foolery from woman to woman" (71).

A woman's touch, even her own, does not suit her; she wants a man. Fanny's sudden surge of desire for heterosexual contact sets the tone for the rest of the novel.

Fanny's ultimately negative reaction to her encounters with Phoebe demonstrates the

45 views of homosexuality that Fanny will later state more emphatically when she spies on a male homosexual couple. Although she complies with Phoebe for a short time,

Cleland does not allow Fanny to be satisfied with the relationship: that would eliminate men from Fanny's sexual world. Fanny must dismiss lesbianism so that

Cleland can use her to glorify the phallus. A potential relationship between Fanny and Phoebe would undermine masculine power by eliminating desire for men.

Fanny's constant lust, longing and rapmre for the male suggest that women are unable sexually to satisfy themselves or each other. The phallus becomes their only means of sexual satisfaction. We see a clear illustration of heterosexual satisfaction in Fanny's relationship with Will. Their sexual intercourse brings her to the level of excitement that she had with Charles but not with Phoebe or by her own hand. She recalls, "I was quite sick with delight! stirred beyond bearing with its furious agitations within me" (112). This evidences the male ideal that only a phallus can inspire such a fierce reaction in a woman.

While Cleland empowers most heterosexual men with virility, he feminizes men who are sexually submissive and homosexual. Although he exploits female homosexuality for voyeuristic fantasy, he uses Fanny to castigate the male homosexual couple and voices homophobia through Fanny and Mrs. Cole. The ideological function of this castigation serves the purpose of allowing the novel to conform to heterosexual pornography. Fanny states that one of the homosexual men

46 had "an engine that certainly deserved to be put to better use" (195). Fanny has been conditioned by her experiences to believe that men who do not dominate women are not worthwhile and that all phalluses are the rightful property of the compliant female. Male homosexuality defies every sexual rule that she has been taught. Fanny scorns male homosexuality because it does not conform to the novel's masculine ideals of men pleasuring women, and according to the novel's logic, deprives women of sexual pleasure.

When Fanny first spots the men coming into the public-house, she scathingly describes them as "two young gentlemen, for so they seemed" (193), setting the tone for her tirade. She sets out to observe them, and Cleland describes their actions in order to demonize them. 7 Homosexual activity no longer serves the purpose of voyeuristic fantasy; now it becomes an opportunity to condemn what deviates from and reveals the sexual norms of the novel. Since the novel devalues the feminine, male homosexuals are regarded in the same light. The novel's male homosexuality parodies heterosexual relationships by characterizing one partner as submissive, and both feminine. Fanny watches them, she cannot fathom that these are two men having sex:

For now the elder began to embrace, to press, to kiss the younger, to put

his hands in his bosom, and give such manifest signs of an amorous

intention as made me conclude the other to be a girl in disguise, a mistake

47 that nature kept me in countenance in, for she had certainly made one,

when she gave him the male stamp. (194)

The male couple appears in the novel to minimize the sexuality of men who are submissive and feminized. The younger partner's submission is portrayed in a similar manner as feminine deflowering: "the writhing, twisting, and soft murmured complaints of the young sufferer'' echos feminine sexual pain. Fanny calls the elder partner's penis a "toy," (195) recalling her earlier reference to her own "little maiden toy'' (68). This is the only time in the novel that the penis is feminized, demeaned, and nonaggressive. These men threaten the novel's masculine objectives because they do not conform to heterosexual standards. Fanny castigates the young homosexual male because he is unlike the dominant male that the novel values.

Possibly, Fanny disdains sodomy because eighteenth-century society considered the act criminal, but her reaction reinforces her condemnation of men who do not dominate women. By operating outside the scope of what the novel values and objectifies, male homosexuality is impervious to and in fact defies the importance of heterosexual men.

In addition, this scene may mask the homoerotic implications of the narrative viewpoint. Throughout the text, Fanny is used as a medium and concealment for the desire of the male body. Since Fanny's perspective has been consistently masculine, perhaps her fixation on male genitalia indicates a homoeroticism that

48 Cleland disguises with Fanny's female identity. However, same sex desire must be

rejected in order to maintain the heterosexual framework.

Fanny, in this way conventional, condemns male homosexuality. Beyond just echoing social prejudice, the novelty of what she sees shocks her. Again, Cleland manipulates Fanny's naivete to voice his masculine convictions, using Fanny's voice as a member of one oppressed group to condemn men whom the novel devalues.

Not only does he portray heterosexual women craving dominant men, he attacks male homosexuals. Mrs. Cole's response to what Fanny witnesses notes that such men are guilty of rejecting women, another element that goes against the grain of the novel:

She could not name an exception hardly of one of them whose character

was not in all other respects the most worthless and despicable that could

be, stripped of all the manly virtues of their own sex and filled up with only

the very worst vices and follies of ours; that, in fme, they were scarce less

execrable than ridiculous in their monstrous inconsistency of loathing and

condemning women, and all at the same time aping their manners, airs, lisp,

skuttle, and, in general, all their little modes of affectation, which become

them at least better than they do these unsexed male misses. (196)

Mrs. Cole's disgust at their "aping their [women's] manners" shows that the feminization of male homosexuals is used to mock the images of the heterosexual

49 women in the novel. Mrs. Cole criticizes male homosexuality because it dismisses the sexuality of women and questions the gender boundaries between male and female. 8

The bias of the text serves the male-dominant heterosexual. The text's devaluation of homosexuality corresponds to the devaluation of the feminine. Since the homosexual male couple are feminized and submissive, they threaten the masculine aggression of the text by proving that not all men feel forced to live up to the standard that the text creates. Female homosexuality only serves to fulfill a male fantasy of insatiable women who are so focused on sex that they will perform for the voyeuristic excitement of male readers. Cleland delves into homosexuality only briefly since the novel's primary goal is to show the domination of men over women.

50 Conclusion

Fanny Hill illustrates a male author speaking vicariously through a female narrator to express a masculine agenda. The sexual and social submission of women in the novel gives men power by default. The novel constructs female identity as passive, dependent, and submissive. Fanny's language create images of masculine ideals of sexual domination; men prove their strength and aggression by inflicting sexual pain and by purchasing the bodies of women. Repeatedly Fanny exalts the phallus. Whether servant, master, young gallant, or simpleton, man retains the dominant sexual position because he is male.

The novel's theme of dominance rests upon the idea of the sexual superiority of heterosexual men and the inferiority of women. With the virile men sexually dominating Fanny and all the other female characters, Cleland creates a male domination fantasy. As they thoroughly satisfy their female lovers (although sometimes not without first causing them a great deal of physical pain and blood),

Cleland presents virile masculinity as a kind of heroic trait. When people other than potent men engage in sexual acts with Fanny, they are never able to satisfy her.

During her voyeuristic experiences, she is aroused by heterosexual activity and

51 repulsed by homosexual activity. Her reactions demonstrate that heterosexuality, specifically the male phallus engaged in heterosexual sex, is what the voice of the text values, and Cleland shows that men are at the top of his sexual hierarchy.

In this male fantasy, Fanny endures the objectification that plagues the women in male pornography. Men control Fanny's sexuality, fmances and housing.

Cleland reduces Fanny to sexual property and uses her voice to express masculine ideals. He shows her contentment in her objectification, and he keeps her unscathed by the dangers of prostitution. Fanny's highly improbable avoidance of rape, disease and unwanted pregnancy glorifies casual sexual relationships and shows prostitution as without the moral repercussions imposed on Hogarth's harlot. Instead, Fanny's story is laden with swoons and delight. Sex becomes her only way of interacting and communicating with other people. It is her primary activity, and the way she and the other characters engage in sexual activity characterize the novel's sex as fantasy.

Since Fanny focuses on sex and also loves Charles, Cleland can utilize her sexuality for masculine exploits but also idealize her as a sex object. When Fanny returns to prostitution after Charles's disappearance, Cleland continues the masculine objective of the text, that sex for money can replace sex as an expression of love.

In Cleland's novel, a beautiful female narrator who praises the potent appearance of her male lovers becomes the ideal sexual being. Fanny becomes an object of desire, while simultaneously always aching for a potent male. As the novel

52 shows sex in terms of commercial transactions as well as desire, her sexual appetite compels her to cooperate with and to relish all sexual demands. She goes willingly into homosexual, heterosexual, voyeuristic, and deviant activity. The masculine consciousness, however, always prefers heterosexual activity where women take a submissive role. Fanny's voice conveys paradigms of masculine sexuality as the text portrays her as a submissive sexual being.

53 Notes

l. "While this was probably done to avoid prosecution, the barrier of the unprintable presented no more of a problem than the very structure of English vocabulary itself" (Hollander 70).

2. In his edition of Fanny Hill, Peter Sabor explains, "Spanish flies or Cantharides, used as an aphrodisiac, was known for its blistering qualities" (200). Ian Gibson notes in a chapter entitled "Sexual Flagellation before Freud" that when Fanny resolves to make her encounter with Barvile the last of its kind, she "concludes that flagellation act 'somewhat in the manner of a dose of Spanish flies, with more pain perhaps, but less danger.' She does not realise that this explanation fails to take into account the active new variety of the phenomenon. Was this Cleland's view as well as Fanny's? ... What is certain is that Cleland is feeling his way towards a psychological interpretation of what was by the middle of the eighteenth century recognised as a common sexual deviation. His description of Fanny's painful adventure with Barvile has a ring of authenticity that places it far above the sort of flagellant pornograJiil¥ would flood the market in the Victorian period; and, in identifying the 'habitual state of conflict' in which Barvile is forced by his peculiarity to live, the author made a perceptive contribution to the understanding of the problem" (16).

3. Carol Houlihan Flynn argues that Fanny's "compliance demands that she be always ready to promote and sustain more pleasure ... Readiness inspires in pornographic and sentimental fictions a Sadism that depends upon the unflagging compliance of its feminine characters. Sade is most notorious for insisting that pain be the feeling registered in sexual encounters" (288). Philip Simmons also notes Sade's influence on the text, but there is difference between the presentation of pain: "for where Sade openly celebrates the pleasures of cruelty, Cleland covers women's pain with the mask of pleasure" (45).

4. Peter Sabor points out that "Pamela, preparing to leave Mr. B's household, also writes 'I tricked myself up' in a new outfit (Pamela, 1740. Letter 24)" (191).

5. In his article "An Evolutionary Approach: Can Darwin's View of Life Shed Light on Human Sexuality?" Donald Symons offers a biological explanation for this

54 phenomenon. He argues that "men, far more than women, are likely to be sexually aroused by the visual stimulus of a member of the opposite sex - whether this stimulus is a drawing, a painting, a photograph, or an acmal person. The evolutionary explanation for this sex difference is that a male can impregnate a female at almost no cost to himself, hence selection favored the basic male tendency to become sexually aroused by the sight of females. Human females, on the other hand, invest a substantial amount of energy and incur serious risks by becoming pregnant, hence selection favored the basic female tendency to become sexually aroused tacmally by favored males a propensity to be sexually aroused merely by the sight of males would produce random mating from which a female would have nothing to gain, reproductively, and a great deal to lose. Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin (1948, 1953) called attention to this striking sex difference and pointed out that pornography is everywhere produced exclusively for a male audience" (102). Gary R. Brooks, in The Centeifold Syndrome, observes that "the unique features of a female partner's physical appearance ... can become a powerful sexual stimulus for a man. Certainly, the visual sense always has and probably always will play a major role in men's sexual responsiveness" (2). Brooks discounts the biological role and credits society for causing this reaction. He argues, "women become objects as men become objectifiers. As the culture has granted men the right and privilege of looking at women, women have been expected to accept the role of stimulators of men's visual interest'' (3-4).

6. The Dictionary ofLiterary Terms and Literary Theory distinguishes two basic sorts of pornography: (a) erotica - this concentrates on the physical aspects of heterosexual love and may describe them in great detail; (b) exotica - this concentrates on what are known as abnormal or deviationist sexual activities, and thus the emphasis on sexual perversion. Common subjects for this kind of pornography are: sadism, masochism, fetishism, transvestism, voyeurism (or scoptolagnia), narcissism, pederasty and necrophilia" (729) .

7. Julia Epstein notes that perhaps Cleland's sympathy is with the men: "This scene, one of the final sexual consummations in the novel, represents a perfective moment: not one phallus, but two. As a metonymic woman, Fanny is so sexually unnecessary in this scene that her fumbling voyeurism acmally helps the lovers to safety'' ( 146).

8. Janet Todd provides an economic explanation of Mrs. Cole's scorn. Mrs. Cole "explains that, since sexuality is women's power, its use by men alone harms women, diminishes this power, and lessens trade, and she adds further that homosexuals

55 mock and parody the faults and failings of women . . . For women who are successful in society, like Fanny and Mrs. Cole, sexuality has become an economic commodity, which they buy and sell, trade for money and marriage. A sexual relationship which is neither an economic one nor, like that of Phoebe and Fanny, a preparation for the market throws in question the whole elaborate scheme which successful women have erected and accepted. In a way it sheds doubt on the value of the success to be achieved and the means of achieving it, and it stresses that women . . . are ultimately subordinate and reduced. It is the kind of revelation that undermines success and shatters female self-esteem" (96).

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