Dangerous Discourse: Language and Sex Between

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DANGEROUS DISCOURSE: LANGUAGE AND SEX BETWEEN

MEN IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON

KENNETH W. MCGRAW

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Dissertation Adviser: Christopher Flint

Department of English

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

August, 2009

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES

We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of

______

candidate for the ______degree *.

(signed)______(chair of the committee)

______

(date) ______

*We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. DEDICATION

For my wife, Joyce, and for everyone on the fourth floor, I could not have done it without you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………. 2

Abstract………………………………………………………………………… 3

Introduction…………………………………………………………………….. 5

Chapter I: “An Indecent Posture”: Legal Discourse and the Sodomitical 30

Assault on Eighteenth-Century England………………………………..

Chapter II: Botanical Bodies, Unnatural Predilections: Nature and Sex 61

Between Men in the Eighteenth Century………………………………..

Chapter III: Mapping the Molly: (Re)Defining Homosexual Space at the 100

Metropolitan Margins……………………………………………………

Chapter IV: Peephole Politics: Keyholes and Liminal Sexuality in the 135

Eighteenth Century………………………………………………………

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………. 168

Bibliography..…………………………………………………………….……… 199

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to my dissertation committee, Heather Meakin, Kimberly Emmons, and Sandra Russ for their willingness to sit on my committee and their support throughout the process. I am particularly grateful to Chris Flint who, as an “ornery advisor,” never let me relax and always pushed me to improve my writing. His attention to detail and professional advice helped me become a better writer, a more succinct thinker, and a better teacher. I would also like to thank the entire English Department and Case Western Reserve University for their constant support and encouragement through the process. I am further grateful to Tom Bishop and Kurt Koenigsberger for their support, guidance, and professional example. An extended thanks to Heather

Meakin without whom this would not have been possible.

I am, of course, extremely grateful to the master’s and doctoral candidates I had the pleasure of knowing during my time at Case. A special thanks to Barbara Burgess-

Van Aken for the encouragement and inspiration she provided throughout my time at

Case Western Reserve University. I am particular grateful to Paul Neel, Daniel

Anderson, and Wells Addington for the amusing diversions they provided throughout this process. I must also thank my family, especially my mother, Tina McGraw, who read portions of this project and asked particularly grueling questions. Thanks to my father,

Ken McGraw, my sister, Kelly McGraw and my brother, Frank McGraw, for their unwavering belief in my ability to complete this project. To my wife, Joyce, there is little

I can say to reflect my sincere love and gratitude. Thank you.

Dangerous Discourse: Language and Sex between Men In Eighteenth-Century London

Abstract

KENNETH W. MCGRAW

“Dangerous Discourse: Language and Sex between Men in Eighteenth-Century

London” explores the intricate and often overlooked intersection of three distinct

discourses on sodomy in early eighteenth-century London. For most authors of the

period, whether Grub Street hacks or Neo-Classical practitioners, the “emerging” homosexual1 sub-culture (a term not used until the nineteenth-century) was a blight that

infected both the metropole and the country. They shared with common culture a disgust

with the sodomitical underground calling the practice a “disease,” a “plague,” an

“unnatural vice,” and the “sin not to be named.” These, and a host of other monikers,

clearly reflect the cultural homophobia of the early eighteenth century. Unlike other

scholars interested in the sodomitical “problem,” my project is not predominantly

sociological. Instead, I investigate the discourse used to condemn sodomites in the legal

system, in the mass of botanical erotica in the early half of the century that responded to

the sodomitical practices infecting the country, and in the language used to mark out the

urban “space” assumed by the sodomite.

In the above trio of loci I investigate, a discourse on sex between men emerges

that, while consistently aggressive in its injunction and violent in its punishment, also

aligns the discourse on hetero- and homosexual activities. This discursive congruence

positions the discourse on sodomy as one concerned with sex between men and the

situation of the accused in the urban labor market, the family, and civic duty. We see in

specific texts, coded discourse that is highly concerned with both the public and private spaces sodomites assumed in the period. The discursive and physical spaces occupied by sodomites of the period, whether explored or renounced, oftentimes demonstrate a distinct intersection between hetero- and homosexuality that places the sodomite on a sexual continuum instead of at the sexual margins.

INTRODUCTION

In response to the October, 1707 convictions of numerous sodomites, Daniel

Defoe was compelled by “a great number of newspaper reports” to respond to the open and public disciplining of sodomy. In his political periodical A Review of the State of the

British Nation, Defoe hopes that Britain can “imitate the Dutch in one thing, who in such

Cases make both the Trials and Punishments of such Sort of Criminals, to be done with

all the Privacy possible that may consist with Justice.”2 While Defoe shares with his

contemporaries an acute disapproval of sodomy, terming it a “Sort of Bestiality” and a

“nauseous Subject,” he attends more precisely to the system of publicly disciplining

convicted sodomites and the consequences of public association with sodomitical

activity. For Defoe, the public disciplining of sodomites was itself an affront to nature

and provided spectators the opportunity to indulge in “immodest and obscene

expressions” and “gratifie the corrupted Appetites of the Vicious.” While the “modern

Sodomites” were “hellish Creatures” it was their publication, their infiltration into public

life that outraged Defoe. Defoe was not only concerned with “sodomitical space,” but was also discouraged by the sheer amount of text that was being produced about sodomites. Later in The Review, Defoe reflects on the publication of the trial against

Captain Rigby and the types of cultural responses it elicited:

And what was the End of such a Publication? I know not what might be the Design, but I know, the Consequences were two fold.

1. Good Men abominated it equally with the Fact, blushed for our Magistracy that suffer’d it, and loathed the Sight of it.

2. The vicious, debauch’d Youth made Sport at it, and glutted their vile Inclinations with a double Pleasure; 1st. That of reading it, and 2dly. seeing it – A publick thing, as if that justify’d the debauching their Tongues with the beastly Dialect. (The Review)

For Defoe, sodomy was not only an individual and cultural illness, but also an ideological disease that infected any who came into contact with it—no matter how violently they opposed and attacked it. By publicly announcing the need for a private solution to a public disgrace, Defoe exposes the contradictory assumptions underlying the treatment of sexual crimes in the period between the Glorious Revolution and the mid-eighteenth century. Analyzing the kind of verbal strategies underlying Defoe’s language, this project addresses the formation of “sodomitical space” in the early part of the eighteenth century. I contend that in the first part of the long eighteenth century there erupted a distinct discourse on the sodomitical subculture and that this discourse, in its desire to punish and silence pre-emergent homosexuality unexpectedly produced a distinct discourse and created a new knowledge base for its readers.

The sodomite existed prior to the early eighteenth century, but it was the proliferation of textual embodiments that made him visible to the reading public. This visibility, at the levels of both text and violent public punishment, made writing about the sodomite possible, but, more importantly, allowed the reading public to “know” the sodomite, categorize his actions and contribute to his swift and violent punishment.

Although not centrally concerned with homosexual identity, i.e the individual’s awareness of both a gay sexual orientation and a group affiliation, this project interrogates the distinction between the sodomite and the molly—the common term for a transvestite—to argue that, while there was not a fortified homosexual identity in the early half of the century, the molly social type did constitute a sexual social type that was

quite different than the sodomite of the same period. The molly, while signaling no form

of group solidarity or partisan politics, may have been a step in the construction of a

homosexual identity in the nineteenth century. This project is not, however, about what

men did in bed together, what they did in the cruising grounds, in the cottages or in the

corners of taverns. Instead, I examine the discourse dedicated to the silencing of illicit

behavior and the paradoxical construction of a discourse that not only condemned the sodomite and molly, but also created them as bodies fit for incarceration, eradication and, at times, rehabilitation. It is, in other words, dedicated to analyzing the discourse about sodomy and not sodomy itself.

This project is critically indebted to Michel Foucault and his observations of sexuality and punishment. While I would not term this a “Foucaultian” project, some of his concepts and precautions have informed my approach on the emergence of sodomitical space in the eighteenth century. Important elements to this project are

Foucault’s distinction between morphology and subjectivity, the formation of “docile bodies,” and his cautions to those analyzing historical formations of power. These elements in Foucault’s arguments about modern sexual ideology expose the sodomitical discourse of the period as both a moment of subjugation and creation. Moreover, this project is indebted to the critical work on eighteenth-century space as explored by scholars such as Cynthia Wall, Simon Varey, and Greta Olson who concern themselves with both the gendering of space, the formation of the public and private spheres, and the relationship between urban space and Londoners in the period of reconstruction following the Great Fire of 1666. Elaborating upon this work, I focus on three particular spatial loci that were crucial to the reformation of the city and juridical, natural and urban

environments that both shaped and limited city life. I then examine the literary treatment

of these overlapping loci through close analysis of John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. This introduction serves as both a methodological overview and a synopsis of the project’s chapters on juridical space, natural space, urban space and literary

depiction in the early eighteenth-century formation of a discourse on sodomites and

mollies.

Morphology, Subjectivity and the Kinaidos

The most oft quoted, criticized and refuted portion of Michel Foucault’s History

of Sexuality, Volume I is his contention that homosexuality did not exist until the

nineteenth century. Foucault writes:

This new persecution of the peripheral sexualities entailed an incorporation of perversions and a new specification of individuals. As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them. The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away. It was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular nature. We must not forget that the psychological, psychiatric, medical category of homosexuality was constituted from the moment it was characterized—Westphal’s famous article of 1870 on “contrary sexual sensations” can stand as its date of birth—less by a type of sexual relations than by a certain quality of sexual sensibility, a certain way of inverting the masculine and the feminine in oneself. Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species. (43)

The conclusion most draw from Foucault’s position is that before the modern era (and

our modern conceptions) sexual deviance was composed of only acts and not of

identities.3 This is the type of critical reception David Halperin, in his study Forgetting

Foucault: Acts, Identities, and the History of Sexuality, investigates. His intention is to revise Foucault’s claim and “not to reverse it” (96). He does not wish to “revive an essentialist faith in the unqualified existence of homosexual and heterosexual persons in

Western societies before the modern era” (96), but instead investigates the ways

“Foucaultians” misread, misinterpret, and misapply Foucault’s observations, thus

“reducing the operative range of his [Foucault’s] thought to a small set of received ideas, slogans, and bits of jargon (94). The typical rendering of the above passage by Foucault is that, “In the premodern and early modern periods…sexual behavior did not represent a sign or marker of a person’s sexual identity” (96). This assertion is most clearly accessible in the case of the sexually “deviant” sodomite. Sodomy was an act that

“anyone of sufficient depravity might commit; it was not a symptom of a type of personality” (96). But what has been forgotten, and what Halperin makes very clear, is that Foucault is talking about discursive formations and institutional practices and not about “what people really did in bed or what they thought about it” (97). Foucault works to contrast pre-modern and modern styles of sexual prohibition to argue that these prohibitions “took the form of specifying rules of conduct, making prescriptions and recommendations, and discriminating between the licit and illicit” (98). However, modern strategies “took the form of establishing norms of self-regulation—not by legislating standards of behavior and punishing deviations from them but rather by constructing new species of individuals, discovering and ‘implanting’ perversions, and thereby elaborating more subtle and insidious means of social control” (98). Defoe and his contemporaries were both spectators and enactors of a shift in civic control. While

“deviant” sexuality such as sodomitical behavior was punished through the legal system, it was more specifically punished by urban inhabitants. The pillory and consequent publication of the sodomite’s crime marked him as “deviant” and thus made him vulnerable to future reprisal. In other words, once a sodomite was convicted of sodomy or attempted sodomy, he was known as a sodomite to his community. Simultaneously, however, the sodomite became an entrenched social type in the early eighteenth century.

In order to support the “historico-theoretical” claim that power not only represses but that it is also significantly productive, Foucault asks readers to make distinctions between the pre-modern sexual prohibitions against “acts” that were “contrary to nature” and nineteenth-century prohibitions that did not simply criminalize the deviant individual

“but medically disqualified them as pathological” (98). In other words, the pre-modern

“deviant” was not an identity but was instead a series of acts. The deviant individual did not possess a “deviant” identity and prohibitions merely aimed to criminalize and punish the “deviant” for his or her criminal actions. In contrast, nineteenth-century prohibitions were not content to simply penalize the “deviant” individual, but instead “constructed the deviant form of life, a perverse personality, an anomalous species, thereby producing a new specification of individuals whose true nature would be defined from now on by reference to their abnormal ‘sexuality’” (98). The consequence of this prohibition was that the attempted eradication of “peripheral sexualities” paradoxically implanted the sodomitical subject as a separate “species.” The discursive formation of this new sexual perversion “no longer simply prohibited behavior but now also [acted to] control, regulate, and normalize embodied subjects” (99). Hence, the sodomite of the pre-modern era was simply a category of forbidden acts while the homosexual of the nineteenth-

century became a real and tangible person. Foucault’s distinction between the sodomite

and the homosexual is a discursive one, not a historical one. His is not a claim about the

historical existence or nonexistence of sexually “deviant” identities, but is instead a claim

about sexual disqualification and the function of the varied discursive means necessary to

this disqualification.

To more clearly distinguish Foucault’s point and to revise Foucault’s stark

division, Halperin claims that this distinction suggests a difference between sexual

morphology and sexual subjectivity. Halperin begins his revision with a lengthy

comment on the kinaidos or cinaedus which is “a ‘scare image’ (or phobic construction)

of a sexually deviant and gender-deviant male, whose most salient distinguishing feature

was a supposedly ‘feminine’ love of being sexually penetrated by other men” (100).4 As

Halperin points out, “The kinaidic figure arose in a belief system where the two genders

were conceived as opposite ends of a much-traveled continuum and, second, masculinity

is thought to be a difficult accomplishment—one that is achieved only by a constant

struggle akin to warfare against enemies both internal and external” (100).5 Women

stood at the opposite end of this “much-traveled” continuum and were not only opposite but were a potential threat to masculine identity. Thus, there was the potential, in every

man, of losing his social rank as a man and being reduced to the social ranks of women.

The kinaidos “stands as a warning to men of what can happen to them if they give up the

internal struggle to master their desires and if they surrender, in womanly fashion, to the

lure of pleasure” (100-101). What this suggests is that the only thing stopping men from

allowing other men to use them as objects of sexual gratification is their masculine ability

to withstand the temptation of “pleasure-at-any-price.” For Halperin, this shows that the

kinaidos does not possess a different sexual orientation, but instead represents what every man would be like if he were to indulge his bodily appetites. The kinaidos, then, “is considerably more than the juridical subject of deviant sexual acts” (102). Furthermore, as Maud Gleason observes, “Foucault’s description of the nineteenth-century homosexual fits the cinaedus remarkably well…The cinaedus was a ‘life-form’ all to himself, and his condition was written all over him in signs that could be decoded by those practiced in the art.” She further adds that the cinaedus was not different only because of the sexual partners he chose, but also because of the “inversion or reversal of his gender identity: his abandonment of a ‘masculine’ role in favor of a ‘feminine’ one” (411-412). The outcome of Halperin’s and Gleason’s discussion of the kinaidos is the assessment that Foucault’s polarized claim is too general and does not permit a sexual “middle ground.”

While I, like Halperin, disagree that the kinaidic figure fits with Foucault’s conception of the nineteenth-century homosexual, the figure does seem remarkably similar to the molly of the eighteenth century. The molly traversed the sexual continuum by engaging in distinctly “feminine” acts—not only as the object of sexual gratification, but also because he mimicked “feminine” discourse, dress, and habits of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, the molly also mimicked heterosexual sex and procreation. The eighteenth-century discourse on sodomy designates the molly as a “monster” because he has given up his masculine identity not only through the physical act of sex, but also through his gender transgression. What Halperin rightly suggests is that the kinaidos has two distinct characteristics a “shameless appetite for pleasure” and a “deviant gender- style” (Halperin 108), while Boccaccio’s sodomitical character is driven only by sexual tastes. Thus, for Halperin, the kinaidos is a morphological character because he

“assimilates the cultural definition of a woman” while the sodomite is merely a deviant.

Halperin uses this distinction to clarify the stark polarization that is associated with

Foucault’s theories of aberrant sexuality. The difference between kinaidos and sodomite, between morphology and subjectivity, are the foundation for our modern understandings of homosexuality. Thus, according to Halperin, our conceptions of modern homosexuality, “insist on the conjunction of sexual morphology and sexual subjectivity”

(109). This distinction is not only relevant for studies of modern homosexuality, but also for early eighteenth-century ideas of sex between men. Distinguishing between sodomites and mollies, early eighteenth-century Londoners posited the sodomite as a deviant sexual agent known and prosecuted for his actions but not for a “shameless appetite for pleasure.” The molly, conversely, was a figure defined principally in terms of his association with both cultural notions of femininity and deviant sexuality. Hence, the molly is a sexual type punished not only because of sexual tastes, but also because of his extravagant activities. The implicit assumption in this distinction, however, is that there was no codified homosexual “identity” or orientation; instead, the sodomite and molly were part of a sexual continuum that situated them as pre-emergent homosexual social types.

There were two distinct sodomitical “characters” in the early eighteenth century: the sodomite and the molly. Scholars such as Rictor Norton argue that in the eighteenth-

century “molly” and “sodomite” were used interchangeably and thus do not distinguish

two separate types. This solution is overly general, however, because it aligns heterosexual men who occasionally participated in sodomy and mollies who also enacted

gender transgression.6 While Foucault’s approach to the homosexual is a bit too stark, it

does offer us a useful apparatus to distinguish the sodomite and molly in the discourse of the period. The sodomite and molly were both punished for their sexual tastes.

However, they were obviously two distinct classes of men: the sodomite had sex with men, but was also married or widowed and, at times, had children. The molly, on the other hand, was usually unmarried and participated in not only sexual transgression, but also gender transgression. While both were known and punished for their acts, they behaved differently and, because of this, the discourse on them significantly differs. The sodomite was persecuted for his sexual transgression; the molly was persecuted for both sexual and gender transgressions. Unlike Norton, I do not think that the molly constituted a codified homosexual identity, but can be seen as an important moment in the construction of a homosexual identity. The sodomite, in contrast, was a social character known because of his licit acts, while often retaining his licit masculine

identity. That is, the eighteenth-century sodomite retains some of his masculine identity

even though he participates in sodomitical behavior. The molly “cull” relinquishes

masculinity identity not only through illicit sexual congress, but because his internal

desires are contrary to heteronormative conceptions of masculinity. In these terms, the

molly is a kinaedic figure because he desires other men and transgresses eighteenth

century conceptions of masculine behavior.

Disciplinary Power and “Docile Bodies”

Rather than asking what power is and where it comes from, Foucault asks how

power is exercised and questions the effects of its application. Foucault is clear about his

conception of power when he says:

I do not mean ‘Power’ as a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensure the subservience of the citizens of a given state. By power, I do not mean, either, a

mode of subjugation which, in contrast to violence, has the form of the rule. Finally, I do not have in mind a general system of domination exerted by one group over another, a system whose effects, through successive derivations, pervade the entire social body. (History of Sexuality, Volume 1, 92)

Instead, Foucault conceives of power “not [as] an institution, and not [as] a structure;

neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a

complex strategical situation in a particular society” (93). While Foucault never offers a

distinct methodology for analyzing this “strategical situation,” he does insist on five

approaches to analyzing historical notions of power. Of the five approaches, Foucault’s

concept of power as a creative agent in which “the exercise of power necessarily puts into circulation apparatuses of knowledge, that is creates sites where knowledge is formed”

(Smart 80) is most important for this study.7 In the eighteenth century, power was based

less exclusively on sovereignty and was no longer the sole possession of the king. As

David Armstrong notes, “Foucault argued that this system of sovereign power was joined

by a more pervasive system of disciplinary power in which the supreme body did not

belong to the king but to ‘everybody’” (20). While the legal institution was an agent in

which power was invested and punishment extracted, it was only one end point, an

outcropping of the social discourse on sodomy. In other words, the sodomite was

accorded a “space” in eighteenth-century discourse (albeit a disciplinary one). The

sodomite existed prior to the eighteenth century, but the discourse on sodomy, as it is

articulated in the first half of the eighteenth century, did not. There emerged, more

specifically, a discourse on sodomy that disclosed the sodomite, his actions, and the

urban spaces he “haunted.” As Armstrong notes, “Disciplinary power…is concerned not

with repressing but with creating” (23) and this is, I will argue, the mode through which

both the molly and the sodomite emerged in the early eighteenth century as a social type

both known through his actions and his emerging identity. While Foucault does not

analyze the formation of a sodomitical subculture in light of his precautionary methods, his power/knowledge scheme does provide the first step in an analysis of the emerging

discourse on sodomy. What is important in this type of investigation is not how various

institutions punished sodomites, but instead how publications interested in sodomy

produced a discursive “space” not solely interested in punishment, but at times

positioning sodomy on a sexual continuum. Simply stated, positioning sodomy on a

sexual continuum suggests that, at times, sodomy resided at the sexual margins but

refined understandings of orthodox sexual ideology. Hence, hetero- and homosexuality

both affected and were affected by one another. Sex between men, while sometimes seen

as completely different in kind and thus positioned at the extreme sexual margin, was

also portrayed as different in degree and thus resided on a sexual continuum that

discursive engagements used to solidify orthodox sexual behaviors. Thus, sodomy is

sometimes conceived differently than heterosexuality while at other times it is positioned

on a continuum that, at times, aligned hetero- and homosexual discourse. This project

argues that while certain contexts dictated that the discourse on sodomy relied on a notion

of marginal behavior, sex between men was predominantly (though often paradoxically)

treated as part of a continuum.

The human body, in the eighteenth century, “was entering a machinery of power

that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it” (DP 138). According to Foucault, what

was born in the eighteenth century was a “mechanics of power” that, “defined how one

may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but

so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency

that one determines” (DP 138). In other words, a “docile body” is one that does what it is

supposed to in precisely the way it is supposed to do it. For Foucault, the three means by

which the modern “docile body” is formed are “Hierarchical Observation,” “Normalizing

Judgment,” and “The Examination.” Hierarchical Observation, to state it plainly, is the

ability to control what people do and how they do it by simply observing them. Foucault

takes as his example modern architecture:

A whole problematic then develops: that of an architecture that is no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of palaces), or to observe the external space (the geometry of fortresses), but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control—to render visible those who are inside it; in more general terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them. (172)

According to Foucault, the construction of space inside (and outside) of modern architecture follows “the old simple schema of confinement and enclosure—thick walls, a heavy gate that prevents entering or leaving—began to be replaced by the calculation of openings, of filled and empty spaces, passages and transparencies” (172). This is, in many ways, precisely what we witness in the formation of the pre-modern homosexual.

The sodomitical discourse of the early period was certainly a landscape of “confinement and enclosure” (incarceration), but it was also a “space” of openings and transparencies in both the physical landscapes of cruising grounds and the disclosures of the witnesses.

Sodomitical space is produced through the types of disclosure offered by witnesses in both legal cases and other various narratives that accompanied the litigation of sodomites.

The sodomitical act is never wholly witnessed, but is instead seen through a partition, a rip in a screen or a keyhole. In these terms, spectators, in their desire to see, know and categorize the aberrant individual is at the same time confused, frightened, and disgusted

by what they are partially witnessing. While the spectatorial gaze is not panoptic in

Foucault’s sense, those outside of the subculture not only witness the act, but claim it to

be infecting every aspect of their society. Thus, while the sodomitical act is

simultaneously known and unknown, seen and unseen, it has a dangerous potential for

London’s inhabitants and the city itself.

Foucault’s conception of “Normalizing Judgment” is a function of power that does not judge an individual based on the rightness or wrongness of their acts, but instead on a comparative hierarchy that situates them in terms of their effectiveness. For

Foucault, normalizing judgment is:

Opposed to a judicial penalty whose essential function is to refer, not to a set of observable phenomena, but to a corpus of laws and texts that must be remembered; that operates not by differentiating individuals, but by specifying acts according to a number of general categories; not by hierarchizing, but quite simply by bringing into play the binary opposition of the permitted and the forbidden; not by homogenizing, but by operating the division, acquired once and for all, of condemnation. (183)

Thus, individuals are “graded” on their ability to function. While Foucault is again speaking of the modern “obsession with lists that rank-order everything from tourists sites, to our body weights, to levels of sexual activity” (Gutting 84), I think the function of normalizing judgment is an important one to the study of sex between men in the early eighteenth century.8 Although there was a judicial penalty consistently deployed to

combat sodomitical acts in the early eighteenth century, it was also positioned as the

opposite of heteronormative activity and thus was always the negative term. There was

also a form of hierarchical comparison in the discourse on sodomy. The lists on which

sodomy was included was not a comparative list as we conceive of it, but was instead a

discursive attempt at organizing the sodomite and his actions in some knowable way

without naming him directly. Sodomites were included with beasts, witches, heretics,

Italians, the Turks, the French and other demonized cultures and monsters. To compare the sodomite to the most frightening, horrifying and disgusting monsters and nations of the time gave the reader a sense of the sodomites’ depravity. Moreover, by including them in this “list” while at the same time asserting that they are even more depraved and bewildering than those on the list the discourse condemns and erases them. Of course, the outcome of this duality was the construction of a knowledge base that accorded the pre-emergent homosexual a “space” in the print market of the eighteenth century and the imaginations of its consumers. The production of knowledge made the sodomite a public figure thus situating him for surveillance and punishment.

The final means through which “docile bodies” are produced is the examination.

For Foucault:

The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them. (184)

The examination “also reveals the new position of the individual in the modern nexus of

power/knowledge” (Gutting 86). For Foucault, this new position, “places individuals in a

field of surveillance [and] situates them in a network of writing; it engages them in a

whole mass of documents that capture and fix them” (189). While Foucault is speaking

of an “intense registration and of documentary accumulation” such as educational and

medical records, patient charts and psychiatric notes, I think the “normalizing gaze” and

the emergence of a discourse on sodomy produce a similar form of “intense registration”

and “documentary accumulation.” The act of sodomy was a highly publicized and highly

visible crime. However, what speaks more to Foucault’s concept is the emergence of

various reform societies bent on eliminating prostitution and swearing as well as sodomy.

These societies (especially the Society for the Reformation of Manners) were surveillance teams that infiltrated molly houses and the meeting places of sodomites.

They planted spies and entrapped members of the emerging subculture in sodomitical

“haunts.” The men captured, prosecuted and punished by the Society for the

Reformation of Manners (SRM) were the subjects of the emerging sodomitical discourse that proliferated during the period. These surveillance teams not only watched the sodomites and articulated power over them, they were also agents that helped incite the flurry of “documentation” in the first half of the century.

Sodomitical documentation existed in varied forms from serial political publication, poetry, novels, drama, private letters, broadsides, and affidavits. Much of this publication was generated from direct “surveillance” of some sort. Whether it was

Defoe’s response to publicly prosecuting sodomites, The Drury Lane Ladies’ response to sodomites infecting their lucrative trade, or Fanny Hill’s “keyhole” experience with the sodomite, a proliferation of text erupted over the new visibility accorded the early eighteenth-century homosexual. This proliferation of text explored the homosexual form in order to know, categorize, and employ the sodomite as an effective Other to heteronormative activity. Not only did this stabilize heterosexual reproduction, it also exposed the sodomite to public surveillance. This, in turn, generated a public knowledge of the sodomite that resulted in the production of civic responsibility. This civic- mindedness resulted in public participation at the pillory. In other words, “justice” was not only affected at the judicial level, but at the public level as well. Sodomites were pilloried by the courts, but were assaulted by the populace. Possibly the most disastrous

result of public prosecution was the publication of his name and the association of his

character with sodomy. Not only did the populace “know” what sodomy was, but they

now had an individual to punish for the act. The sodomite was thus known as such to a

large portion of the public and could expect a history of persecutions following his

release from the pillory and incarceration. His was a life-long infection and the public

response to his actions was the articulation of power against the sodomite.

Foucault and Halperin help provide an initial position for this articulation of

power against the sodomite. This study investigates three distinct discursive categories—

legal narratives, natural narratives, and urban narratives—to reveal discursive techniques

employed to locate the “deviant” in a sexual hierarchy and then punish him for his

“deviancy.” In the process of punishment, these narratives use punitive rhetoric to

“unname” the category of sodomy. However, the rash of publications devoted to

“unnaming” sodomy paradoxically made it an important site of sexual tension and

discussions of civic duty. This marked sodomy as not only a sexual crime, but also a crime against the state. Oftentimes, the discourse on sodomy or attempted sodomy is not solely interested in penetrative sex between men, but also with an individual’s loss of inhibition, civic purpose, and commercial productivity.

The Function of Discourse

This project is dependent on the relationship between Foucault’s concept of discourse and the three related foci of legal discourse, natural discourse, and urban

discourse. It takes as its central theoretical claim that the series of statements that

produce a distinct discourse are integral to the exercise of power and thus social

regulation. For Foucault, power is exercised at a variety of points through the social

body. This exercise of power affects each individual by producing a sexual identity

dependant on its regulation. Thus, power uses knowledge of that which is different to codify what would be considered orthodox social practices. In this instance, the exercise

of power through the discourses devoted to law, nature, and the city all reflect a

reciprocal relationship between the categories of hetero- and homosexuality. Urbanites in

eighteenth-century London internalized the perceived importance of heterosexual

reproduction because of sodomy’s unproductive sexuality. Thus, by associating sodomy

with unproductive sexuality that does not contribute to the perpetuation of a functional

urban environment, inhabitants of London contributed to regulating both sodomy’s

perceived degeneracy and their own heterosexual lives.

The three foci I have chosen to investigate exhibit the most profound and

powerful discourses in the regulation of both orthodox and unorthodox sexual practices.

However, it is not that they are simply central to period discussions of homosexuality, but

that all three discourses are also obsessed with the production of a civil discourse against

sodomy and other forms of “deviant” sexual behavior. While this project focuses wholly

on sex between men in the early half of the eighteenth-century, other forms of “deviant”

behavior were similarly lambasted within these three discourses. Thus, all three foci,

while not situated entirely in London, are concerned with the civil duties of urbanites and

the efficient and effective silencing of perceived deviancies in the sexual lifestyles of

urban inhabitants. Moreover, these three foci have not been investigated as a collective

discourse espousing civil obedience nor have they been seen as an effective means for the

distribution of power through urbanites that became one of the most effective ways of

punishing and silencing the “emerging” sodomitical sub-culture. In order to investigate

the discourse on sodomy so concerned with civil obedience, I look at both canonical and

marginal texts to demonstrate that these three foci were important to the develop of

sexual regulations devoted to policing the lives of London’s inhabitants.

This project, then, is devoted exclusively to textual embodiments of urban sexual behavior in texts either about or printed in London. Furthermore, the historical record clearly shows that sodomy was a specifically urban phenomenon and thus the readings and texts that follow are intimately concerned with urban functionality and individual

responsibility. Because of this focus on London, I have decided not to include investigations of either naval or religious discourse. There is a long tradition of sodomy’s relationship with the military, especially the navy. However, while that discourse is evidenced in London’s print market, it speaks specifically to matters that

occur outside the metropole. More importantly, the three foci investigated in this project

did not contribute to the production of sodomitical behavior but attempted to regulate it.

In scholarship concerning the navy and sodomy, in contrast, the separation of men from a

heterogeneous culture is thought to prompt men to casual sodomitical behavior. The

intention of this project is to show how homosexual men were both regulated by the city

and integral to the city itself. Religious discourse is absent from this project because sodomy was no longer a matter for the ecclesiastical courts. Taken out of the church’s hands one-hundred years prior by Henry VIII, sodomy was now a secular matter—one that was located and regulated on the streets of London from the pillory to the gallows,

from Moorfields to St. Jame’s Park. This clear focus on urban behavior and the discourse

of civil responsibility, positions the city and its inhabitants as a site of both prohibitive rhetoric and violent punishment

Chapter 1

Chapter 1, “’An Indecent Posture’: Evasive Discourse and the Sodomitical

Assault on Eighteenth-Century England,” investigates eighteenth-century legal discourse

to argue that scholars have been much too concerned with why sodomy was punished and have ignored how it was talked about. In other words, sodomy was a discursive category.

The categories of sodomy and buggery are notoriously ambiguous until the first half of

the eighteenth century. This ambiguity produced a discourse that contributed to the cultural (mis)understandings of sodomy. While eighteenth-century legal discourse understood sodomy as anal penetrative sex between men, the legal system, spies for the

SRM, and the witnesses all participate in rhetorically evading the subject of sex between

men instead addressing the sodomite’s economic and familial functions within the city.

What the legal narratives suggest is that the sodomite’s roles as father, husband, and

urban laborer are similarly on trial. The evasive speech acts of participants in the legal

proceedings align sodomy with both private and public waste. Hence, the trial records of

the early eighteenth century demonstrate a heightened civic concern for sodomitical

sexual acts as well as the sodomite’s productive behavior in the family and the city, but,

in most cases, avoid explicit discussions of the sex act itself.

Chapter 2

The legal narratives demonstrate an almost obsessive concern with the sodomites’

position in the urban labor market. While the particular sodomite in question may have

been a daytime heterosexual participating in the reproductive acts necessary to London’s

familial and fiscal economy, sodomites were often punished in the end. There was, for

the legal narratives, no discussion of “correcting” such an “odious practice.” However,

the connection between sodomy and nature, while often a distinctly punitive discourse, portrays the sodomite as an individual in need of “correction” and punishment.

Chapter 2 of this study, “Botanical Bodies, Unnatural Predilections: Nature and

Sex between Men in the Eighteenth-Century,” explores an oftentimes overlooked connection between botanical erotica and the “nature” of sodomy. Arguably the most evoked injunction against sodomy was that it was “unnatural.” In the relatively new two-

body sexual system, it is sometimes argued that the sodomite was a third gender, a third sex used as a foil to orthodox heterosexual reproduction.9 However, “nature” was not

only about sexual reproduction, but was also a “corrective” and punitive force used

against sodomites because of their “unnatural nature.” Examining two pieces of

botanical erotica and the relatively unknown story of Leondert Hussenlosch, who, unlike

Robinson Crusoe, cannot control and order the natural world, I show that nature was

enlisted to “re-naturalize” and “re-order” the sodomite.

Botanical erotica such as Arbor Vitae and Frutex Vulvaria demonstrate a

heightened concern for orthodox sexual practices and “deviant” practices alike.

Published as companion pieces, both texts detail what it means to function properly in

heterosexual ideology and what orthodox sexual practices can do for the sexually infirm.

The frutex vulvaria (flowering shrub) can “naturally” cure a dysfunctional male member

through intercourse. For the dysfunctional arbor vitae (tree of life), one way to cure such

ills as persistent masturbation, venereal disease, impotency, and, of course, sodomitical desire was through vaginal penetration. Arbor Vitae responds directly to sodomy as a

“sickness” infecting London’s inhabitants equating it to a specific tree not native to

England. This connection positions sodomy as a foreign vice that can be cured through

“natural” sexual intercourse.

However, nature is portrayed in much more violent terms in the story of Leondert

Hussenlosch. The final portion of Chapter Two is devoted to this text, demonstrating that

while nature can “fix” masculine sexual dysfunction, it is also the individual’s

responsibility. Hussenlosch, stranded on a deserted island because of his sodomitical predilections, is portrayed as a sodomite who, while repentant, has a degenerate and

unregenerative “nature.” Crusoe-like in its narrative, the means for survival on this

desolate island are made available to Hussenlosch. He finds drinking water, plenty of goats, seeds to start a garden, and materials to build a shelter. However, Hussenlosch is unable to husband the land or his livestock, consistently makes decisions that cause irreparable harm, and, because of this, eventually dies on the island. Through his journal entries, nature is configured as a force capable of saving the sodomite and punishing him.

In the end, Hussenlosch demonstrates that the sodomite possesses an “unnatural nature”

that conflicts with the “natural” world of Ascension Island.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3, “Mapping the Molly: (Re)Defining Homosexual Space at the

Metropolitan Margins,” contends that homosexuality was perceived as a distinctly urban

phenomenon. Yet, the manner in which the sodomite was configured indicates that he

constructed urban space as much as he was constructed by it. Sodomitical “spaces” were

split between public and private lines, positioning the sodomite in both the streets and

molly “houses.” The city offered the illusion of safety and the reality of capture and

punishment. From the “Sodomite’s Walk” of Moorfields to the molly houses at the East

End of London, the sodomite’s place in the city and his discursive “space” are “named”

and marked in order to then “unname” the sodomite and the spaces he appropriates for

his “devilism.” Jonathan Wild’s and Ned Ward’s accounts of molly house activity show

that whether sympathetic toward molly sub-culture or aggressively homophobic, the

spectator is the agent in both the rhetorical and urban exile of the molly.

Wild’s account of molly club activity, while included to discredit Charles

Hitchen’s character, is a more benign account of molly activity than Ned Ward’s

portrayal. The mollies, in Wild’s description, appear as accepted and tolerated

participants in the criminal underground of which Wild was a powerful member. The

long time business associate of Wild, Charles Hitchen, detained the mollies as they

walked home from molly clubs and then punished the offenders by parading them

through the streets of London in full female regalia. This type of punishment, although

not as physically debilitating as the pillory, marked not only the men as mollies, but also

announced their presence and their urban locales to the inhabitants of the area. In this

way, the mollies were put on display to show the types of public and private spaces they

occupied in an effort to heighten an urban inhabitant’s sense of civic duty.

Ned Ward’s account is more vitriolic than Wild’s and displays the molly for public observation and sanction. Ward’s description also positions the molly sub-culture in interesting spatio-temporal terms. The mollies are usurpers of space who appropriate commercial establishments for their “odious” practices. In Ward’s description of their activities, just as in Wild’s, there is no account of penetrative sex between men, but instead a concern for the spaces appropriated by the sub-culture. Ward’s text is dedicated to identifying the mollies as both a persistent threat and one that has already been

controlled. Furthermore, through what was called tea-table discussion, Ward silences the mollies by taking away their ability to “name” themselves. Ward’s account is a full dismissal of sodomitical activity through both the standard injunctions against sodomy and the rhetoric employed to remove them from urban and discursive space.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4, “Peephole Politics: Curiosity, Keyholes, and Liminal Sexuality in the

Eighteenth Century,” concludes the dissertation by investigating sodomy from a much

different perspective. Most scholars rightly contend that the violent discourse on sodomy

is an attempt to extirpate sodomites from history. However, there are some instances

where the discourse on sodomy contains a counter-discourse much more tolerant than

most contemporary accounts. Instead of attending to sodomy as “dangerously seductive”

(Haggery 168), I investigate a number of sodomitical scenes that employ the peephole or

keyhole to both alleviate concerns of proximity and that generate a more benign account

of sex between men.

Through Fanny Hill’s heterosexual education, which repeatedly exploits the

keyhole or peephole, and the trials against Thomas Rodin and John Dicks, a different

type of discourse is evidenced, one that closely aligns homosexual and heterosexual

desire. In the accounts of Rodin and Dicks and Fanny’s encounter with the young

sodomites, the peephole is used to disclose full sodomitical activity without implicating

the spectator. In these moments, the rhetoric is sometimes one of legitimate desire rather

than “dangerous seduction.” Fanny uses the language of safe and pleasurable

heterosexual intercourse to describe a scene of “preposterous pleasure.” In her

description, the young sodomites do not exhibit the aggression and violence sometimes

attributed to sodomites. Instead, they are characterized as men with desires not unlike the heterosexual men and women in the text.

CHAPTER 1

“AN INDECENT POSTURE”: EVASIVE DISCOURSE AND THE SODOMITICAL ASSAULT ON EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

William Huggins was indicted for Assaulting Richard Hemmings, and Thomas Jones, upon the Exchange, the 9th of Sept. last; the Prosecutors declar'd, that walking upon Change, with design to detect such wicked Persons; they were sate upon one of the Benches, and the Prisoner came to them severally, and offer'd to put his hand into their Breeches, pulling out his Nakedness at the same time; upon which they apprehended him, and he said, at that time, that he had hear'd there were such sort of Persons in the World, and he had a mind to try. He had Counsel of his side, and call'd several to his Reputation, who all said he was a very honest Man, as to his course of Life; otherwise, that he was employ'd as a Porter: He said, that he had been carrying 6 Pound of Coffee into Leaden- Hall-street: that he had been married about a Year to a young Wife, who was big with Child; and that he always seem'd very fond of her: He deny'd the Fact, and said he never used any such Practices; but none of the Evidence speaking as to what he was indicted for, the Matter was then left to the Jury. (The Tryal and Conviction of Several Reputed Sodomites, 1707)

About legal narratives on sodomy in the early half of the eighteenth century, scholars concede one general point, “Much of what was written about sodomy during the

eighteenth century remains amazingly vague” (Haggerty 167).10 The effects of this

concession have caused many scholars to question why the sodomite emerged in the

eighteenth century, but not how this social typed was characterized. But the legal

narratives that recount trials against men charged with sodomy or attempted sodomy

reveal the ideological and discursive tensions underlying most discussions of sodomy in

eighteenth-century England that explain the particular means by which sodomy became a

highly publicized issue. While some of these narrative accounts were popular and widely

read and others relegated to relative obscurity, they all contributed to an authoritative

discourse that characterizes sodomy as “a detestable and abominable sin, amongst

Christians not to be named” (Coke III.10.58). However, in attempting to “unname” the

act, the legal system helped provide a discourse that identified, labeled, and punished the

men accused of sodomy in order to restore social and sexual discipline. Legal narratives,

while often characterizing the sodomite as an aggressive and violent pederast, evade the

topic of penetrative sex between men, instead repositioning the discourse to concentrate

on the defendant’s social productivity and responsibility. These narratives are certainly

about sex between men, but the discursive strategies employed by the prosecution,

defendants, and the witnesses called in his defense “unname” the act, thus simultaneously examining the sodomites’ sexual predilections and social productivity and binding many of them to an inflexible heterosexual code.

Exploring the discursive strategies in legal proceedings against sodomites helps elucidate the sodomite’s puzzling position in eighteenth-century British culture. An analysis of discursive particulars in the sodomy trials suggests that these trials were similarly concerned with sexual congress between men and the societal position(s) of the men on trial, one often canceling the other. Repeatedly, the juridical rhetoric that both

prosecutors and defenders employed reveals that sexual preference and socio-economic

position are intimately related markers of a sodomites’ cultural identity. The language used to prosecute and defend sodomites further indicates that sexual predilection was less

important than affirming heteronormative ideology through the rhetoric of class, family

and gender. While the individual’s sodomitical activity is purportedly on trial, his value

as a man, a father, a husband and a laborer also contributes to his guilt or innocence.

This confluence of sexuality and social responsibility is specifically noticeable in the

discursive strategies of authors, prosecutors, defendants and the numerous witnesses used

in the sodomy trials, all of whom separated the defendants along these lines. From the positions of spectator and cultural judge, observers condemn the sodomites’ actions as polluted. While sodomy was linked with all manner of “deviant” behavior before its explicit association with penetrative sex between men, both the sodomite and molly were seen as prime examples of cultural waste. Not only did the sodomite waste semen and was thus implicitly linked with the wasteful masturbator, but the character witnesses demonstrate that the courts also thought him to be wasting the productive potential of his heterosexual relationship. Mollies, however, more trenchantly signified a cultural waste because of their propensity for lavish club meetings, drunkenness, foul language and sexual explicitness. For both sodomite and molly, the narrative accounts addressed waste at the private level (family) and then the public level (labor). Juridical rhetoric, not unlike other discourses, is acutely concerned with the sodomite’s role in betraying heteronormative order and the masculine roles of father, husband and laborer. Because of this, the accused sodomite was tried not only for his sodomy or sodomitical intention, but also for the threat he posed to both the family and the economy of eighteenth-century

England.

The rash of prosecutions and publications regarding sodomy in the early

eighteenth century indicates a heightened public concern over the spread of a cultural

“disease.” The sheer number of available legal accounts, however, has not helped place many of these trials at the center of academic debates concerning sex between men.

Some serious work has been done on a handful of famous trials, but there is very little serious work on the discursive patterns of both popular and marginal narrative accounts

of these trials. Scholars such as Cameron McFarlane, Randolph Trumbach, Alan Bray and George Haggerty have completed preliminary analyses that seek to answer why sex

between men became such a concern for early eighteenth-century British culture. They

focus on the sodomy trials as a spectacle that constructs the sodomite or molly as a

fascinating and frightening character who explicitly inverts social and sexual order.

Rarely do they mention the language used to decry sex between men or the discursive

positions in which sodomites and their would-be prosecutors contend. Cameron

McFarlane, in one of the most influential texts for the study of the sodomitical subculture,

has provided a thorough analysis of both the Account against Captain Rigby and the

novel Fanny Hill, arguing that John Cleland’s fictional work and the anonymous diatribe

against Rigby were “the expression[s] of erotic fantasy” (145).11 As others do,

McFarlane attends to a single trial that was both popular in the eighteenth century and

more fully exposed the sodomitical act.12 While it is true that a few trials disclose the sodomitical act in detail and were widely read, a greater percentage of the trials do not

expose sex between men; nor were their accompanying narrative accounts particularly

popular. A small number of very important and explicit legal accounts are extant;

however, most trial accounts are brief and avoid particulars. By focusing on a very

popular trial and terming it an “erotic fantasy” McFarlane posits the sodomitical social

type as a theatrical character dependant on the titillated spectator for his agency.13 The actual public discussion of sodomy was much more prosaic.

Typical of the dramatic approach McFarlane adopts is a recent essay by George

Haggerty that analyzes the juridical spectacle in the trial against John Dicks.14

Haggerty’s essay “Keyhole Testimony: Witnessing Sodomy in the Eighteenth Century”

performs a number of important functions for those who study sodomy in the eighteenth

century.15 A “keyhole testimony” refers to “an observer [who] watches certain sexual activities from a distance and then reports them to a listener or an audience, either in a

court of law or another social situation, such as an antisodomy tract or novel” (168). The

concept of a “keyhole testimony” is important to Haggerty because “the details of [the

sodomy] scene have another function as well. In them, sodomy emerges as a site of

voyeuristic pleasure” (169). Furthermore, the “keyholes” through which individuals

surveyed the sodomitical scene are, for Haggerty, “small aperture[s]…coded in quasi-

anatomical terms…[that] work to frame the scene, both aurally (as it were) and visually.

This frame is what makes this scene of sodomy deeply troubling even as it fulfills the

quasi-pornographic ‘entertainment’ function of the volume as a whole” (170). For

Haggerty, how spectators view the sodomitical scene is important to the way culture as a

whole views sexual relations between men. He especially notes “the way in which what

works within the family can be projected onto culture itself” (172). Haggerty goes on to

discuss Fanny Hill and other accounts of “keyhole testimonies” to show that “the

prototype of the nuclear family or indeed, the hegemony of bourgeois domestic economy

itself can only be defined against the spectacle of male-male love” (176). Sodomy was

the “dark secret” of the eighteenth century and the spectator was “at the heart of the

configurations of couple, family, and home that would exclude it… its presence there

explains the fear and violence that surrounds the articulation of same-sex desire” (180).

Same-sex desire “like a theatrical scene…exposes the ideological structures that depend

on the very contradictions it implies” (175). The perpetuation of heterosexual ideology

depended on same-sex desire in order to both solidify itself as “cultural tradition” and to

expose the dangerous sexual other as a societal blight. Exposing sodomy to the family through the “slit in the partition” or through the “keyhole” afforded the family an opportunity to witness that which distorts sexual binaries from a safe distance. This

insured that spectators would not be implicated in the crime and would instead become

supporters of moral reform. While Haggerty’s essay effectively conflates the sodomitical

“scene” and the cultural reaction itself, he fails to note that the theatrical scenes he

investigates are not a normal occurrence in the trial records. In this case, Haggerty only

works with the trial against John Dicks, which is one of the few legal cases where the

sodomy scene is exposed through the keyhole/peephole trope recycled in eighteenth-

century narratives. While both McFarlane’s and Haggerty’s analyses are important for

expanding the discussion of sex between men in the period, they suffer from an over-

determined focus that situates the sodomitical social type as a theatrical character instead

of a discursive formation.

What is lost by looking solely at fantastic cases of sodomitical disclosure is the

language often employed to describe and condemn it. In the above critical scenarios, the

spectacle defines the situation while discursive formations and rhetorical strategies are

overshadowed. Haggerty, fully aware of this dilemma, observes in his opening paragraph

that, “Even the so-called trial accounts themselves most often talk around sodomy” (167).

Thus, the question becomes as much one of why they talk around sodomy as how they

talk about sodomy. This evasive rhetoric is apparent in not only the sodomy trials, but

also in other forms of contemporary literature, which show that authors were consistently

concerned with rhetorically evading the topic while they talked about it. That is, the

question of how sodomy is rhetorically evaded is important to an understanding of why it

was “talked around.” Haggerty uses a trial that, in many ways, does not talk around

sodomy—a trial that is very specific about the sodomitical act itself. However, in other trials such as those against William Holiwell and William Huggins and William Brown

there are discursive patterns that talk about sodomy even though the act of sodomy never

occurred. In cases such as these, evasive discourse connects sodomy to cultural

formations such as the family, the economy and conceptions of gender.

A discursive focus reveals that sodomy is positioned as both a sexual crime and a

crime against the state. By examining the discursive patterns in trial accounts of sodomy,

we can ascertain how such activity was “policed” by various cultural institutions. This

type of discursive focus suggests that the silencing of the sodomite functions as a

historical condition of his experience. It further reveals the contemporary methodological

problem of silencing subjects by naming them anachronistically. The accused, while a

historical entity, is only available to us through the words of those who intended to

criminalize and culturally ostracize sodomites. Hence, the issue of language should be

integral to discussions of sodomy because the historical record makes sodomy as much a

matter of discourse as spectacle. While McFarlane, Haggerty and others are aware of this

evasive rhetoric in discussions of sodomy, they fail to recognize the rhetorical maneuvers

that postulate sodomy as an “assault” against another man (whether consented or not) and

against cultural ideologies. Specifically, the rhetoric used in the legal system

demonstrates a central concern for a functionally productive heteronormative system and

the threat that homosexuality posed to it.

Michel Foucault observes in the History of Sexuality that, “sodomy was a

category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject

of them” (43). To call sodomy a “category of forbidden acts” is to assert that the term

sodomy was not only about sex between men, but was also connected to other “forbidden

acts.” As Margaret Hunt has shown, sodomy was also used to describe “such disparate

activities as bestiality, heterosexual anal intercourse, both priestly celibacy and clerical

concubine-keeping, an adult man’s sexual abuse of a young girl, sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews, masturbation, coitus interruptus, birth control, pederasty, and luxurious consumption” (360). Consequently, the term sodomy was used to describe a whole host of perverse and illicit acts that included sex between men but was not limited to it. While the word itself connoted many other forms of deviancy, by the eighteenth century sodomy was often linked specifically to penetrative sex between men.

Once this was adopted, the specific meaning of sodomy became a matter of discourse.16

It became a matter of how culture and its institutions (such as the church and the legal system) talked “about” sodomy. The physical act of sodomy is rarely discussed in any detail. Other than a few instances in the legal narratives and one revealing scene in

Fanny Hill, sodomy, whether attempted or otherwise, is often evasively described as a matter of bodily position and not anal penetration. Furthermore, it was extremely difficult to prove in court that sodomy had actually occurred. Couple these factors with a textual apparatus dependant on dashes to expunge names and deeds from the historical record, and a common phrasing (“the sin not to be named”) to identify the crime, and we see a culture intent on labeling and condemning sodomy by not naming it, a system intent on talking about sodomy without actually talking about it.

Because the categories of sodomy and buggery historically signified more than just penetrative sex between two men, most scholars stress that our current discussions

concerning sodomy in the eighteenth century are plagued by vagueness. Cameron

McFarlane notes this problem of “vagueness” in both contemporary and eighteenth-

century discussions of sex between men. The Sodomite in Fiction and Satire, 1660-1750 begins by recounting a discussion between Samuel Pepys, Sir John Mennes and Sir

William Batten. In this discussion, the men comment on Charles Sydly’s actions when he:

…coming in open day into the Balcone and showed his nakedness—acting all the postures of lust and buggery that could be imagined, and abusing of scripture and, as it were, from thence preaching a Mountebanke sermon from that pulpit, saying that there he hath to sell such a pouder as should make all the cunts in town run after him. (qtd. in McFarlane 1)

Pepys responded to Sydly’s actions by exclaiming, “But blessed be God, I do not to this day know what is the meaning of this sin [buggery], nor which is the agent nor which the patient” (qtd. in McFarlane 1-2). McFarlane explains Sydly’s actions and Pepys’ response by arguing that Pepys’ apparent (mis)understanding of the categories buggery and sodomy indicate a cultural confusion surrounding the category generally constructed as sex between men. McFarlane observes that, “To anyone unfamiliar with gay studies, it may seem odd to begin by suggesting that there is a certain vagueness about what the words buggery, sodomy, and sodomite refer to at this time” (2). His conclusion is not unlike Hunt’s in that the etymology connects sodomy to other “disparate activities.”

However, while the word sodomy may have historically connoted many of the above definitions, it is obvious from Pepys’s response that he recognizes an “agent” and a

“patient.” There is, then, for Pepys a passive receiver as well as an aggressive penetrator.17 Hence, while a broad range of connotations certainly existed, McFarlane

does concede that Pepys, Mennes and Batten “meant by buggery sex between males” (3).

This discussion reveals something more than simply the ways buggery and

sodomy did or did not denote homosexual intercourse in the early portions of the long

eighteenth century. If it is obvious these men meant by buggery sex between men then why the playful banter suggesting otherwise? The conversation indicates a cultural paradox surrounding and defined by the sodomitical social type that “emerged” in early eighteenth-century narratives. In order to locate, prosecute, and punish the assumed sodomite, various cultural institutions were forced to give a prominent, although pejorative, discursive space to the men on trial. The legal institution sought to simultaneously silence the sodomite and his assumed societal prevalence through the publication of his crimes and his highly public punishment.18 However, this desire to

silence, expunge, and eradicate the sodomite inadvertently sparked a proliferation of

publication in various genres about the sodomite and the molly, their activities, and the

consequences of “knowing” men who commit this “detestable sin.” The underlying issue

for many legal proceedings is how the prosecution and the defense should “know” a

sodomite and his crimes without actually “knowing.” Oftentimes, close proximity was

tantamount to culpability in a sodomitical act. Hence, the witness for the prosecution, the

governing body, and the witnesses for the defense all needed a physical and rhetorical

distance in order to prosecute or defend the accused. The prosecution and the defense

both employed strategic and evasive rhetoric in order to distance themselves from the

man on trial while simultaneously condemning his actions as an “assault” or defending

him as a productive member of pre-industrialized London and the growing global

economy.

Foucault notices this central paradox of sexual discourse: “If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression” (6). While Foucault is speaking about all sex, this approach particularly applies to sex between men in the eighteenth century. Sodomy was, of course, “condemned to prohibition” as practicing sodomites were prosecuted and punished for their sexual behavior. Furthermore, there was a palpable “nonexistence” and “silence” permeating eighteenth-century discourse on

sex between men. While it is often not named as such it is signaled in other ways such as a “crime against nature” or the “detestable sin.” This evasive discourse refocuses the perceived sexual injunctions squarely on the family and metropolitan economics.

Foucault, in part, indicates this discursive refocusing when he notes that, “In the eighteenth century, sex became a police matter” (24).19 In The Perverse Implantation

this “police matter” is posed as a question: “All this garrulous attention which has us in a

stew over sexuality, is it not motivated by one basic concern: to ensure population, to

reproduce labor capacity, to perpetuate the form of social relations: in short, to constitute

a sexuality that is economically useful and politically conservative?” (37). Eighteenth-

century culture was certainly in “a stew” over the problem of sodomy. However, the

evasive rhetoric used to prosecute these men removes the attention from the actual sex act

and refocuses the discourse on social responsibility.20 In most legal accounts, the

sodomitical body is as equally evasive as the rhetoric used to describe it. Hence, the

sodomitical form and the evasive rhetoric used to discuss it position the sodomite as both

a concern for early eighteenth-century culture and yet one that was marginal to it.

There are numerous explanations for the evasive rhetoric used in accounts of sex

between men. The news account with which I began this chapter, and most other

accounts of sodomitical activity in the period, demonstrates one key reason. All of the

accounts uncovered were written by someone other than the accused. As Rictor Norton

suggests, “if it were not for gossip and rumour, we would know little about most

homosexuals until quite recent times (20). These are not the words of a sodomite, but are instead the words of an individual speaking from the privileged position of spectator, from the “objective” position of “news” reporter and, of course, from the position of an individual governed by all the permeating cultural (pre)conceptions of sex between men.21 Because we lack trustworthy first-person accounts of sodomy we are left with

second and third hand renditions that speak more to cultural homophobia than to

homosexual identity.22 These accounts reflect not only the cultural loathing accorded sex

between men, but also the “spaces” sodomites occupied in the consciousness of a culture

not only concerned with sodomy, but with other forms of sexually deviant behavior. This

space is not, as some assume, dominated solely by prohibitive rhetoric. Instead,

embedded in the condemnatory legal rhetoric is a discourse of exploration in which

institutional dogma and imprecise language demonstrate that while sex between men was

silenced it was also accorded a discursive space predicated on fascination as well as fear.

Another reason for the “vagueness” often noticed in contemporary accounts of

sex between men is the debatable construction of a homosexual identity in the period.23

Norton, in his most recent edition of Mother Clap’s Molly House: The Gay Subculture in

England 1700-1830, is one of the most vociferous proponents of an identifiable gay culture in the period. He claims that, “One thing made clear by the evidence is that many

eighteenth-century gay men not only identified themselves as gay men, but also as members of a gay community, which is a gay cultural identity rather than just a gay sexual identity” (16). At the same time he notes that this eighteenth-century gay identity

“lacked political awareness, but…possessed every other feature of the modern gay identity” (16). Scholars generally fail to recognize the lack of political awareness that

Norton mentions in passing. While Norton’s bibliographical work has helped develop a corpus of texts on sex between men, his ardent focus on identity formation belies the underlying issue of discursive formation. While mollies were, of course, put on trial, most of the men accused and punished in the sodomy trials of the eighteenth century were not mollies but were instead men who appear to have had bisexual tendencies.24

They lacked political awareness and group solidarity, which effectively disconnected them not only from one another but from any kind of legible social identity.25 The only time a connection between men appears is when the prosecution uses the information against the accused. While this may have much to do with the fact that “almost all of our evidence about homosexuals during this period was provided by people who hated homosexuality” (Norton 20) it may also have much to do with the lack of solidarity among the men who were accused. The absence of first person accounts hinders any position that argues for an identifiable homosexual identity similar to what we see in modern culture. In many ways, the critical focus on the “emerging” molly and the existence of an identifiable homosexual has overshadowed rhetorical accounts that better explicate the fashioning of the sodomite and molly social types in the early eighteenth century. Furthermore, positioning homosexual identity as a primary concern has pushed many of the trial records to the margins because they do not seem to support the identity

formation thesis. The importance of the trial accounts lies in the ways they construct a discourse on sodomy; a language that consistently suggests that the sodomitical act is not only sexually “deviant,” but socially degenerative. Sodomitical “assaults” and the

“honest” husband/father are consistently juxtaposed in order to define the sodomite through his body (assault) or through his character (honest). There are many narrative accounts that demonstrate this contradiction, and position the discourse on sodomy as one that consistently evades sex between men in lieu of a discourse on social responsibility.

The trial against William Huggins is not the only trial that terms assumed sodomitical actions an “assault.” In fact, a survey of the available trial accounts demonstrates that frequently attempted sodomy is termed an “assault.” The trials against

William Griffin, Patrick Malcolm, George Kedger, Thomas Wright, George Whitle and others are more suggestive of an actual sodomitical event and it is in these trials that the word “assault” is rarely employed. Instead, these trials employ typical phrases to describe the crime. Often referred to as “crime against nature,” “sin not to be named,” and “the detestable sin of sodomy,” these trials do not often term the behavior an

“assault”—even when it is an accused rape or pedophilia. It is in the trials against men who “intended” to commit sodomy where “assault” marks the assumed sodomite as violent and aggressive. In trials when all necessary evidence was provided there was no need for pejorative rhetoric—the physical evidence was enough to prosecute and severely punish the guilty sodomite. However, when the evidence was at best unclear and at worst completely absent, other measures were adopted to criminalize the accused. The word

“assault” served the legal system’s proactive approach to sodomy. When physical evidence was unavailable, the postures of the accused sodomites were considered

aggressive “assaults” against both a man’s body and the social body. The effects of this

rhetorical approach are thus two-fold. It served pragmatic purposes as outlined above but

also served metaphoric purposes. The accused sodomites’ “assault” on another man’s

body was indicative of a greater and more damaging “assault” against the social body and

the ideologies that govern a fully functional and productive society.

The news account with which I began this chapter is a brief but very relevant

example of the evasive rhetoric used in discussions of sex between men. It is particularly

relevant because of two distinct diction choices. Similarly to the sodomy trials and other

publications concerned with sodomy, the news account begins with terming Huggins’ actions as an “assault.” To use the word “assault” as a description of Huggins’s actions is, in some ways, to misuse the word itself. The word “assault” describes a physical attack on another’s body or a linguistic attack on another’s character, position, and morality with harmful intent. It is reported that Huggins “offer’d to put his hand into their [Richard Hemmings and Thomas Jones] Breeches, pulling out his Nakedness at the same time; upon which they apprehended him.” To call Huggins’s actions an “assault” suggests that Hemmings and Jones (who were there with a “design to detect such wicked

Persons”) and the legal system generally assume that Huggins was intending to commit sodomy with the men because of his aggressive exhibitionism. However, there is technically no sodomy in this report. In this instance, as in many others, it is not the actual act of sodomy, but the assumption that sodomy and violence were the intended outcome that activates legal intervention. Not only is the sodomitical scene absent, in this instance it never even takes place. Hence, the word “assault” is not necessarily connected to actual sodomy but is instead connected to either intended sodomy or, most

likely, Huggins’s desire to reveal his “nakedness” publicly to other men. The questions

then become exactly what or who was Huggins assaulting? How were his actions an assault in the first place? First and foremost, to term Huggins’s actions as an “assault” is to invariably connect his actions to systematic violence. In other words, when Huggins

exposes himself to Hemmings and Jones and offers to put his hand into their breeches he must be assaulting both men in some way. The specifics of Huggins’ assault and what he

was assaulting are not found in the actual, physical act of revealing his “nakedness” to the

other men or in his own words at the trial. Instead, the victim of Huggins’ “assault” only

becomes visible through the rhetoric of both the witnesses and the prosecution. This

suggests that both witnesses for the prosecution and the defense are bound to a certain set

of rhetorical strategies. While the “deviant” individual is on trial for illegal sexual

congress, the witnesses use strategies to circumvent the question of whether the event

actually took place, and thus turn the focus of the narrative from one of illegal sexual

congress to one of material production. Character witnesses consistently focus on what

the accused has produced while the prosecution often focuses on what the accused has

wasted (money, time, semen, etc.).

When looking at this news account it is obvious that the actual prosecution

against Huggins is absent.26 The news brief is divided in half, the first dealing with his

actions and the second dealing with his trial. However, we do not actually “see” or read the account of his prosecution; instead we only “hear” the witnesses called to his defense.

The prosecution against Huggins focuses on his “assault” against Hemmings and Jones as

one that threatens heterosexual order. We are told that Huggins had “Counsel of his side”

and that he:

call’d several to his reputation, who all said he was a very honest Man, as to his course of Life; otherwise, that he was employ’d as a Porter: He said, that he had been carrying 6 Pound of Coffee into Leaden-Hall-street: that he had been married about a Year to a young Wife, who was big with Child; and that he always seem’d very fond of her.

The witness first asserts that Huggins “was a very honest man.” Huggins must appear as both trustworthy at the moment of prosecution, and possessing a trustworthy character.

This character witness, as in other trials, begins his character portrait with the sodomites’ overall character. Huggins has been honest his entire life and, hence, must continue to be honest even at this most trying time. Furthermore, the word “honest” has deep associations with legal rhetoric. To be described as honest does not simply mean that

Huggins is telling the truth; it further signifies that he is law-abiding and is not a threat to the state.27 The witness also discusses Huggins’ current positions in London as a man of

industry who is devoted to his family and, therefore, to the well being of the metropole.

Huggins was employed as a Porter and carried coffee into the market. Furthermore, and

just as importantly, he was married to a young wife of whom he was “very fond” and who was already with child. To reveal that Huggins was not only married and that his

wife was pregnant, but to also say that she was a “young wife” is to assert that both

Huggins and his wife are a fertile couple participating in the necessary heterosexual

production of a family. Moreover, to mention her age is to argue that there will be more

children in the future. This is further solidified by the witnesses’ observation that

Huggins is fond of his wife. Inherent in the character witnesses’ observations is that

Huggins is doing everything required of a man in eighteenth-century culture and,

furthermore, that he is fond of doing it. For the character witness, Huggins is an active

and productive member of London society; his actions should therefore be forgiven

because of his productive position in culture or because the alleged actions never

transpired since Huggins’ is an honest man. The witness defends Huggins with a particular rhetorical strategy. Most likely aware that Huggins would be found guilty no

matter what the circumstance, the witness makes clear that Huggins and his family are

productive and necessary members of the urban labor market. While the prosecution

relies on an assumed act of sodomy that never took place, the witness for Huggins relies

on repudiating his sodomitical tendencies, and demonstrating that Huggins was an

unlikely sodomite because of his position(s) in the metropole and his law-abiding

character. Unfortunately, for Huggins and most other prosecuted sodomites of the period, this language of social usefulness did not save them from punishment, though it

did save them from execution. Huggins would suffer the same penalty as most accused

sodomites. He would stand for a day at the pillory, would pay a fine based on his income

and would be imprisoned. Once these punishments were exacted he could return to his

work and his family to continue as a “productive” member of British society.

Although different than the first trial against Huggins, the trial against William

Holiwell and Huggins further demonstrates the effects of certain discursive choices.28

While this trial shows that there were cases in which two men participated in consensual homosexual activity, the language used to describe, prosecute, and defend the sodomites are all consistent with characteristic discursive patterns describing sodomitical rape, pederasty and, of course, assault. Short and discreet, most trial accounts employ this discursive pattern while they report on the prosecution of the case. Consistent with rhetorical patterns in other legal narratives, a choice in diction marks sodomy as an

“assault.” In the case against Holiwell and Huggins, like so many other accounts, the

charges are first explained: “William Holiwell, was Indicted for a Misdemeanor, in assaulting William Huggins, with an Intent to commit the detestable Sin of Buggery; and

William Huggins, for a Misdemeanor, in consenting and submitting to the same” (394).

These men are not being prosecuted for committing sodomy, but are instead being prosecuted for intending to commit the “detestable Sin.”29

Furthermore, the key witness for the prosecution is as unreliable as the language used to describe the act. John Rowder, the first witness in the case, in an attempt to detail the act actually confuses the situation:

I look’d thro’ the Light of the Newel Stairs, and discover’d the Prisoners in a very indecent Posture. I was then about 30 or 40 Steps from them. I made haste and surprized them. Huggins was stooping very low, so that I could not see his Head, his Breeches were down, his Shirt was turned upon his Back, and his Backside was bare. Holiwell was standing close by, with his fore Parts to the others Posteriors, and his Body was in Motion; but I could not see his fore Parts, because his Back was towards me. (394)

This invisibility (except in a rare number of cases) is consistent with other trials in which the act is rarely “seen” by judge, jury, or character witnesses. Rowder was thirty to forty steps away, could not see Huggins’ head, and he could not see Holiwell’s “fore Parts” because Holiwell’s back was towards Rowder. For Rowder, it is not important to see the actual act of sodomy, it is merely enough to see the two men in an “indecent Posture.”

One of the possible reasons for this prosecution is explained by Netta Murray Goldsmith in her study The Worst of Crimes. As she observes:

If it was by no means certain that a man caught engaging in homosexual practices would be arrested, it was equally uncertain what would happen to him in a court of law, should he be so unfortunate as to find himself in one. In that event, ironically enough, his best chance of regaining his freedom was if he was put on trial for the capital offence of sodomy. The immediate reason for this was that there were strict rules of evidence that must be met before a defendant could be convicted, whereby it must be shown that both penetration and emission had

taken place. Such proof was difficult to provide, especially as hardly any of the participants in a homosexual act had been examined by a doctor. (34)

Like the case against Holiwell and Huggins, most prosecutions were for “the intent to commit sodomy” and not for sodomy itself. While a guilty verdict for this charge was not the death penalty, it was easier to prosecute suspected sodomites because the necessary physical evidence was not required. Furthermore, prosecuting a suspected sodomite for the misdemeanor “attempted sodomy” affords the legal system an opportunity to publish sodomy.30 McFarlane notes the significance of this “publication.”

In his discussion of the trial against Captain Edward Rigby, McFarlane observes that:

To be “published” to the world is what happens to Rigby in the Account. The various machinery of power—here the court of law and the press—combine to condemn Rigby precisely by making a spectacle out of him, recreating in a brief narrative both the enormity of his crime and the swift and magnificent workings of justice. An Account of the PROCEEDINGS Against CAPT. EDWARD RIGBY, “Printed by Order of the Court,” puts the criminal and his punishment on display and thus functions as a more widely circulating, longer-lasting, verbal counterpart to the sentence to stand in the pillory. (150)

While the accused and condemned sodomite can return to his family and profession following the term of his sentence, the verbal display of the sentence was certainly a longer-lasting injunction against his past actions.31 However, the durability of the verbal display derives not only from the punishment, but also from the proceedings. The verbal display not only marked the man as a recognizable sodomite who was punished for his

crimes, but also circulated the entire proceeding for public consumption. While this

“publication” likely titillated and excited an audience fascinated by “deviant” sexuality

and pornography, it also publicized the other participants and, more importantly, made

public the danger sodomy posed to sexual order. Thus, the publishing of the name and

the act here enshrines the rhetorical framing of sodomy as an “unspoken” crime and

simultaneously articulates it.

As Goldsmith further contends, prosecuting for attempted sodomy was the only

way a suspected sodomite could be punished if the necessary physical evidence was

unavailable. While this “talking around” is present for pragmatic reasons—to more

easily prosecute a suspected sodomite—it also reinforced how sodomy was “seen.” Sex

between men was rarely witnessed completely; instead, it was witnessed through a slit

partition, a keyhole or from 30-40 steps away. While Rowder did not see the men’s faces

or their genitalia, he concluded that the men were in an “indecent posture.” Hence, the

act of sodomy itself is not only evaded from the beginning when the charges are filed, it

is also evaded by the witness himself. The witness is only involved in the proceeding to

explain what this “indecent posture” might look like. The court prosecutes and condemns

men not for sodomy, but instead for the “posture” of sodomy. These men are ostensibly

on trial for the placement of their bodies (Huggins on all fours, rump in the air and

Holiwell behind) and not for committing the “detestable” act of sodomy. We further see

this in the rest of Rowder’s testimony and the character witnesses called to defend

Holiwell and Huggins.

Rowder claims to have not seen some key elements of the act. However, both

men attempted to escape when they realized Rowder was spying on them. This is a likely

reason both men were detained and subsequently prosecuted. To run from the scene itself, or for Huggins to get up and “[put] up his Breeches” was to signal guilt. At the end of his testimony Rowder claims that “Holliwell’s Shirt was examin’d, and there appear’d plain Tokens of Emission” (394). To couple the word “examin’d” with the word

“appear’d” is to assert that the “token of emission” may, in fact, not be a “token of emission” at all. The claim itself is a confusing one in which the medical rigor implied by “examin’d” suggests that the shirt was inspected by someone who knew what they were looking for. To also include the word “appear’d” confuses this examination because Rowder is not sure if it was a “token of emission” or some other material on the

shirt. Hence, the act of sodomy itself is not fully visualized, and the necessary evidence

is questionable. The continued use of the word “assault” and the rhetoric of the character

witnesses further demonstrate that sodomy was as much about evading the topic as it was

about proving it occurred.

The word “assault,” as in the news account, is once again used to describe the

actions of Holiwell and Huggins. This is obviously not an “assault.” Holiwell is not

raping Huggins; the alleged event appears to be one of consensual, homosexual activity.

Hence, the word “assault” does not apply in the ways the word was understood in the

period. It does not signify a violent act committed against another’s body, but instead an

act that assaults something other than the passive receiver’s body. The “assault” was not

about Holiwell “assaulting” Huggins in a sexual way, but was instead concerned with the

intended act’s assault on certain normalizing aspects of heterosexual ideology. We see

this specifically in the way the character witnesses defend Huggins.32 We are told that

Huggins:

Call’d a great many of his Neighbours to his Reputation. They gave him the Character of an Industrious Man in his Business (which was that of a Waterman) a loving Husband to his Wife, a tender Father to his Children, an honest Man in his Dealings, and a Religious Man, who kept to his Church constantly on Sundays, and one of the last Men that they should have suspected of such Practices. That they should more easily have credited his Familiarity with Women, he commonly chusing their Company more than that of Men. (394-395)

Huggins is defended as a productive man in various areas such as the labor market and

the family. We are told that he is an “Industrious Man in his Business.”33 It is possible that Huggins was directly connected to the production of crops necessary to feed an expanding population. To assert that he is “Industrious” is to allude to this occupation.

Many of the labor options available to a Waterman were integrally connected to the irrigation of arable land and the feeding of a nation. Paradoxically, in the case of

Huggins, he is not only productive in his marriage but also in his occupation.

Furthermore, he is a “tender husband to his Wife, a tender Father to his Children.” This

trial takes place after Huggins’s wife has given birth and we are to understand that they have had multiple children. Thus, Huggins is a productive man in the family because he and his wife are producing multiple children. Moreover, he is an honest man, attends

church on Sundays, and, perhaps most importantly, “commonly chuses their [women’s]

company more than that of men.” Like the news account which briefly detailed another

of Huggins’s assaults, this trial makes clear that Huggins’s character as a man of

business, a husband, and a father is similarly on trial.

The trial against William Brown for sodomitical practices further demonstrates

that “intended” sodomy, as understood by the court, was actually an assault on various

heteronormative institutions and threatened sexual order. As was the case in the trial

against Huggins, men were in place with “designes” of capturing sodomites. In this trial

Thomas Willis and [?] Stevenson asked Thomas Newton (victim) to accompany them to

an alehouse in Moore-Fields where Newton would entrap a sodomite.34 William Brown

was the man entrapped, accused, and punished as a result of this “design.” As in the

account of the case against Huggins, the initial paragraph claims that “William Brown,

was indicted for a Misdemeanor, in assaulting Thomas Newton, with an intent to commit

Sodomy with him” (210). In the brief narrative detailing the plan to capture a sodomite,

Newton testifies that, “There’s a Walk in the Upper-Moorfields, by the side of the Wall

that parts the Upper-field from the Middle-field. I knew that this Walk was frequented by

Sodomites, and was not Stranger to the Methods they used in picking one another up”

(211). After Brown steps up next to Newton by the wall “as if he was going to make

Water” he “sidles nearer, and nearer to where I [Newton] stood, ‘till as last he comes

close to me.—‘Tis a very fine Night, says he. Aye, says I, and so it is. Then he takes me

by the Hand, and after squeezing and playing with it a little (to which I shewed no

dislike) he conveys it to his Breeches, and puts—into it. I took fast hold, and call’d out to

Willis and Stevenson” (211). Again, similarly to the news account of Huggins’s

“assault” there is no sodomy committed in the narrative of events; it is instead the

position of the bodies that elicits what the court construes as a “sodomitical attempt.” In

this case, Brown’s genitalia is not exposed but fondled by Newton. We could understand

this as an assault if Brown physically forced Newton to fondle him; however, Newton

says that he “shewed no dislike” for Brown’s forwardness. Brown’s assumed forward

action is equated to “attempted sodomy” and thus an assault. The close proximity of two

male bodies is the central issue. Because Huggins exposed himself to Hemmings and

Jones he was indicted for the same reason as was Brown—namely, that a man exposing and/or fondling another man is tantamount to an assault on the sexual ideology that

governs society. Hence, by exposing himself Huggins is not only offering the men a

sodomitical interlude, he is also inverting the rules of sexual engagement. As McFarlane

notes:

Denied its assertion, asserted in its denial, sodomy would seem to confound the ‘orderly’ workings of representation, particularly in light of the late seventeenth- century project of stabilizing and clarifying verbal representation so that there might be a direct transference of ‘the Trayne of our Thoughts, into a Trayne of Words.’ (26)

The evasive discourse on sodomy in the trials contributed to the vagueness of the

category. Sodomy was not a crime against another person but a crime against the various

modes that organized culture. McFarlane partially recognizes this when he observes that,

“As a ‘crime,’ sodomy was a crime against neither persons nor property; it was instead,

like bigamy or treason, a crime against order and, in the Renaissance, order was

conceived—at least theoretically—to proceed from and to be ratified by the divine” (26).

McFarlane spends some time discussing the historical transition by which the “crime” was seen as one that contravened divine law to one that “originate[d] in the social body”

(27). Because of this, McFarlane asserts:

Order itself was now understood to originate within the social body, so too were the threats to order given a social embodiment and identified as social types: the plotter or secret conspirator, the insurrectionary, the foreigner, the papist or Jesuit, the corrupt government minister, the crafty stock-jobber, the enervated and supercivilized indulger in luxury, the free thinking libertine—all were, at one time or another, connected with sodomy and the sodomite. (30-31)

McFarlane’s purpose is to “give an account of the various ways in which sodomy and the sodomite were given a cultural, as opposed to cosmic, legibility” (33). While he successfully demonstrates how sodomy became a secular matter, he does not discuss how various institutions such as the legal system used the discourse on sodomy to enforce certain cultural ideologies through the criminalization of “deviant” behavior. At times, the placement of both the witness’s and the sodomite’s body indicates a “deviant” character. For witnesses, their proximity to the sodomitical event and their hesitancy to

expose sodomites meant they were seduced by sodomy. For accused sodomites, their

close proximity to other men meant they had sodomitical intentions.

Following Newton’s testimony in which he concludes that “I had seen the

Prisoner before, at the House of Thomas Wright, who was hang’d for Sodomy,”35 Willis

recalls a telling comment by Brown, “We asked the Prisoner why he took such indecent

Liberties with Newton, and he was not ashamed to answer, I did it because I thought I

knew him, and I think there is no Crime in making what use I please of my own Body”

(211). It is obvious that Brown does not say this in his own defense. His own words

offer a weak defense in which he simply states, “As I was going a-cross the Fields I stood

up to make Water, and with no other Design, at which Time Newton coming along, took

hold of me, and then call’d out to the two informing Constables.” Brown’s own defense,

in his own words, is simply “I didn’t do it.” There is no hint of the liberatory rhetoric so

aggressively stressed in Willis’s testimony.36 Of course, Willis could simply be

fabricating the comment to demonstrate Brown’s aggressive sodomitical tendencies or,

just as likely, Brown would realize the situation he is in and understand that this type of

rhetoric would only compound his problem.37 Either way, the liberatory rhetoric is

present at the linguistic level. It is apparent from the slew of other trials that men’s

bodies are, in fact, not theirs to do with as they please. When it comes to the sodomy

trials, the position of the men’s bodies constitutes an “assault” against sexual order. This is likely the reason why familiarity was necessary to sexual explicitness. However, this familiarity was risky because many of the informants and spies for various reforming societies integrated themselves into this subculture for the express purpose of capturing and/or describing the deviant.38 Newton, Willis and Stevenson were only a few

participants in this type of entrapment. Familiarity was not a matter of “knowing”

another sodomite, but instead of “knowing about” his attendance at various meeting

places and cruising grounds. For Brown to say, through the voice and testimony of

Willis that “I did it because I thought I knew him” is to compound the matter of guilt.

This association demonstrates that Brown had frequented areas known to harbor and/or

cater to men with sodomitical predilections. Brown is certainly aware that it was nearly

impossible to be acquitted of attempted sodomy and is likely even more aware that

through Willis’s testimony his guilt had already been decided. His proximity to

Newton’s body and the sodomitical subculture itself would serve to demonstrate that

sodomy is not a random, singular event but a recurring problem. In other words, Brown

has a history of “sodomitical” tendencies (whether that is exhibitionism or something

more explicit) and his sodomy is therefore “chronic.” Hence, Willis’s testimony asserts

that Brown is not only “familiar” with Newton’s body, but that he is also “familiar” with the sodomitical subculture. Brown would no doubt have realized that his chances for acquittal were very small, which may explain his half-hearted defense. Also, the second part of Willis’s testimony further solidifies Brown’s aggressive sodomitical tendencies.

To say that Brown believes he can make whatever use of his body he pleases is to claim

an agency that did not exist. Men involved in sodomitical practices did not “own” their

bodies and this is clearly evident through the character witnesses called to defend their usefulness as productive men in society.

The character witnesses called to Brown’s defense are similar to those called in most of the sodomy trials in the early eighteenth century. In Brown’s case “Several of both Sexes appeared to his Reputation. They deposed that he had been married 12 or 13

years; that he bore the Character of an honest sober Man, a kind Husband, and one who

loved the Conversation of Women better than that of his own sex” (211). In identical

fashion, the character witnesses deposed in Brown’s case defend his character just as they

did in the case against Huggins. Both men and women note that he was an “honest sober

man” suggesting that he has been and will continue to be a law-abiding citizen who poses no threat to the state. While his defense was rather brief it was, according to the character witnesses, an honest account of that evening. Moreover, they assert that he is a

“kind husband,” that he “had been married 12 or 13 years” and that he “loved the

Conversation of Women better than that of his own sex.” Brown, according to the witnesses, is a heterosexual man performing the necessary masculine duties on which eighteenth-century culture depends. His assault, while ostensibly against Newton’s body, is more particularly an assault against assumed masculine responsibilities. Again, just as in the case against Huggins, the character witnesses’ portrait is consistently based on observations that link homosexuality to an inversion of social responsibility. To continuously assert that Brown, Huggins, and many others are productive members of society is to assert that the legal system believes them otherwise. For the character witnesses, the accused sodomites’ sexual preference is absolutely on trial, however, it is less a matter of whether the accused committed the sexual crime and more a matter of whether the crime indicated sodomitical, and thus threatening sexual tendencies. By consistently claiming that these men are loving husbands and fathers, productive men in the labor market, and honest men witness accounts efface the charge of sodomy by emphasizing the accused’s productive social positions. For the character witnesses of these trials it is important to solidify the defendant’s heterosexual character instead of

simply saying that he did not commit the act. Moreover, the various adjectives used to describe the defendant’s heterosexual life are important to understandings of these trials and the cultural and juridical view of sodomy in the period.

Integral to the discursive choices that describe the act of attempted or intended sodomy as an assault against established heteronormative and economic institutions, is the witnesses’ use of tender and passive language to describe the defendant’s heterosexual lifestyle. Often we see phrases such as “loving husband,” “tender father,” and “honest in his business” to describe the daytime life of an accused sodomite. While the word “assault” did much to describe the actions of the accused, it also implied the consequences of his actions; these adjectives are used to counteract the violent and aggressive sounding “assault.” If these men have “honest” characters then they are perpetually law-abiding instead of sexually “deviant.” A man who is “loving” to his wife and “tender” to his children would presumably not be the aggressive, violent “deviant” who exposes himself in public or who forces another man’s hand into his breeches. At the rhetorical level these character witnesses are attempting to contrast the aggressive and violent juridical language used to describe the accused sodomites’ actions with passive language used to describe a husband and a father. The witnesses show that these men are productive, heterosexual members of society and, just as importantly, that they prefer the company of women to that of men.

Condemned and exposed by the judicial apparatus while defended by the laboring class, the sodomite was not celebrated like the seventeenth-century libertine, chided like the restoration fop or mocked like the mid-century molly. Instead, the eighteenth-century sodomite occupies the sexual middle-ground between man and woman, between the

effects of male-male conversation and male-female conversation, between heterosexual and homosexual and between the known and unknown.39 His character is damned by the

same people who defend him and punished by the same apparatus that fifty years earlier celebrated the “vice of the upperclass” (Harvey 136).40 Ultimately, the image of the sodomite in the sodomy trials suffers from a paradoxical displacement via the rhetoric employed to both prosecute and defend him. Sodomy was a vague category, the rhetoric used to punish the sodomite was evasive, the language of the character witnesses was

dependent on the vagueness of the prosecution, and the sodomite could not employ his

own language in defense. All of this points to the categorical confusion of sodomy and

the sodomite in the consciousness of a culture that so readily condemned him. While

some may argue that the molly “emerged” out of the sodomite as a way to organize a

language that heretofore was unable to “locate” the sodomite as a social actor, I also think

the vagueness surrounding the eighteenth-century sodomite is indicative of an attempt to

organize and define not only this “third-sex” but general conceptions of masculinity and

femininity.41 What it meant to be an eighteenth-century man and woman were in flux as

were those who deviated from the assumed gender roles. The language used in the

sodomy trials demonstrates that the discourse on sexual deviancy and, specifically,

sodomy was an imprecise apparatus.

It is not only in the sodomy trials that we witness the rhetorical evasion implicit in

the discussions of sodomy; we also see this rhetorical evasion in other public arenas.

There is an organizational attempt by many authors to define the category of sodomy

through redefining conceptions of masculinity and femininity and the sexual roles

adopted by men and women. We see in the quack-botanical texts of the period and the

discussion of natural law an attempt to organize eighteenth-century culture around the rather new concept of a two-body system. As a consequence, the sodomite and the molly become social characters in a culture that lacks the language with which to discuss them.

There are a number of phrases consistently employed to describe and condemn sodomy.

These range from the rather benign “the crime” to the more severe verbal injunctions such as “the crime not to be named,” “the detestable sin of sodomy,” and “the unnatural sin of sodomy.” The latter claim, that sodomy is “unnatural” rests on the claim that there is a “natural” sexual behavior that sodomy contradicts. The next chapter focuses on not only the claim of “unnatural” sexual behavior but also the claim of a “natural” sexuality.

From the court room to the wilderness, the injunction against sex between men as

“unnatural” is the single most heavily employed verbal injunction leveled against those who had sodomitical “tendencies.” We need only look to texts that constructed the

“natural” world of sexuality in the eighteenth century to see that nature is both a force of liberation and condemnation for the eighteenth-century sodomite.

CHAPTER 2

BOTANICAL BODIES, UNNATURAL PREDILECTIONS: NATURE AND SEX BETWEEN MEN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Na’tural, nat’tshu-ral, adj. produced or effected by nature, not artificial; illegitimate, not legal; bestowed by nature, not acquired; not forced, not farfetched, dictated by nature; following the stated course of things; consonant to natural notions; discoverable by reason, not revealed; tender, affectionate by nature; according to nature; unaffected, according to truth and reality; opposed to violent, as, a natural death. (From Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, 633)

Na’ture, na’tshure, n.s. the native state or properties of any thing, by which it is discriminated from others; the regular course of things, the constitution and appearance of things; the state or operation of the material world; sort, species, as, a dispute of this nature. (From Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, 634)

“Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language” (Williams, 219).

“May his Calamities, with the other Examples of Punishment for this detested Crime, so present with us, be a Warning to all who have been any ways guilty, to repent; and others who may be unhappily deluded, to beware how they are seduc’d to commit this obnoxious Sin to God and Nature” (Preface to Sodomy Punished, iii)

The conjunction of eighteenth-century British erotica42 and sex between men

would seem an unlikely convergence. It is by now no secret that the “emerging”43 homosexual underground characterized by early period molly houses, gay cruising grounds and secret gay “rites” was publicly demonized, publicly tried and publicly

“executed” at both the gallows and the pillory. One need only glance at any text discussing sodomy in the early half of the eighteenth century to find examples of the homophobic abhorrence accorded sex between men. It is variously termed “the sin not to

be named,” “the detestable sin,” “the detestable crime,” “a sin against God,” and, most

prevalently, “a sin against nature.” By the time John Cleland published his titillating

Fanny Hill,44 the discursive formations that drew correlations between sodomy and an

unnatural, illegal and blasphemous act had been fully established by the legal and religious rhetoric of the early century.45 By including the male “homosexual” social type in his text, Cleland asks readers to address their own morality and heteronormative cultural ideology.46 His text, however, is only one of a handful of novels that mention the

sodomite. As with contemporary scientific discourse, the homosexual social type goes

relatively unnoticed in eighteenth-century “fiction.”47 In other words, the sodomitical

social type is exposed solely in the “non-fiction” of the period until Cleland’s text. As I

have demonstrated in the previous chapter, the sodomite and molly are both firmly

established in the legal discourse as criminals in need of exposure and punishment.

However, natural science and botanical erotica are other discursive arenas in which

sodomites and their activities are exposed. The conjuncture of botanical erotica and the

discourse on “nature” in publications concerned with this “growing fashion” publicize

and punish the sodomite as vigorously as the juridical discourse. However, in this case, nature stands in as judge, jury, and executioner and/or physician in order to correct the

unnatural, unregenerate nature of the sodomite. In other words, the interventions of civil

discourse in the regulation of sexual misconduct had to be supplemented by justifications

rooted in natural law.

Given its prevalence in period discussions concerning sodomy and its notorious

complexity, the belief that sodomy was “unnatural” or a “crime against nature” has

received scant critical attention. Modern scholars of sex between men in the eighteenth

century often notice the complexity associated with the word “nature” but often skim the

surface of this complexity, never contextualizing the word and thus failing to investigate

its deep association with the cultural view of sodomy in the period. One possible

explanation for this oversight is the apparent simplicity associated with the word

“nature.” In fact, our current understanding of the concept is not that far removed from

eighteenth-century conceptions. We often conceive of it as “the natural world:” that

which signifies both the country landscape and the brutality of “primitive” life. For us, as

for an eighteenth-century reader, the “natural” world is both fascinating and frightening.

It is the “other” of civilized culture through which we define and celebrate the victory of

technocracy over the brutish and rugged natural world. However, As Raymond Williams

notes in Keywords, “Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language.” For

Williams, there are three distinct areas of meaning for the word nature. Williams

observes that nature is “(i) the essential quality and character of something; (ii) the

inherent force which directs either the world or human beings or both; (iii) the material

world itself, taken as including or not including human beings” (219). His subsequent

discussion of usage and the complex ways in which these three definitions have been

employed throughout the centuries has been adopted by some scholars of hetero- and

homosexuality in the eighteenth century. Many studies of sexuality and gender include

some discussion, however brief, of the natural/unnatural binary and its effects on

conceptions of sexuality. This is no different for those who study homosexuality in the

eighteenth century. The most frequently evoked injunction against sex between men in

the eighteenth century is its “unnaturalness.” Most texts, whether legal tracts, sermons,

poems, novels or news accounts refer to the unnatural quality of sex between men often asserting that sodomy is an “unnatural sin” or has debased nature in some way.

Although Cameron McFarlane only devotes a few pages to the natural/unnatural binary often used to demonize sex between men, his discussion is more cohesive and echoes the complexity established by Williams. McFarlane observes three ways the natural/unnatural binary functioned in terms of eighteenth-century homosexuality and the cultural comments on it. For McFarlane, “’nature’ mean[s] the system or order of the world, or, perhaps more specifically, the system which directs and orders the world” (38).

He goes on to observe that “’nature’ refers to the essential quality or character of something” and that “nature designates a state of innocence and purity, of what is right and inevitable” (40). While McFarlane follows very closely Williams’ definitions of nature, he deviates slightly in his third definition. Williams notes that nature “has meant the ‘countryside’, the ‘unspolied places” (223) equating nature to an idyllic space often juxtaposed to the ills of urban corruption. For McFarlane, this sense of innocence, purity and “goodness” is of central importance to the rhetorical functions of the natural/unnatural binary. However, McFarlane further notes (as does Williams in his etymological reference) that the natural/unnatural binary is nearly inseparable from the civilized/uncivilized binary used to reference “sodomy’s and the sodomite’s potential to enact a frightening inversion” (38). For McFarlane, the social character of the sodomite

“both defiles nature and is of a defiling nature” (38). However, McFarlane further explores the dual binaries to effectively demonstrate that they form another powerful binary in “nature/culture and nature/art” (39). He notes that within this structure to be civilized is to become “unnatural” while to be “uncivilized” is to lapse into a state of

“nature” (39). This construction, he adds, is notoriously ambiguous depending “on whether one imagines nature to be a state of Hobbesian disarray which culture holds at bay, or a state of Newtonian perfection which culture emulates” (39). Hence, for

McFarlane, culture can be either opposite of nature or can be rooted in nature as a model for culture.

Unfortunately, this problematic does not get us very far when discussing sodomy in the period because sodomy indicated a polluted, uncivilized nature and an unnatural condition. McFarlane relies principally on the concept of nature as an innocent past. For him, “sodomy is seen as indicating the decadence and degeneracy of the entire culture which must either return to nature—i.e., idealized tradition—or face inevitable destruction” (42). In this formulation, sodomitical practices reveal a “degeneracy of the entire culture.” While McFarlane, through Williams, has rightly outlined the initial construction and the correlation between the two binary structures of natural and unnatural and civilized and uncivilized behavior, he fails to discuss the discursive situation that attempted to stabilize the above contradictions. Specifically, for a culture that saw the sodomite as possessing both an unnatural character and a character not to be found in nature and who was a threat to the very existence of “civilized” culture, there must have been a corrective to this “unnatural” nature. The first chapter of this study explored the institutionalized “corrective” to the sodomitical “problem” of the early half of the eighteenth century. Specifically, the ways the legal system employed various rhetorical strategies to identify and publicly punish those men who participated in sodomy and how these operated to stabilize civic relations. However, the “natural” world, the world of the known and unknown, the world of innocence, purity and fantasy

was a concept that authors deployed to instruct their readers on “natural” sexual practices

while using the “natural” world as a periodically violent corrective to the sodomitical

“problem.”

Thomas Laquer echoes Williams’ approach when he asserts that, “Anatomy, and

nature as we know it more generally, is obviously not pure fact, unadulterated by thought

or convention, but rather a richly complicated construction based not only on observation,

and on a variety of social and cultural constraints on the practice of science, but on an

aesthetics of representation as well” (163-164). The natural world of the eighteenth-

century was, to put it lightly, under constant revision. The empire’s expansion into new

worlds with fascinating flora and fauna spawned an explosion of texts dedicated to

revealing new and intriguing facts to curious readers.48 Grub Street writers wasted no time in pirating this material and turning it into various forms of cheap erotica available to both the laborer and aristocrat. One area that received profound attention from authors

like Thomas Stretser and printers like Edmund Curll were the botanical studies being

written by naturalists such as Carl Linnaues (von Linne), Richard Bradley and Phillip

Miller.49 As Julie Peakman notes in her study Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of

Pornography in Eighteenth-Century England:

Botanical metaphors were springing up in all sorts of erotica as a result of contemporary scientific investigations into categorizing of plants. Witty poems about the Arbor Vitae sold in two penny sheets were easily accessible to labourers. Wisdom Revealed, or the Tree of Life sold at the pamphlet-shops in London and Westminster for sixpence. Raucous songs would also have been sung in taverns, and were also available in penny song-sheets. This erotica describes bodies and the sexual behaviour of men and women in terminology favoured by contemporary botanists and was a specific reaction to new developments in science and natural history. (71)

An entire industry evolved from the sexualized scientific discoveries of these writers.

However, while the texts of Bradley, Linnaeus, Miller and others couched their botanical

observations in sexual rhetoric, the Grub Street writers who capitalized on this type of

writing:

[U]sed [botanical metaphors] as a device to communicate openly about sex and conveyed an image of male and female sexuality, and described a certain set of relationships which operated between men and women in the eighteenth century; in other words, a new erotic world was formulated which allowed for the expression of alternative attitudes on sex differing somewhat from more authoritarian lines of thought on morality. (72)

Peakman also rightly observes, “The ancient theories of Aristotle and Galen would

continue to circulate” (70) in the mock botanical pieces of the period. These pieces conflate sex and nature as well as new and old models of sexuality to both sell books and naturalize heterosexuality. Botanical erotica, which was cheap and widely available to every class of reader, participated in the formation of sexual pedagogy that normalized both the heterosexual body and its functionality while it distinguished both the unnatural sodomite and natural responses to sodomitical activity. Body-scapes were important to the construction of “natural” sexuality and the deployment of the natural world in order to codify male and female sexuality while simultaneously demonizing, punishing, and, at times, correcting the “molly cull” of Enlightenment London.

Although he has rightly been the subject of constant revision, Thomas Laquer has made abundantly clear, at the very least, that the early half of the eighteenth century was still fluctuating between Galenic philosophy and the emerging two-sex model of sexuality. For Laquer, “Sometime in the eighteenth century, sex as we know it was invented. Aristotle and Galen were simply mistaken in holding that female organs are a

lesser form of male’s and by implication that woman is a lesser man” (149). With this

transition also came the introduction of a new language with which to describe recently

discovered sexual difference:

Organs that had shared a name—ovaries and testicles—were now linguistically distinguished. Organs that had not been distinguished by a name of their own— the vagina, for example—were given one. Structures that had been thought common to man and woman—the skeleton and the nervous system—were differentiated so as to correspond to the cultural male and female. As the natural body itself became the gold standard of social discourse, the bodies of women— the perennial other—thus became the battleground for redefining the ancient, intimate, fundamental social relation: that of woman to man. Women’s bodies in their corporeal, scientifically accessible concreteness, in the very nature of their bones, nerves, and, most important, reproductive organs, came to bear an enormous new weight of meaning. Two sexes, in other words, were invented as a new foundation for gender. (149-150)

No longer were the ovaries considered internal testicles (or “Female Stones”), gone were the days of the uterus as a negative phallus and a whole discourse “grew” out of the female anatomy. Words such as vagina “only entered the European vernaculars around

1700” (159) and demonstrate that the matter of sexual difference was in its rhetorical infancy. Galen’s corpus philosophies were replaced by scientific treatises and the science of procreation was also revised. Ultimately, the “nature” of sexuality itself was under scrutiny and “the battleground of gender roles shifted to nature, to biological sex” (152).

However, this was not the end of the one-sex model. In fact, as Laquer has shown, the one-sex model continued to exist into the nineteenth century: “In the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries, books like Aristotle’s Masterpiece and Nicholas Venette’s The Art

of Conjugal Love, or to a lesser extent the Pseudo-Albert Magnus’ Secrets of Women,

transmitted Galenic learning to hundreds of thousands of lay readers, whatever their

doctors might have thought” (151). Nevertheless, it is impossible to know exactly what

people thought. For everyone who believed in the Galenic model there were just as many

who accepted the two-sex model. Laquer further observes, “all but the most

circumscribed statements about sex are, from their inception, burdened with the cultural

work done by these propositions. Two incommensurable sexes were, and are, as much

the products of culture as was, and is, the one-sex model” (153). The bodies of both men

and women became the text on which were inscribed legal dogma, educational theory and

socio-political critique from the monarchy to the state of religion. Thus, in many ways

biological sex was at the very least one of the central concerns of eighteenth-century

readers and authors. More specifically, authors in various genres from the novel to

scientific treatises spoke of sexual difference and, as might be expected, people read such

material avidly. While the two-sex model was being articulated by authors throughout

the century the one-sex model still had its supporters. In fact, there are many texts

demonstrating the struggle between these models.

Laquer, while sufficiently precise in the medicinal articulations of “natural”

sexuality, errs in at least one crucial respect. He asserts that “Indeed, the framework in

which the natural and the social could be clearly distinguished came into being” and then

adds that:

Generation could now less plausibly be seen in terms of rennin and cheese; iron and loadstone lost their resonance as metaphors for semen and womb. The penis as plowshare and the womb as field did not quite capture Enlightenment views of fruitful intercourse. Hoary images drawn from agriculture—the vagina as an organ ‘inwardly wrinkled, like the inner skin of the upper jaw of a cow’s mouth’—disappeared from works intended for a self-consciously sophisticated audience. (154)

While there is obviously a stark incommensurability between the two models there is also

simultaneity evident in many texts of the early eighteenth century which demonstrate a

“naturalized” approach to sexuality. In these texts the reader witnesses the struggle

between the two models and, moreover, the consequence of this struggle for not only the

male and female body, but also the homosexual body. The discourse on “nature” was, in fact, at the center of this debate. Agricultural images and images of the “natural” world

are employed in the struggle to legitimate the two-sex model and appear, in many

instances, as a type of commiseration between the two models. In other words, many of the “botanical” texts of the period show that while the sexes were polarized, sexual bodies had not undergone the full separation that was seen in the nineteenth century. In

these texts, the discourse on both the two-sex and single-sex models of sexuality are

employed to demonstrate what “natural” sexuality is as well what dangers arise from

“unnatural” sexuality. It is at this point, at least in British textual history, that erotica and

pornography found an audience for mass consumption.

It is important to note that various layers of significance are found in the botanical

erotica of the period and that these layers require a more “complex vision” if we are to

draw out this significance. For Peakman, looking at the nuances of these “multi-layered”

texts and their connection to both the progression in the various scientific discoveries and

the cultural reactions to both the science and the erotica demonstrates that there is “a definite development in erotica which led to the major new English pornography” (11). I do not doubt that the scientific discoveries had much to do with the emerging forms of erotica and that this erotica was in many ways a precursor to the development of English pornography.50 However, if these connections do indeed exist and are exemplified in the

cultural reactions to erotica (both in terms of its popularity as both titillating

entertainment and smutty pedagogy) then it seems likely that conclusions can be drawn

which elucidate not only the complexity of the term “nature” but also how the term bears

on both hetero- and homosexuality. Moreover, it strikes me as odd that while the

botanical erotica of the period is directly linked to authors such as Linnaeus, whose

botanical categorizations revolutionized the field of botany, scholars tend to move rapidly through the concept of “nature” in an attempt to argue for one of these polarized positions. Homosexuality was an important aspect to the codification of the two-sex model of sexuality, and was also a central concern of the state. By investigating the concept of “natural” sexuality as evidenced in eroticized, popular botanical texts it is apparent that the molly “problem” and the “sin not to be named” are articulated in an effort to efface the “vice” that has “infected the entire country” because it is an unnatural

“other” antithetical to contemporary visions of heterosexuality.51 The “parasexual” body

of the sodomite is feared and abhorred for both its voracious appetite for other men and

its “dysfunctional” desire. It possesses an “unnatural” nature that exists simultaneously

at the center of a culture concerned with sexuality and the margins of a culture that

punishes the “unnatural.” The homosexual body is part of botanical erotica (and, later,

pornography) while it is conveniently absent from the text. By investigating the botanical

erotica available to eighteenth-century readers, it becomes apparent that the “unnamable

sin” of sodomy is, indeed, named in an effort to both control an “unnatural” nature and to

let the vast, primitive and unknown world of nature punish the “unnatural” sodomite.

While McFarlane asserts that “It is important to note that nature…has less to do

with trees and animals than with tradition” (40) it is also true that “nature” and texts

discussing the natural world had much to do with “trees and animals.” I agree that the

employment of “nature” as it referred to sodomy was interested in tradition and the return

to a more “traditional” world. However, erotic texts of the early century, which masked

themselves as learned botanical works detailing the natural world of unknown lands,

worked to construct a certain type of natural world through descriptions of various types

of plants. Through these texts the natural world is only a metaphor for what authors such

as Philogynes Clitorides or the Society of Gardeners saw as natural sexual practices.

Inherent in early conceptions of “natural” sexuality and the use of “nature” to outline

“proper” sexuality is a discussion of “unnatural” sexuality and “improper” sexual

practices. In these texts, nature was used not only to instruct readers on proper

functioning heterosexuality, but was also to correct improper and dysfunctional sexuality.

For these authors, nature performed two roles in service of a singular purpose: through

examples of properly functioning male and female genitalia, such authors show how

nature can be used to correct and/or punish the “unnatural” tendencies of the sexually

deviant individual. From dildo use to masturbation, they show how nature itself punishes unnatural sexual practices.

The use of plant life, different landscapes and the “natural” world to explore sexuality was not new to the eighteenth century. In fact, the use of extended metaphors to discuss “natural” sexuality can be traced back to the tenth century and, of course, are

still in use today. However, the eighteenth century did see an explosion in the printing of

“pornotopic” texts. Not only were these texts being printed, but they were also being pirated, re-printed, and were being read by a large audience. For instance, the prose version of Arbor Vitae was turned into a verse work and republished soon after its initial publication. Both versions went through numerous editions and were being reprinted in

numerous collections such as The Ladies Delight and A Short Description of the Road

which Leads to Merryland. However, there was probably no more popular work than A

New Description of Merryland. Written by Thomas Stretser and printed by the now infamous Edmund Curll, A New Description of Merryland went through no less than seventeen editions in the period; there were two editions of Merryland Displayed, and a

French translation titled Description topographique, historique, critique et nouvelle du pays et des invirons de la Foret-Noire, situee dans la province du Merryland. While the print history of A New Description of Merryland and other erotic texts is important as evidence for their popularity, texts such as The Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria, and The Natural History of the Arbor Vitae play, I think, key roles in determining how the complex concept of “nature” was articulated and understood in the early half of the eighteenth century. Moreover, the textual apparatuses used by the anonymous authors demonstrate that these texts are printed to “teach” and to “instruct” on the reality of

“natural” sexuality. In these two texts the landscapes are constructed of body parts which bear a “natural” relationship to the body parts of the opposite gender. These two texts demonstrate what “natural” sexuality looked and acted like. They also clarify the rhetoric that damned sex between men as “unnatural” while also showing how nature was used to correct such an “unnatural” practice in the lesser known narrative Sodomy Punish’d.

Printed as companion pieces in 1732, The Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria and The Natural History of the Arbor Vitae were both popular texts and sold for the small sum of sex pence by various book sellers in both London and Westminster. Both set themselves up as learned pieces of botany in their cover pages and both are a “Natural

History” composed by botanists. Frutex Vulvaria was written by Philogynes Clitorides

(an obvious pun) but the authority of this text is solidified by his title and position. The title page tells the reader that Clitorides is a “Botanist, and one of the Missionaries of the

Society of Jesuits for propagating Knowledge in foreign parts.” Hence, the purpose of this text is to promote knowledge of “foreign parts.” This obvious double entendre suggests that the reader will not only be learning about foreign botany, but also about the

“foreign part” of female genitalia. Arbor Vitae is similarly constructed, however, while it does not name a specific author or contain a brief description of what the reader will learn, we are told it was published by a “Society of Gardeners.”52 Both texts construct an authoritative framework in their title pages by suggesting firstly that they are “Natural

Histor[ies]” and, secondly, that they were written by authors learned in the field of botany. Furthermore, Frutex Vulvaria asserts that the text “is collected from the best

Botanists both Ancient and Modern.” It is, in essence, establishing historical precedence for what is contained in its pages. What the reader will glean is a “Natural History” of female genitalia in botanical terms and heterosexuality’s position and importance to global politics. Furthermore, Frutex Vulvaria includes a rather lengthy introduction whereas Arbor Vitae contains no introduction or explanatory notes according to the title page. Moreover, the fact that they were published as separate pieces, even though they constantly refer to one another, demonstrates a number of key factors. First of all, it is, I think, an economic decision. More money could be made by publishing these pieces separately. However, in their separate publication the reader is reminded that the two sexes are, indeed, distinct and that each separate piece, while often referring to its companion “piece” will take one or the other “plant” as its subject. To print Arbor Vitae without an introduction suggests that the reader would already have some understanding of the “Tree of Life” and would further understand why it was important to publish a piece devoted to it.

The introduction to Frutex Vulvaria is interesting because it is concerned with not

only explaining what it is doing but why it is doing it. Not only this, but the introduction

is addressed to “Ladies” who “tis universally agreed” are the “Owners of the finest

Vulvaria’s in the three Kindgoms, but [have] also cultivated them with the most

consummate Art and Dexterity.” The introduction praises the women of the three

kingdoms for their “vulvarias” and their able “upkeep.” This praise continues through

the introduction where the author observes that:

Tho’ Great-Britain has never been destitute of the finest Shrubs in the Universe, yet the Trees that have been grafted upon them, for these two and twenty Years last past, have so far degenerated, that our Plants are held in the utmost Contempt in all foreign Countries, as fit only to be piss’d upon.

The blame of any dysfunctional sexuality, whether the author is referring to sexually

transmitted diseases or homosexuality, is to fall on male genitalia. In fact, the entirety of

the introduction is devoted to both the degeneracy of the male “tree” and the perfection of

British “shrubs.” The introduction is also highly politicized in its approach. We are told

that “we had several very glorious Trees in the Reign of Charles II,” that “It was likewise

owing to the Vigour of the same Plants that we made such a bold Stand in the Reign of

James II” and that “To the same Trees, or Grafts from them we owe our present Safety in the Hanover Succession.” However, the author notes that “since the Peace of Utrecht, we have never done any Great Feats, but seem to be damnably off our Mettle.”53 For the

author, the greatness of Britain is intimately connected to the greatness of its “Trees.” In this construction, the “Tree” equals the quality of the man. Masculinity, here, is

generated and understood as concomitant with the strength or weakness of the attached

“Tree.” In many ways, while the introduction does praise the “greatness” of British

“shrubs” it spends more time discussing the weakening state of the British “Tree.” The

author says quite plainly that “All these Misfortunes the Naturalists and Botanists ascribe

(how truly I know not) to the Degeneracy of our Trees of Life.” Masculinity is the

problem that needs correction if Britain is to return to its glory. While this may seem

rather liberating and revolutionary, the focus of the introduction is on the male member.

However, the author does make sure to give the prescription for this masculine

degeneracy:

[H]ow much then, beauteous Ladies, must the whole Nation be obliged to your indefatigable Endeavours to restore their Vigour, by inoculating none but the finest Plants upon your Flowering Shrubs, whose Shoots may promise sprightly generous Plants, untainted with that baneful Corruption that has, of late Years, overspread our finest Plantations?

While the author does not speak directly of sex between men, this “baneful Corruption”

is, I think, a rather obvious remark on the emerging “fashion.”54

The belief that male homosexuality was a “baneful Corruption” which had

become fashionable in the early half of the century was not uncommon. In May of 1726

a letter from The Drury Lane Ladies55 was published in The Weekly Journal. In their letter they give their “hearty Thanks for endeavouring to suppress the notorious Practice

of the Mollies, by which Abuse of Nature we may properly call ourselves the greatest

Sufferers.” At the end of the letter they append a poem where they ask “What cursed

D[evi]l brought this Trick in vogue,/To spite a W[ho]re, and doubly damn a Rogue?”

The Drury Lane Ladies echo a view that had become rather common: that the practice of

the mollies or, more generally, sex between men had become a “fashion” during the early

half of the century. As a corrective, the author of the Frutex Vulvaria asks that these

corrupt trees be “inoculated” on their shrubs. For the author of this text, heterosexuality

is not only “natural” but is also the way to cure uncooperative trees. To further this

claim, the author finishes the preface by giving a “few Directions” for proper

“inoculation:”

Be sure you take your Trees when they are very erect and in full Vigour, on order to which nothing is better than to warm their Roots with generous Wines, especially such wherein a live Viper has been consumed, which will invigorate their Sap, and make their Juices full of volatile Particles, and apt to impregnate.

In these brief directions the author has laid out the full and “natural” process by which to

“inoculate” uncooperative trees while also demonstrating the power of a fine “shrub.”

The main point of these directions is to trigger male orgasm in hopes of pregnancy.

According to the author, through heterosexual intercourse the male body will be relieved from an odious practice and will also be impregnating a “frutex vulvaria” and thus producing more “plants.” Hence, it is participation in heterosexual staples of sex and child birth that will “cure” the afflicted and correct the “corruption” that has lately become the fashion. The preface to Frutex Vulvaria sets up authorial control through its construction as a “natural history” but also through the lessons taught by a learned man.

These become more pronounced through the text and through the descriptions of flowering shrubs and their part in the heterosexual relationship. In both texts, the flowering shrub and the tree of life rarely stand alone and are instead discussed as they relate to one another.

In the initial pages of Frutex Vulvaria, it is made expressly clear that the earlier publication of Arbor Vitae was, indeed, an incomplete publication:

Learned and publick spirited Society of curious Botanists having lately obliged the World with an elaborate Disseration upon the famous Arbor Vitae, or the Tree of Life, it was thought very proper (that such an useful Work might not be transmitted incompleat down to Posterity) to subjoin thereto an Account of the Frutex Vulvaria, or the Flowering Shrub; it being, according to the learned Leonard Fucksius, an Author of undoubted Credit, of the very same genus, and no

other than a Female Arbor Vitae, as is accurately observ’d in the Dissertation above-mentioned. (5-6)

Not only will this publication (and, by association, the frutex vulvaria) complete the arbor

vitae both literally and figuratively, but the above quote also shows that this text will

attempt to negotiate the divide between the one and two-sex model of sexuality. The

quote makes clear that the flowering shrub and the tree of life come from “the very same

genus” and that the flowering shrub is simply a “female arbor vitae.” The use of the

word “genus” in this instance is interesting because it signified to eighteenth-century

readers both sameness and difference. In Johnson’s Dictionary (as in the OED) genus is

“a class of being, comprehending under it many species” (450). In other words, the flowering shrub is both part of the tree of life while it is simultaneously its own

“species.” In this instance, the flowering shrub and the tree of life are both different from one another and are also made to complement one another. The author goes on to make this similar connection by observing that “this Shrub; it is guarded round about with

Fibrillae, or Capillary Tendrils, of the same Nature, and Use, with those at the Root of the

Arbor Vitae” (6). Moreover, the author also makes direct reference to Hippocrates and

Galen and comments on their beliefs:

It has long been warmly contested by the greatest Botanists, whether the Vulvaria is not a succulent Plant. Hippocrates and Galen, two eminent Virtuosi of former Ages, with abundance of their Followers, very obstinately contended that it was so; and that it had a balmy Succus, or viscous Juice, which distill’d from it, upon being lanced, at certain times, of the same Nature with that discharg’d at the Pistilium of the Arbor Vitae, which was absolutely necessary in order to its bearing. But the celebrated Harvey, with many other modern Botanists, famous for their useful Discoveries and improvements, absolutely deny this; and affirm that it is impregnated solely by the Succus of the Arbor Vitae. (7-8)

In terms of reproduction, the botanists (Clitorides included) are at odds with the Galenic

vision of sexuality because male and female genitalia do indeed perform different

functions even though they are part of the same “genus.” One of the more profound sexual “discoveries” of the beginning of the long eighteenth century was that female

orgasm was not necessary for reproduction. However, while the belief that women

needed to climax for reproduction persisted (there are some documented cases of women

believing this into the twentieth century) this is the central position on which botanical

texts separated themselves from classical beliefs on sexuality. While the flowering shrub

and the tree of life come from the same “genus” and are part of the same body category,

their genitalia function differently in terms of reproduction. This is further naturalized as

the author goes on to say that the flowering shrub “has a natural Fissura or Chink in the

Middle, much like the Eye which we shall see in some Trees, which opens spontaneously when the Arbor Vitae is to be grafted upon it, and afterwards closes again of its own

accord” (8). To say that the shrub opens “spontaneously” on approach of the tree of life

is to say, in essence, that the flowering shrub is made to accept the tree of life. These

have a natural predilection for one another and function mechanically when in close

proximity. Furthermore, “To shew that the Frutex Vulvaria is absolutely of the same

Genus, one need only observe, that upon the Inoculation of the Arbor Vitae there upon, it will both bear an Arbor Vitae, and a Vulvaria, and as frequently the one as the other” (8-

9). Not only are these two “naturally” constructed for one another but they are also the avenue through which reproduction takes place. Perhaps the greatest affront to “nature” perpetrated by sex between men was the fact that it was unproductive intercourse. As mentioned in the first chapter, to prosecute an accused sodomite to the fullest extent of

the law, semen had to be present. If semen was found, or the act of ejaculation was witnessed, then the accused sodomite was often executed. Similarly, male masturbation was deemed wasteful and dangerous to a culture highly concerned with heterosexual production. Furthermore, as made clear by Raymond Stephanson56 and other scholars, it was believed that men possessed a finite amount of semen and, if wasted via masturbation or homosexual intercourse there would be little left for the production of offspring. Thus, the authors of Frutex Vulvaria and Arbor Vitae demonstrate that male ejaculation was not only necessary to heterosexual production, but also that the “wasteful

masturbator” and the “unnatural” sodomite promoted cultural waste. It was an affront to the primary purpose of heterosexual intercourse: the production of children and positive contribution to the labor pool necessary to perpetuate a thriving local and global economy in pre-industrialized Britain.

The last half of Frutex Vulvaria is dedicated to extolling the virtues of a properly

functioning shrub and to providing a historical examination of some of the “most

remarkable” shrubs in history and literature. Throughout this section, the author continues to describe the characteristics that make the shrub and tree different yet perfectly suited for one another. The last half opens with “As our Shrub is similar to the

Tree of Life in almost all other Respects, it is likewise so in many of its names and

Virtues” (16). The various names for the shrub like Fons Vitae (Fountain of Life) and

Incus Vitae (Anvil of Life) not only demonstrate its linguistic connection to Arbor Vitae but extol the shrub because “on this Soft Anvil all Mankind were made” (17). However, the greatest respect is given the flowering shrub named by Hippocrates who “always term’d it Natura, for this unswerable Reason; that, whether our Nature was good or bad,

we undoubtedly derived it from thence” (18). The use of the word “natura” works on two

distinct levels. It refers not only to the production of children but also the production of

the nation. Derived from the Latin nasci, “natura” and thus “natural” has much to do

with the heterosexual production of the nation itself. The flowering shrub is, in this

sense, the site of nation building through the production of children. Furthermore, if the

flowering shrub is termed “natura” and is the genesis for the construction of the empire, then to engage in intercourse that does not include the shrub would be “unnatural” and would not help to produce a nation.

Yet, the flowering shrub is not only “natural” and the only site from which all life sprang; it also has the power to reverse the “unnatural nature” of any man. The flowering shrub “infallibly dispels Melancholy, and purges away all Choler, be it ever so inveterate” (22). It can also “[make] the greatest Misers generous, the most Cowardly resolute, the most Churlish kind and loving, and the greatest Cynics compleat Courtiers; in short, it makes every one the reverse of his natural Temper” (22). Inherent in the shrub is the ability to change a man’s nature. While never specifically mentioning sex between men, the shrub’s ability to change a man’s nature would entail the capacity to correct those men who have strayed from natural heterosexual practice. It is not, however, only in the power of the shrub, but also in the meeting of the shrub and the tree of life that the power to change nature occurs. It is in heterosexual intercourse that the “natural” is both preserved and, if necessary, corrected. In reflecting back on the preface, the connection is evident: there is a problem with the English “tree of life” caused by a “baneful

Corruption that has, of late Years, overspread our finest Plantations.” This “baneful

Corruption,” however, can be corrected through proper heterosexual outlets. In fact,

most masculine sexual dysfunctions, including sodomy, chronic masturbation and even persistent impotence can be corrected through a “meeting” with the shrub. While never directly saying that this shrub can fix the sodomy “problem” believed to be ravaging

London in the early half of the eighteenth century, heterosexual intercourse is the

corrective to both local and global socio-political problems as well as sexual

dysfunctions. What Frutex Vulvaria does directly is establish a link between the

diverging feminine and masculine bodies to demonstrate that their connection is not only

“natural” but can also correct flawed bodies and/or the “unnatural nature” of any man.

There are two sexes for the author of this text, but these two sexes must co-exist if both

the local issues of deviant sexuality and global socio-political issues are to be located and

corrected.

The companion piece to Frutex Vulvaria, while shorter and uninterested in proving the crucial relevance of the tree of life to proper forms of sexuality, works in

similar ways to demonstrate the importance of heterosexual practices and the dangers of

sexual dysfunction. Arbor Vitae focuses on male genitalia, its specific characteristics and

functions, and its connection to a flowering shrub that lies beneath the tree of life.57

Furthermore, it too indirectly mentions the sodomitical “problem,” as well as other male sexual dysfunctions, in an effort to instruct the reader on ways to correct purported sexual deviance in men. Speaking in similar botanical terms, it informs the reader that, “The

Tree of Life is a succulent Plant, consisting of one only strait stem, on the top of which is a Pistillum or Apex, at some times Glandiform and resembling a May-Cherry, tho’ at others, more like the Nut of the Aucllana or Filberd-Tree” (3). Drawing on this naturalist rhetoric, it further elaborates the heterosexual logic of male and female genitalia:

…the fruits coming to good maturity, yield a viscous juice or balmy succus, which being from time to time discharged at the Pistillum, is mostly bestow’d upon the open Calyx’s of the Frutex Vulvaria, or flow’ring Shrub, usually spreading under the shade of this tree, and whose parts are by a wonderful mechanism adapted to receive it. (4)

Arbor Vitae also relies on other mock botanical authors such as Leonhard Fucksius to assert that the flowering shrub and tree of life, “are of the same genus, and do best in the same bed; the Vulvaria itself being indeed no other than a female Arbor Vitae” (4-5).

The main distinction in this text, which repeatedly demonstrates the natural connections between the arbor vitae and frutex vulvaria, lies in its extended discussion not only of the differences between trees but also, even more emphatically, of the various ailments that plague the tree of life. The corresponding ailments are those that most texts discussing male genitalia mention: old age and impotency, the alternative use of dildos, the eunuch, sodomy, and venereal diseases. While most of these ailments are accompanied by either a direct cure or reference to someone with a cure, the section on the pollution of the tree through sodomy provides no specified corrective. Unlike other ailments, sodomy is a sin and a plague incurable by any man-made concoction. This suggests that the act of sodomy is a profound sin only curable by someone or something beyond human systems of correction.

Concerning sodomy, the author writes: “Some other curious Gentlemen have endeavour’d to inoculate their plants on the stock of the Medlar, and that with a manure of human Ordure; but this has never been approv’d: and I have known some trees brought to a very ill end by such management” (7). If trees constantly symbolize the male member then the sexual metaphor here likely alludes to anal penetrative sex between two men. The Medlar tree had been naturalized in Europe and has a curious etymological

history. As late as the mid seventeenth century, the Medlar was used to refer to female

genitalia and/or prostitutes. This usage became obsolete around the time of the

Restoration. Following Charles II’s return to the throne, itself an event often celebrated

in terms of heterosexual and libertine triumphalism, the Medlar was discussed less in

terms of the entire tree and more for the fruit it bore, and was dropped altogether as a

metaphor for female genitalia and prostitution. The Medlar fruit itself resembled a “small

brown-skinned apple with a widely gaping apex and persistent calyxlobes” (OED). The association here, I think, is evident. Coupling this allusion to the anus with the “manure of human Ordure,” emphasizes that sodomy pollutes the tree of life, resembles excremental waste, misuses the male sexual member and affronts natural, heterosexual

activity. Unlike the “cure” associated with impotency, no corrective is offered for this

offense against nature. Once a man participates in sodomitical activity his “tree of life”

will, in the words of the text, almost inevitably suffer a “very ill end.” After discussing

other names for the tree of life and describing some of the “great trees” throughout

history, Arbor Vitae ends like Frutex Vulvaria by suggesting again the latter text’s

obligation to it:

It chears the heart, and exhilarates the mind, quiets jars, feuds and discontents, making the most churlish tempers surprisingly kind and loving. Nor have private persons only been the better for this reconciling virtue, but whole states and kingdoms; nay, the greatest empires in the world have often received the benefit of it; the most destructive wars have been ended; and the most friendly treaties been produced, by a right application of this universal medicine among the chief of the contending parties. (11)

The above passage suggests a universal and proper application of this “medicine” in

order to benefit both private individuals and the nation. By universalizing this human

practice through a discourse of natural harmony, the author situates anything other than

this (sodomy, auto-eroticism, etc.) as a destructive force, alien to civilized behavior.

Again, other forms of sexual congress signal both an individual and national defect.

Arbor Vitae and Frutex Vulvaria ultimately proclaim that proper functioning genitalia

contribute to a functional culture and that the various problems associated with both male and female “parts” indicate cultural dysfunctions.

While both Frutex Vulvaria and Arbor Vitae discreetly name the “unnameable” they do not offer conclusive remedies for this type of “sexual dysfunction.” At times,

“nature” itself stands in as a possible remedy to the various ailments that plague male and female genitalia. However, there are a number of texts that speak quite specifically to nature’s ability to punish those who practice deviant sexuality. None is more specific about nature’s ability to subject the sodomite to clear and profound punishment than

Sodomy Punished: Being a True and Exact Relation of what Befel to one Leondert

Hussenlosch. This text offers the most concise account of nature’s power to correct the erring sodomite and the various internal and external struggles facing a practicing sodomite. The story of Leondert Hussenlosch may, in fact, be one of the most important texts for the study of homosexuality in the early half of the eighteenth century. The story, as described recently by both Lennard Davis and Evan Davis, is that a Dutch sailor named Jan Svilt is caught kissing a cabin boy and subjected to water torture until he confesses to sodomitical behavior. Because of this, Svilt is deposited on Ascension

Island as punishment for his crimes. There, he composes a journal detailing his stay on

the island, discussing his diet of turtles and birds, his search for water, the abhorrence of

his crime (or being caught for it), and the apparitions that plague him. At the end of five

months on the island, Svilt dies of thirst, after which his journal is discovered by Captain

Mawson of the British ship The Compton. His journal is transported to England, translated and printed in 1730 as The Just Vengeance of Heaven Exemplify’d. While

Evan Davis is skeptical of this account, he admits “Because much of our current knowledge about eighteenth-century homosexuality is derived from court transcripts or hearsay about scandals, if the journal is factual it would be a valuable eighteenth-century artifact, a rare record of the dying months of a man convicted of sodomy” (257). He is also fully aware that, “The Dutchman’s story might well be a hoax” (258). But both scholars question whether skepticism about the story’s facticity abets a general neglect of homosexual history. Like Evan Davis, I think an attempt to establish the authenticity of a text such as this renders the scholar “complicit in the potential silencing of a queer voice”

(E. Davis, 258). Lennard Davis similarly asks, “Which is more or less transgressive, to think of the text as fictive, and by so doing deny the constitutive experience of queerness that is preserved there for us, or to think of the text as factual and in so doing cover up the problems of provenance?” (qtd. in Evan Davis, 258) I too want to resist the temptation to affix a label suggesting this text as fictive or factual. By asserting this text as fictional we deny the experience described in it and thus dismiss its cultural significance. Alternately, by asserting the text as factual we fail to take into account its diverse print history, including, but not limited to, the number of revisions it went through, the men who printed it, the men who “translated” it and the Grub Street writers who thrived on appropriating contemporary “news.” In either case, we run the risk of discounting the narrative for what it is: a cultural production that, at the very least, exposes the discursive change in contemporary texts that shaped popular conceptions of sodomy at the time. It contains, in other words, what one might call a rhetorical truth.

For Evan Davis, the earliest edition of Svilt’s text (An Authentick Relation was printed in 1728) was more interested in sympathizing with the condemned man than were later editions (The Just Vengeance of Heaven Exemplify’d was printed in 1730).

However, the notion that a text printed two years earlier was more sympathetic than the later is complicated by the 1726 publication of Sodomy Punish’d: Being a True and Exact

Relation of what Befel to one Leondert Hussenlosch. Although the name is different, the account is the same and is most likely the model text on which An Authentick Relation and The Just Vengeance of Heaven Exemplify’d (not to mention the other texts printed between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries) were based. This calls into question both the print history of the text as well as the argument that there are verifiable facts surrounding the recovery of this text, as Evan Davis postulates. In contrast, Lennard

Davis proposes that the story’s importance resides in its ideological rather than factual

“reality”:

When I have presented this paper at various academically oriented venues, the universal response from my colleagues has been that I should engage in further research. People have suggested that I go to Holland and track down shipping records, or others have suggested I go to England and find out if there was a Captain Mawson. Such helpful suggestions come from a profound feeling that history can be recovered if we try hard and are scholarly enough…But what I want to suggest in this paper is that there are limits to our abilities to recover the past—particularly when we are dealing with marginal groups like homosexuals, criminals, whores, people with disabilities, and so on. It may be that even those remaining documents, like The Just Vengeance, are so imbricated in an ideology of repression and concealment that the notion of a clear reality that can be recovered has to be rethought and re-theorized. (84)

Evan Davis, undeterred by Lennard Davis’ apparent refusal to attempt what some consider the necessary archeological work, “refuses to speculate on the historical existence of Mawson or the Dutch expedition” but does say that “the historical record

is…fairly clear” (Evan Davis 263). His research has turned up some undeniable facts

concerning, at the very least, the document’s recovery:

The title page of the pamphlet claims that the journal was discovered by Captain Mawson in January 1725/26, as he returned from India on board the Compton. According to the records of the East India Company, the Compton, a 440-ton ship carrying thirty guns and about ninety men, made three voyages between England and Bombay. Its second voyage, led by William Mawson, left Falmouth on April 1, 1722 and returned on April 5, 1726. In January, when the pamphlets claim Mawson stopped at Ascension Island, the ship would have been, appropriately, in the middle of the Atlantic, probably near the Equator. If the original writer of the pamphlet invented the story, he was therefore at the very least working with known facts, ones that British readers could readily enough confirm. (263)

The existence and prevalence of Ascension Island as both a waypoint for naval vessels and a location discussed in many contemporary texts is verifiable. According to Evan

Davis, Ascension Island was a place where naval vessels would stop for rest, often leaving messages detailing their stay in a bottle. In other words, while the factuality of the text itself is debatable, the story’s historic context is not. Evan Davis uses this type of historical data to support his claims that readers would have been very much aware of this material and that there is a connection between the rhetoric of the various editions and the different cultural reactions to sodomites. However, his connection assumes a type of rhetorical and ideological linearity that misrepresents cultural reactions to the sodomitical sub-culture.

Evan Davis’s assertion that the print history suggests a rather clear transformation in cultural reactions to sodomy needs to be further explored to better demonstrate that, while eighteenth-century British culture may have been a homophobic one, the textual responses to this sub-culture are both homophobic and exploratory. Moreover, both Evan and Lennard Davis virtually ignore “nature” and the “natural” world in their

examinations. While Evan Davis’s archeological evidence is significant and his print history contributes to our understanding of the story’s cultural impact, the initial publication of the story appears to have escaped his notice. The main issue for Evan

Davis that the earlier (1728) edition is more sympathetic to Svilt/Hussenlosch than the later more contemptuous edition (1730), is belied by the 1726 edition entitled Sodomy

Punish’d, which clearly derides Svilt/Hussenlosch. The scant critical attention paid to this text makes both Lennard and Evan Davis’ studies important to the discussion of eighteenth-century English attitudes toward sodomy, however, both partly misrepresent the story’s context. Evan Davis overlooks the earlier publication while Lennard Davis neglects the print history of the text. Hussenlosch’s journal is important to those who study the sodomitical underworld of the Enlightenment because it is the earliest edition of the story and offers the reader a first-hand account of the dangers of sodomy and the physical and mental anguish associated with what was then considered a cultural

“disease.” While the authors of the Frutex Vulvaria and The Arbor Vitae envisage natural sexuality as one that is only properly achieved through the meeting of the male and female bodies, and argue that any other form of sexual congress should be punished, the “journal” of Hussenlosch, in Crusoe-like fashion, demonstrates the power of nature to punish that which is “unnatural” and dramatizes the power of God to damn those who deviate from natural heterosexuality. The journal of Hussenlosch is borrowing the naturalist rhetoric of the botanical erotica in order to naturalize what would otherwise belong to the institutional language of judgment in the legal literature of the period.

The tale of Leondert Hussenlosch is essentially one of despair and deterioration.

Abandoning him on the deserted island of Ascension, the commanders of the Dutch Fleet

who found him guilty of sodomitical activity leave him with a cask of water, two buckets, and an old frying pan. Eventually, Hussenlosch, unable to find the necessities of life, descends into madness and dies, apparently of starvation or thirst. Where Robinson

Crusoe, through reason, is able to subdue nature and thrive, Hussenlosch is at the mercy of “nature,” both on the island and within his own “unnatural nature.” While it is, of course, impossible to know whether this is a true account or not, the title page and the preface announce that the story is a “True and Exact Relation” that was “Faithfully

Translated from a Journal wrote by himself.” The preface further asserts the text’s authenticity by claiming that “there are some People who are naturally incredulous, and it is probable such will pay but little regard to the Veracity of this Narration; it is enough to affirm that there is Authority sufficient to convince them of the Truth of it, if they think it worth Enquire” (ii). While the preface assumes the text’s authenticity, it also directly connects Hussenlosch’s story to contemporary sodomitical cases and capitalizes on the assumption that sodomy had become “fashionable.” Moreover, that the text was produced right before the Dutch legal system executed at least sixty men for sodomy, suggests that the publication was responding to a cultural flashpoint.58 However, it is the text’s ability to connect Hussenlosch’s crime to “unnatural” vice that dominates the text and is the pedagogical end point of the preface:

May his Calamities, with the other Examples of Punishment for this detested Crime, so present with us, be a Warning to all who have been any ways guilty, to repent; and others who may be unhappily deluded to beware how they are seduc’d to commit this obnoxious Sin to God and Nature; a Sin so dreadful in its Consequence both to themselves and others, attended with utter Shame and Ruin here, and with the Infinite Wrath of an offended God in the World to come. (iii)

While the factuality of the text is important for the author of the preface, the author’s ability to instruct readers on the consequences of submitting to an activity that is “so present with us” appears more urgent. Unlike Lennard Davis, who asserts that “this is a book with a purpose—to show that God sees homosexuality as criminal and justly avenges homosexual activity with suffering and death” (83), I claim that it solidifies homosexual “vice” as a crime against the self and British culture. As the author of the preface indicates, sodomitical actions have consequences in the afterlife as well as in the present. The frightening ubiquity with which sodomy could spread through the streets of

London was a common trope used by writers to demonstrate not only the ferocity of the

“crime” but also its cultural ramifications.59 The above passage makes clear that the sin of sodomy is “so present” that it serves as a general marker for human frailty and that it bears consequences for both the sodomite and those around him.60 Not only does the author of the preface believe sodomy to be a “detested crime” and an “obnoxious Sin to

God and Nature,” but Leondert himself acknowledges the severity of his crime. On the first day of his stay, Leondert “sincerely wish’d some Accident would befall me to finish these my miserable Days” and “pray’d to God Almighty to put a Period to my Days” (1).

Just as the translator/author recognizes, Leondert knows that he has committed a crime against God, nature and the nation. The adversarial rhetoric employed in this text and others would have been familiar to readers of the early eighteenth century. Furthermore, the common injunctions, especially the “natural” injunctions laid against sodomy, would have been equally familiar to readers of the Hussenlosch text. This text acknowledges the sodomitical “problem” as one that has far reaching consequences for the individual.

For Hussenlosch, his body and his geographic surroundings conspire against him to show

that while God will reject him after death, the “natural” needs of his body and the

“natural” world will conspire against him in the present. For Hussenlosch, and the

sodomitical sub-culture in general, “unnatural nature” will be punished by the natural

world and then eternally damned.

For as many references to God, the afterlife, and his soul that Hussenlosch

records, there are as many to his natural surroundings, the animal and plant life he needs

to survive, and the progressive deterioration of his body. Underpinning this are

comments on his sodomitical act and the consequences of his actions. On his first day,

Hussenlosch “went on the Hills, to see what there might be on the other Side of the Island

proper for me, or any Green or other Things to subsist on, but to my Sorrow found

nothing worth of Notice” (1). While his initial searches turn up nothing on which to

subsist, later that day he “killed three Birds called Boobys, which [he] skin’d and salted and put in the Sun to dry” (2). Through his first two weeks on the island, Hussenlosch is able to find birds and turtles as well as eggs on which to survive. However, the need for fresh water throughout the entire narrative is the problem that most taxes his inventiveness (an interesting dilemma considering water torture was used to lure a confession out of him). Left with a cask of water, Hussenlosch attempts to “put a Spile in it,” however, he loses much of the water when doing this, as if his own actions are programmed for failure. Early in the text, however, besides his mishap with the cask of water, Hussenlosch succeeds in making a tent, preserving water, and locating the

components necessary for survival. Furthermore, after two weeks, like Crusoe he plants

onions, peas and calavances “to try if they would grow, for I could not afford Water to boil them” (4). Hussenlosch is, for the moment, able to find the necessary staples to

survive and constantly thanks God for the provisions. Nonetheless, as May, the

traditional month of promise, turns to June Hussenlosch’s situation rapidly deteriorates.

The first week of June finds Hussenlosch looking for passing ships in hopes of rescue, but he is instead repeatedly given to hallucination. He observes, “how my

Imagination forms every Trifle for a Sail, then look till my Eyes dazzle, and immediately the Object disappears” (7). This is only a hint of what eventually happens to

Hussenlosch’s mental faculties. Unlike Crusoe, Hussenlosch does not thrive in the wild,

natural setting of Ascension Island. While he does generally find turtles and birds to eat,

and does, in fact, find a well that eventually dries up, he is unable to locate sufficient

wood supplies to repair his tent or grow the vegetables he earlier planted. Furthermore,

his decision making processes tend to fail at crucial moments.61 At one of his most desperate moments he finds “a Place where some Water ran out of a hollow rock” (8), but this place, unfortunately, is “exceeding far” from his tent and, consequently, Hussenlosch makes daily trips to the well with his buckets. Oddly enough, he never considers moving his tent closer to the water supply. Later in his journal, when food supplies begin to

dwindle, he finds an “abundance of goats” again “exceeding far” from his tent and again

does not move closer to this possible food source. Of the goats, he says, “I used the

utmost of my Power to catch some, but they were too wild for me” (17). For

Hussenlosch, the “wildness” of this island is untamable, but he also seems

constitutionally incapable of helping himself. Not only are the goats too elusive for him,

but in early August he returns to his vegetables where he perceives “that some of my

Calavances which had been in the Ground about 14 or 15 Days,62 were come up, but to

my great Misfortune, the Vermin, which are plenty on this island, had destroy’d them”

(19).

Hussenlosch is an anti-Crusoe unable to tame the goats and grow even the

paltriest garden. There are numerous goats on the island, vegetables and the seeds necessary to grow a garden and water flowing from the hollow rock, but each of these provisions haunts rather than sustains him. Instead of items which can be propagated and will contribute to his survival, these items become markers for the impossibility of survival. The goats cannot be tamed, the vegetables are attacked by vermin and the water source eventually dries up. It is not that the tools necessary for survival are unavailable; it is that they are not cultivated. For Hussenlosch, nature on the Island of Ascension becomes an extension of his sodomitical crime. Just as his was a crime against God, nature and, consequently, the nation, the Island itself will not yield to him in any productive way. Because Hussenlosch is a sodomite (one of the voices tells him “no

Bougre”)63 he is an emasculated figure unable to reproduce in both sexual terms as a man

and agricultural terms as tender of the natural landscape of Ascension Island. In other

words, nature itself resists Hussenlosch’s attempts at taming, seeding, and harvesting,

thus punishing him with a barren environment. It is at moments like this that the rhetoric

of redemption and punishment collide, leaving Leondert barred from the Christian

promise of salvation by the particular nature of his sin. “Ascension” proves a bitterly

ironic name for him. Leondert’s refusal to relocate and make the necessary adjustments

for survival suggests that he possesses an unregenerate nature—one destined to reproduce

error. Nature consistently teases him with the prospect of survival but ultimately hastens

his demise.64 On July 3rd, Hussenlosch wonders “how the Goats live here in the dry

Season” (17). The question hints at two distinct facts: that the goats not only promise a

stable food source but also live during the dry months. Hussenloch languishes in August

because he is unable to find water, however, he never returns to the goats to see what

they have done for water. In short, he does not learn from nature but instead neglects

evidence that is not immediately providential.

While the natural realm deprives Hussenlosch by constantly allowing him

sustenance only to remove it, his body and his mind become parallel markers of his

physical deterioration, his deplorable condition, and his ultimate descent into madness.

Hussenlosch is not the master of this island, its inhabitants and natural resources or, in fact, his own sanity. Hussenlosch’s deterioration stems from his physical and mental inadequacies and is realized in the apparitions that abuse him both physically and

mentally. Nature, a force that harbors the potential for organization and the model for a

utopian culture becomes a dystopia that contributes to Hussenlosch’s madness and death.

Beginning on June 16th and continuing for the entirety of his stay on the Island,

Hussenlosch is tormented by the specters of men he knew in the past. While it is difficult

to say whether these men were lovers or were men who prosecuted him for his sexual

practices, they provide the backdrop for the conclusion of his journal. Prior to his first

experience with the apparitions, Hussenlosch is in arguably the best condition of his stay

on the island. The dry season is not yet upon him, he has an ample water supply, and he consistently finds turtles and birds for food. At least at this point in his journal, he is

surviving and doing reasonably well. However, on June 16th, following consecutive days

of relative prosperity (including finally finding fire wood), he is tormented by the first of

many specters:

June 16. About Eight or Nine a-Clock at Night, by guess, I was surprised with a Noise of the most horrid and dreadful Swearing and Cursing, mixt with such Blasphemous Discourse, that no humane Creature can express, nor dare I write it with my Pen; it seem’d to me as tho’ all the Devils had broke out of Hell. I was certain there was no Man on the Island but my self, and yet I felt my self pull’d by the Nose, Cheeks, etc. and beat all over my Body and Face. I endeavour’d to Pray incessantly to God Almighty to protect me in this my deplorable Condition, but could not for my Fright compose my Thoughts; They tormented me without ceasing in this manner for several Hours, but towards Morning I got a little Rest; then got up and return’d God Thanks for his mercifull Protection: Tho’ I was still shov’d, and heard the same hellish Noise. In the Afternoon I took my Prayer Book and read Prayers proper for a dying Man, and placed my Confidence in Jesus, God’s Son, who dy’d on the Cross for our Sins, and had Hopes of a Forgiveness for my Sins, tho’ at the same Time I heard a Voice plainly say, No Bougre; Nevertheless I put my Trust in the Mercies of Almighty God, who made the Heavens and Earth and all that there in is. Sometimes I have a little Respite, then again hear them plain and feel them sensibly, but don’t so much mind them. I think it my Duty to discover these Things (tho’ I can’t every Particular, having but few Pens and but a little Paper) as a Warning to all wicked People how they give Ear to the Devil; and that they ought to put their Trust firmly on God Almighty our Lord and Saviour, who died on the Cross for our Sins, and was buried and rose again, assuring themselves, that if he will protect them, all the Devils in Hell can have no Power over them. (10-11)

I quote this passage at length to demonstrate the type of specters tormenting Hussenlosch as well as the point of this torment. According to Lennard Davis, guilt is central to the reading experience of this journal:

In the terms of the work, A Just Vengeance, we have to ask whether or not Svilt is guilty of having had homosexual encounters with Bandino. This decision puts us again in an ambivalent relation to the text—if we see homosexuality as part of a continuum of human experience, then the desire to decide Svilt’s guilt is suspect. On the other hand, if we don’t care to discover the ‘truth’ of the accusation, then can we regard Svilt as a ‘hero’ in the repressed history of sexual intolerance? (85)

Concomitant with the arrival of the specters is Hussenlosch’s admission of guilt. The specters themselves say “No Bougre” referring to their hatred of buggery. However,

Hussenlosch goes on to say, “I heard them speak very plain, and particularly of the

Heinous Sins, that I had committed (for which I hope I have a sincere Repentance)” (11-

12). Even more clearly, as the apparitions continue to haunt him, he admits “I was a

Sodomite, of which I am now too sensible” (13). Admissions of guilt were all too rare in

the British system of legal prosecution, however, this admission reminds us of the water

“cure” that led to Hussenlosch’s initial expression of guilt. We can certainly see that this

admission, similarly to the trial on the ship, comes from physical hardship. Because the

factuality of this text is elusive at best, his admission of guilt could certainly be a

rhetorical strategy by the author to show a sodomite repenting for his sins and the

tribulations he faces because of his crimes, according to the standard narrative of the

repenting sinner that criminal biographies in the period repeatedly recycled.65 Whether

these admissions of guilt are forced out of Hussenlosch or whether they are simply a

strategy employed by the author masks the more fundamental underlying issue: his guilt

was always already decided. In later editions of the text, including those discussed by both Lennard Davis and Evan Davis, authentic trial records appear with the journal and expose Leondert’s admission of guilt. In the first edition, this guilt is solidified both through the rhetoric of the title page (as in Sodomy Punish’d) and that of the preface. The

reader would have approached this text assuming the “hero’s” guilt. Indeed, establishing

guilt for the reader is less important than Leondert’s admission of this guilt. It is, for

Leondert, a matter of repentance and he uses the reader, throughout his journal, as a mode

of confession. On June 18th, one day after he admits to being a sodomite he retells how

he:

[F]ound a Tree that was lately thrown on Shore by the Sea; I cut it in two that I might the easier carry it home, I took one half, and by the Way set it down and rested my self on it, at which Time appeared to me the Resemblance of a Man I had been well acquainted with, whose Name I am afraid to mention; he staid with me some Time, and would not suffer me to take up the Piece of Wood, which I would have done and in a short Time vanished: I then put the Wood on my

Shoulder and carried it Home, and immediately went and fetcht the other Piece. He haunts me so often, that I now scarce mind him. Nevertheless I mention this as an Example for the Reader. (12)

What, exactly, does this example confirm? Is it an indication of how the specters tormented him? Are the specters deliberately attempting to derail his survival efforts?

Or, more likely, is this an example of the consequences for committing sodomy? The specters become the agents through which Leondert confesses his guilt to the reader.

Unlike any of the other extant sodomitical stories, Leondert confesses his sins to God and to the public in hopes that he will not spend eternity in torment. It is the guise of a man

he was “well acquainted with” that drives him to this admission. Hence, it is not only

Leondert’s confession of guilt that is important, but also the confession of a possible

homosexual partner that solidifies his repentance. Leondert, through the torment of the specters and through the apparition of a possible lover admits to committing sodomy.

The reader, in this instance, stands in as judge and jury and the evidence seems rather clear. To get to this point, to enable this admission and the open and public display of guilt and repentance, the specters need to punish Leondert both physically and emotionally. Leondert, even though allowed brief moments of respite, is in an even more deplorable state following his admission. As the dry season arrives, he quickly runs out of water and turns to drinking the blood of turtles and, ultimately, his own urine. His tale ends with the pollution of his own body through his own body.

That Hussenlosch expels his own urine only to ingest it again implies that he is caught in irrevocable circumstances. This cyclical rendering of Leondert’s (re)pollution is suggestive of the human offal associated with sodomy in Arbor Vitae and other texts contemporary with it. The fruit of the Medlar signals the dirt and offal associated with

human excrement, and Leondert’s ingestion of his own biological waste is significant for

similar reasons. While it is apparent that he is forced into this position, it is also clear

that his inability to work within the structured confines nature offers him leads to this

outcome. He fails to tame the goats, locate their drinking source, and husband his food

and water in times of plenty. In many ways, the journal suggests that Leondert’s failures

cause his own pollution. He fails as a properly functional heterosexual man in both his

sexual predilections and his inability to tame the natural world like men before him.

Similar to the botanical erotica that pushed homosexuality to the margins and compared it

to human “offal,” Leondert is unable to work within the newly formed taxonomy that

Carl Linnaeus championed, and, consequently, the categorical formulation of sexuality as

revealed in the erotica. He is neither one nor the other, neither male nor female, but

instead something ambiguous and beyond scientific categorization. Just as Leondert and

his “type” are absent from the labeling so important to the authors of botanical erotica, his mind and body resist and are resisted by his natural surroundings. The product of this dual resistance is a journal that does not focus on the sufferings of a man, but the deficiencies and inadequacies associated with his desire for other men. Leondert

Hussenlosch is not a hero, and is certainly not the hero of a “repressed history of sexual intolerance” (Lennard Davis 85). Instead, the natural world of the island and the repercussions of Leondert’s own “unnatural nature” become the “heroes” of this text.

Left to his own devices, Leondert cannot match other contemporary travel narratives: this incompetence, a direct result of his sodomitical desire, is punished by both external and internal nature, an outcome not only righteous, but expected in an overtly homophobic culture.

CHAPTER 3

MAPPING THE MOLLY: (RE)DEFINING HOMOSEXUAL SPACE AT THE METROPOLITAN MARGINS

Has not wise Nature strung the Legs and Feet With firmest Nerves, design’d to walk the Street? Has she not given us hands, to groap aright, Amidst the frequent dangers of the Night? And think’st thou not the double nostril meant, To warn from oily Woes by previous scent? (John Gay, Trivia, 69)

Social space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather, it subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity—their relative order and/or relative disorder. (Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 73)

While the natural world offered the condemned sodomite the possibility of correction and the certainty of punishment, the post-Fire urban environment of London afforded homosexual men something wholly different.66 Various scholars have

demonstrated that the city was an arena to disavow and punish prurient activity, but it

also offered homosexual men a modicum of respite from an otherwise inflexible sexual

ideology.67 In his historical overview, Homosexuality and the City, Robert Aldrich

observes that, “Since the time of the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah and classical Athens,

homosexuality has been associated with the city” and that, “the urban centres have been

conducive to homosexual expression, whether integrated into or transgressive against

social norms” (1719). Early eighteenth-century London integrated the transgressive

sodomitical social type because of the city’s particular and paradoxical ability to both

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hide and expose “deviant” behavior. Aldrich briefly enumerates why the urban environment has been so integral to formations of homosexual and urban identities:

The reasons are not difficult to discern. Cities offered a larger selection of partners than smaller towns and villages. Crowds provided anonymity and, where homosexual acts remained illegal, a measure of safety. Migrants could break out of the strictures imposed elsewhere, locating new ‘sub-cultures’ to satisfy reprobate desires. Libido, hope for friendship and romance, and a need for money, drove them to search out casual, situational or long-term partners or patrons. (1721)

What stands out in the above account, besides its terminal brevity, is the urban environment’s duality as both a complex site of possible pleasure and one of inevitable pain. The city afforded the sodomite a large amount of space, a larger pool of potential partners, and, concomitantly, a larger number of pitfalls. However, the city is not simply habitable space devoid of content or context dependant on its inhabitant’s comings and goings, but is instead a space that both affects and is affected by the individual. This symbiotic relationship has not been ignored by theorists of urban homosexuality such as

Henning Bech who, in many ways, ground their arguments in the agency of urban space.

For Beck, “Male homosexual existence is…rooted essentially in the city as its basic life space” (146) where the homosexual is “an existence of the city and not merely someone existing in the city” (262). The city offers homosexual men “proximity and distance, surface and depth, crowd and loneliness” which is simultaneously “attractive and alarming” (112). There are, for Beck, centripetal and centrifugal urban institutions, mores, and spaces that attract homosexual men and then attempt to extirpate them. What the city offers homosexual men, in Beck’s terms, is a place to hide, explore, and exist— as men at the sexual and metropolitan margins—in relative safety. While Beck specifically explores modern homosexuality and urban identity, he, like Aldrich, relies on

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a historical continuum that posits homosexual men as having always been produced by

the city and integral in its production. Consequently, the rhetoric used to describe

sodomites in an urban context reveals not so much a radical difference between

homosexual deviant and orthodox heterosexual but an exaggerated depiction of

sodomites (both by observers and themselves) that heightens similar but muted disorders

in the urban behavior of all citizens and in the symbolic life of the city itself: what appear

to be dichotomies are, in fact, elements in this continuum.

When speaking of a homosexual continuum in the early eighteenth century,

however, we lack the urban testimonials so important to modern studies such as Bech’s.68

As I recounted in previous chapters, we have not located a corpus of texts written by homosexual men about homosexuality. We do not definitively know what they thought of post-Fire London, the Society for the Reformation of Manners (SRM), molly houses, the proliferation of print that exposed them, or their own sexual identity. We can, of course, speculate that they likely detested the SRM and found liberation in the urban molly house. What we can say, with some certainty however, is that the practice of sodomy and the molly social type was a distinctly urban one. In other words, the molly and the sodomite were urban social types and the rhetorical positioning of the sodomite within urban space was powerful because of the longstanding opposition between country and city, or, in other words, between the natural environment with its particular moral vernacular, and urban space with its characteristic language of right and wrong. In this chapter I investigate how the molly is positioned in terms of urban ethics, specifically addressing his association with the extravagance of urban motion, his portrayal as a usurper of public and private urban spaces, and his identification as a persistent urban

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threat. In these terms, the molly is connected to urban waste insofar as his “sewer

sexuality” is a reminder of an urbanite’s civic responsibility.

While it is likely homosexual men lived and thrived in England, very little is

known about sodomitical practices outside of London.69 Randolph Trumbach and Rictor

Norton have done extensive work on the spaces occupied by the sodomitical social type

and why these spaces were effective for homosexual trysts. In London’s Sodomites,

Trumbach notes that, “As a result of the prosecuting activities of the Societies for the

Reformation of Manners, the public was made aware in the 1720s that there were five or

six places spread across London and Westminster where sodomites could meet each

other” (15). While I doubt the prosecutions alone made the public aware (other

documents mark places as “sodomitical haunts”), these prosecutions specified the type of

place a sodomite would “haunt.” The known “haunts” in London and Westminster were

“the coffee-houses around the Royal Exchange, Moorfields, the latrines of Lincoln’s Inn,

the piazzas of Covent Garden, and the south side of St. James Park” (15). Field Lane in

Holborn where Mother Clap’s molly house was located can also be added to this list.

There were more than twenty active molly houses in London during the first generation of the eighteenth century at which men would meet on Sunday evenings to practice their

“secret rites.”70 What is obvious in the types of places attractive to mollies and sodomites

alike is a concentrated mix of both public spectacle and private affair. Areas like Upper-

Moorfields, which acquired an unsavory reputation in the sixteenth century, contained a

path by the wall that separated Upper and Middle-Field, commonly known as the

“Sodomite’s Walk.” This walk “was not a thoroughfare for errand boys; it was a

thoroughfare for men looking for action” (Norton 126). William Brown was arrested in

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Upper-Moorfields and Thomas Wright kept a Molly House near Moorfields. Areas like

Moorfields and Lincoln’s Inn “whose ‘Bog-Houses’ or public toilets are cited as notorious molly markets” (127) comprise the most common areas at which sodomites and mollies met. These spaces, as well as others, helped to codify a cultural understanding of the social type. Simultaneously public and private, oftentimes suggestive of pollution and extravagance, mollies were synonymous with human offal and excess because of the

“Bog-Houses” and public houses they used for “illicit” sexual activity. The discourse on homosexuality repeatedly established such rhetorical connections between sodomy and pollution in order to link sexual deviance to a specific urban anxiety about keeping

London streets orderly and clean.

Although their affairs were clandestine, often occurring at night, the sodomite/molly was known by his urban locales as much as for them. These spaces defined the social type just as the social type defined the spaces. If Upper-Moorfields was “known” as the “Sodomite’s Walk” then sodomites were equally known because they occupied and defined this type of space. Post-Fire spaces in London are well known for their dark corners and secluded alleys, as well as the spaces opened up by the conflagration. The literature of post-Fire London is almost obsessive in its attempts to

(re)define, map, expose, and de-clutter a London that has become “as deformed as the minds and confusions of the people” (Evelyn, Character of England 29). John Evelyn, in his Diary, comments on how the fire has collapsed boundaries thus causing socio- economic as well as spatio-temporal confusion:

Nor was I yet able to passé through any of the narrower streets, but kept the widest, the ground and aire, smoake and fiery vapour, continud so intense, my haire being almost seinged, and my feete unsufferably surbated: The bielanes and narrower streets were quite fill’d up with rubbish, nor could one have possibly

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knowne where he was, but by the ruines of some church, or hall, that had some remarkable towre or pinnacle remaining: I then went towards Islington, and high- gate, where one might have seene two hundred thousand people of all ranks and degrees, dispersed, and laying along by their heapes of what they could save from the Incendium. (III: 461)

As the Fire still rages, Evelyn’s account pinpoints the immediacy of “such visible social

disintegration [that] haunts all immediate genres of the narrative account of the Fire”

(Wall 11). His observations, however, also express the immediate immobilization and

spatio-temporal confusion enacted by the Fire. His perambulations through the once

familiar streets are now retarded. He is “[un]able to pass through…the narrower streets”

and the streets were “fill’d up with rubbish.” The architectural landmarks are now simply

“some church, or hall.” Moreover, class distinctions are now effaced in lieu of “two

hundred thousand people of all ranks and degrees.” For Evelyn, the familiar streets of

London, the historical landmarks that define space, and the entrenched socio-economic

distinctions all collapse so that the city and its inhabitants are only known by “what they

could save.”

Pepys, too, sees the effects of the Fire when he goes to the Exchange only to find

“nothing standing there of all the statues or pillars but Sir Tho. Gresham’s picture in the

corner” (VII: 276). He also notes of Moorfields that it is “full of people, and poor

wretches carrying their goods there, and everybody keeping his goods together by

themselves” (VII: 276). Pepys, like Evelyn, observes in the Fire not simply a loss, but a

collapse of distinctions that defined metropolitan life. The inhabitants of London defined

stability through the possessions they attempted to maintain while the city was defined by

one’s motions in its streets and its architectural significance. The Fire hindered motion

and consumed private goods thus throwing both individual and urban identity into

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confusion, estranging the city and its inhabitants. However, the reconstruction of London would help assuage the estrangement felt by its inhabitants. This was done through a redefinition of space in which urban mobility and civic responsibility define metropolitan space: a space the molly social type would come to inhabit.

In her study, The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London, Cynthia

Wall offers perhaps the most thorough account of urban space through “the rhetoric of loss” in post-Fire London. For Wall:

The rhetorics of loss generated by the Fire, in official narratives, sermons, diaries, and poems, all share to some degree a heightened spatial consciousness in imagery and expression, an awareness of a new kind of conceptual emptiness in the ruined physical spaces, of boundaries previously invisible and now transgressed, of structures previously assumed and now collapsed, of spaces once fixed and stable, now shifting and treacherous. (4)

The treachery of space in Wall’s account destabilizes sign and signifier, which indicates a further destabilization of an individual, urban identity. Wall contends that inhabitants of post-Fire London were acutely aware of urban destabilization and its effects on urban identity. To her, “Too many distinctions seemed to collapse: the streets were closed, emptied of buildings and refilled with rubble, their defensive chains melted; the privacy of houses, the sanctuaries of churches, the institutionalized spaces of the Company Halls, all alike were blown open and lost; rich and poor spilled homeless into Moorfields; the very fabric of urban and social meaning was undone into topographic incoherence” (6).

The urban self, then, is similarly damaged in a Fire that, “destroyed four-fifths of the historical, commercial, topographic, and imaginative center of London” (5). The outcome of this topographical destruction is an explosion of literatures intent on redefining the streets of London and those who inhabit them. For those who inhabited

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London and those who wrote about the metropole, the effort was intended “to make lived

space once again known space” (38).

In an effort to redefine and (re)know urban spaces in the early half of the

eighteenth century, authors show “that Londoners well understood that it was not enough

to recover the streets and reinstate street names; reinhabiting the new city demanded that

the occupant also map that behavior” ( Wall 117). There were numerous responses in

various genres to the rebuilt city and one’s (in)ability to navigate or map behavior in it.

Oftentimes, these renditions suggest an urban ambivalence in which pleasure and success

are tempered by a fear of what lies within the city. Wall notes this fear of London in

direct relation to the Fire:

Like the insistent public fear that the enemy was socially “within”—the catholics, the fanatics, those extremists amongst us—and the spiritual certainty that the Fire was God’s judgment for the interior sins of the city, so many of the poems and Fire narratives reveal a lurking anxiety about the general interiority of fire, nurtured in our secret darkness, in a place where literal fact and psychological metaphor far too full overlap. (33)

Early eighteenth-century authors feared the lurking footpad, the aggressive sodomite and

the “pox’t whore” for what they intimated about the dark spaces of urbanity. These

criminal deviants became the focus for a slew of publications from John Gay’s Beggar’s

Opera to Henry Fielding’s Enquiry Into the causes of the Late Increase in Robbers. In

these works and many others, London allows the civic minded and the criminal deviant spaces in which to blend and thrive. For the civic minded, the lighted streets of business and industry, and for the deviant, the darkened alleys and public houses of ill repute become areas of production no longer governed by immobilization, as they were for

Evelyn and Pepys, but areas of action and mobility used for mapping virtuous behavior as well as vice.

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There are far too many examples of urban behavioral cartography to enumerate

here, however, there are a few examples throughout the first half of the century that

highlight urban duality. In his essay, Eighteenth-Century London: Urban Paradise or

Fallen City, Arthur Weitzman argues that, “feelings of fear and despair toward the city

were anticipated by the writers whom we think of as the quintessence of cosmopolitan

politeness: Pope, Swift, Gay, Fielding, and even Dr. Johnson in some of his moods. On the other hand, what one also finds among the Augustans is a real sense of an urban ideal,

a heightened longing for a life possible only in the city” (469-470). The Scriblerian

morality of Pope and Swift, although at times ambivalent, shows an overwhelming distaste for the city. For Pope, the ills of authorship directly correlate to the disintegration of aristocratic ideals and thus the city:

Time was, a sober Englishman wou’d knock His servants up, and rise by five a clock, Instruct his Family in ev’ry rule, And send his Wife to Church, his Son to school. To worship like his Fathers was his care; To teach their frugal Virtues to his Heir; To prove, that Luxury could never hold; And place, on good Security, his gold. Now Times are chang’d, and one Poetick Itch Has seiz’d the Court and City, Poor and Rich. (Imitations of Horace, Ep. II, 161- 170)

He would later ask in his Imitations, “And here, while Town, and Court, and City

roars,/With Mobs, and Duns, and Soldiers, at their doors;/Shall I, in London, act this idle

part?/Composing Songs, for Fools to get by heart? (Ep. II. ii, 123-126). Pope produces a

“rhetoric of loss,” as Cynthia Wall has outlined, which struggles to negotiate past glory

and contemporary avarice. More specifically, however, Pope questions a similar loss of

distinction between liberal author and Grub Street Hack, between the “Poor and Rich”,

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between city, town, and court, and between “Mobs, and Duns, and Soldiers.” In Pope’s

terms, London has become a city of unrefined action in which the use of the aggressive verb “seiz’d” intones that London and its inhabitants have been taken by vice both without their consent and completely unawares. Furthermore, to say that “one Poetick itch” has caused this calamity is to negate the numerous and necessary steps to a productive urban life. In these terms, the public and the private lives of London’s

citizens are affected by idleness and a lack of virtuous activity necessary to regain

London’s glorious past. Also evident is that the “sober Englishman” is on the move. He moves fluidly between public and private lives in an ordered and ordering fashion.71 His

motion is rational, linear, and laden with purpose.

While Pope’s vision is an intellectual foray in order to re-educate his readers,

numerous comments on the city are much more tactile. For Jonathan Swift:

Filth of all Hues and Ordours seem to tell What Street they sailed from, by their Sight and Smell. They, as each Torrent drives, with rapid Force From Smithfield, or St. Pulchre’s shape their Course, And in huge Confluent join at Snow-Hill Ridge, Fall from the Conduit prone to Holborn-Bridge. Sweeping from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts, and Blood. Drown’d Puppies, stinging Sprats, all drench’d in Mud, Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood. (A Description of a City Shower, 409-410)

The city in these lines is an amalgam of torrential smells and sights not one of which is appealing. The inhabitants are infected by the sights and smells of the streets from whence they came and contract the city as they walk through its streets past stalls and dead animals. However, it is not just the action of individuals in the city, but also the action of the city. While inclement weather has produced the motion, the items in the streets and the smells that linger are urban productions and are only put in motion

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because they exist in the city. The city and its inhabitants produce these commercial by- products and the city must cleanse itself through a purification of water. The biblical assonance here equates London to a fallen city that must be purged, via the “flood,” of those who live within its borders. Laura Brown, in her study Fables of Modernity:

Literature and Culture in the English Eighteenth Century, demonstrates that the

etymological and phonetic connection between “sewer” and “shower” shows that

“Swift’s poem leads in an inexorable rush—characteristic of the vitality of this figure—to

the urban sewer” (27). She also notes that, “the sewer is a phenomenon that structures

urban geography, tying the distant and socially disparate parts of the city to one network

with the common necessary purpose of waste disposal” (28). This connection between

urban inhabitants and urban waste is highly visible in other texts such as John Dryden’s

Mac Flecknoe, Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, and John Gay’s Trivia; of the Art of Walking

the Street.72 In these texts, the sewer/shower trope connects urban inhabitants, urban

mobility, and urban waste to “the material degradation of city life” (Brown 26).

Urbanites must always be moving if they are to avoid the waste that they helped produce.

While Pope’s masculine character moves seamlessly between public and private spheres

as an effective husband, father and businessman, Swift’s urban inhabitants are

simultaneously affected by the city and affect the city itself in terms of urban pollution

and human waste. The molly social type, a product of the urban environment, is similarly

governed by urban mobility that positions him in public walks, latrines, and bog-houses

as well as private molly houses. The molly correlates to “sewer sexuality,” a sexual

social type linked with urban pollution, human offal, and human extravagance. These

associations align the molly with urban waste and contribute to the perpetuation of

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orthodox sexuality. In these ways, the molly is often characterized through his urban

position and the spaces he occupies.

Other texts such as A Trip Through Town, A Trip from St. James to the Royal

Exchange, A View of London and Westminster; or The Town Spy, Hell Upon Earth, and

Satan’s Harvest Home similarly paint the city and its inhabitants as one in perpetual and often objectionable motion. Many of these authors also describe the city, as Weitzman has argued, in binary terms that represent a “fallen city” in need of cleansing and reconstruction. A Trip from St. James to the Royal Exchange (1744), for example, records an initial response to the city, its inhabitants, and its penchant for vice that is less than flattering:

This Place [London] is a kind of large Forest of wild Creatures, ranging about at a venture, equally savage, and mutually destructive of each other. The splendid Equipages we see in every Part of the Town, are an indication of an approaching Poverty, and too plainly foretell Bankruptcy to Crouds of miserable People. (B)

For this author, the motion of the city does not point to splendor and fascination, but instead to the brutality of urban life. The inhabitants of this London move about town as

“savages” in order to destroy each other. Furthermore, the “splendid” means by which they traverse the streets of London marks them, paradoxically, as spendthrifts, thus highlighting fiscal abuses and impending economic disaster. Even more noticeable, however, is that this is happening in “every Part of Town.” As is the case in much eighteenth-century figurations of identity, outside appearance says something very specific about identity. In this case, the “miserable people” are everywhere “savage” and everywhere irresponsible. In this scene, the way one moves about town indicates the way people live both their public and private lives. A spendthrift in private is a savage in

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public and one incapable of the civic-minded duties necessary to a highly functional

mercantile culture.

The first lines of Hell Upon Earth (1729) also portray urban inhabitants and the

city as “fallen.” Between 6:00 and 7:00 Sunday morning, the author notices:

Coaches, Chaises, Chairs, Phaetons, and Hackney Horses harnessing and getting ready for Citizens and their Wives, Doxies and Daughters.— Lascivious Gentlemen and Tradesmen stealing from their Maid Servants Garrets to their own Bed-Chambers.— Irishmen meditating the Destruction of Maids, Wives, Widows and Trades-People on their Pillows.— Infirm and superannuated Letchers plagued in their Beds with impracticable Desires.— News-Mongers inventing Stories of Rapes, Riots, Robberies, etc. for their next Papers.— Obscurity, Flatness and Impertinency flowing in upon the Meditations of certain Poetasters. (2)

These “Observations of the Sabbath, in the good cities of London and Westminster” are obviously not “good” observations of a “good” city. Instead, these “Observations” further depict the city and its inhabitants in a state of constant and problematic motion.

From the public street with its “Coaches” and “Chairs” to the private machinations of

“Gentlemen,” “Tradesmen,” and “Irishmen,” the city and its (male) inhabitants are constantly on the move. Just as the text shifts seamlessly between public and private criminal activity, the men committing the acts are “harnessing,” “stealing,” “meditating,” and “inventing.” The use of the present progressive tense in the above descriptions

suggests that these activities are happening at the moment. This use positions urban motion and its connection to vice in a perpetual present. The men in the above passage will always be scheming, will always be moving, and will always be using the city and its inhabitants for their malicious machinations. The molly social type is often equated to the urban ills outlined in A Trip from St. James to the Royal Exchange and Hell Upon

Earth. Mollies are extravagant in their “secret rites” and are thus often connected to

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fiscal abuse. Because of this, mollies are linked with civil disobedience, with irreverence for London’s streets, its inhabitants, and the spaces they so often occupy. Narrators of anti-molly tracts often present their portrayals in temporal confusion. They shift seamlessly between the present progressive and past tenses in an effort to show that the

mollies are still active, but are also actively pursued. In these cases, the molly is aligned

with urban life to show that sodomy embodies the impurity of city life, its rich sensuality, and its fluid and mobile energy.

Other authors characterize the city in terms that highlight the pleasures offered by urban space. Fanny Hill’s first impression of London’s streets is governed by sensory imagery: “As we passed thro’ the greatest streets that led to our inn, the noise of the coaches, the hurry, the crowds of foot passengers, in short, the new scenery of the shops and houses at once pleased and amazed me” (4). For her, mid-century London promotes not only urban activity but also a euphoric passage through social space. For Fanny, the hustle and bustle of the city streets, prompted by urban planning that situates public establishments and domestic abodes in close proximity, transforms normally pejorative words such as “noise” and “hurry” into positive nouns. And, like Fanny, the inhabitants of London are constantly mobile, always moving to new “scenery” that is likely, in

Fanny’s terms, to “please and amaze.” In all the above cases action and motion are part of an individual’s urban existence and experience. What these scenarios also suggest is that urban inhabitants both reflect the complexities of urban life and are agents in the production of urban experience.

A particularly revealing example of the urbanite’s position as both urban agent and urban subject is John Bancks’ A Description of London. Bancks’ brief poem neither

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comments on the city as a “fallen paradise” in Scriblerian terms nor on its splendor as

Fanny does. Each line of his poem groups together divergent items in an effort to demonstrate the lack of boundaries and restrictions, the loss of order and the chaos of urban life:

Houses, Churches, mix’d together; Streets, unpleasant in all weather; Prisons, Palaces, contiguous; Gates; a Bridge; the Thames irriguous. (1-4)

In beginning with the architecture of the city, Bancks frames the contents of his poem as well as its form. Immediately noticeable is the rhetorical motion of the words and punctuation. Just as houses, churches, prisons, and palaces are all jumbled together in the urban landscape so, too, are the words. Using only commas to separate this architectural list makes the words themselves “contiguous.” There is a division between the items on his list which has the paradoxical effect of bringing them rhythmically closer together.

Also, the linguistic paucity and reliance on punctuation to connect these nouns produces a staccato effect that suggests Bancks finds this architectural “mix” troublesome. Brief and non-descript, the architectural make-up of the city clearly reflects its inhabitants.

While the city suffers from architectural chaos, the streets are inhabited by throngs of urbanites who are all “Showy Outsides; Insides Empty.” Mixed among the urban crowds are “Lawyers, Poets, Priests, Physicians; Noble, Simple, all Conditions”

(13-14). He also distinctly comments on “Rogues that nightly rob and shoot Men” and how “Villainy—bedaub’d all over.” For Bancks, urban inhabitants mirror their architectural surroundings. They are not simply “outside” the architecture and “Showy

Outsides,” but are instead urbanites that exist in the city and with the architecture.

Everyone and everything that inhabits the city, whether buildings, “Coaches,

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wheelbarrows, carts,” or thieves play some part in urban motion. The relationship of the people to their city is a complicated one where each inhabitant, whether noble or simple, handsome or ugly, has some part to play. The individual inhabitants are agents in defining their individual and distinct lived space as well as contribute to the momentum of the city. Footpads, in this case, are just as integral to the city as poets and physicians.

Each has a role to play in constructing London as a city of both pleasure and pain, of both comfort and fear—a duality that is marked in the last stanza of the poem when he writes,

“Many a Bargain, if you strike it:/This is London! How d’ye like it?” The final question only makes the previous conditional more forceful. The mixing of classes, buildings, and people produce a London that is conversely full of possibility; full of “bargains” but only if the urban individual is willing to “strike it.” This further suggests that each inhabitant contributes to the production and perception of the city, and also that individuals, because of this chaos, control some aspects of both the city and their place in it. For Bancks, possibility and opportunity are characteristics of post-Fire London, and it is the readers’ responsibility to judge, use, and remake London on their own terms. In the end, Bancks portrays London as one that gives the urbanite ample opportunity for fortune and bankruptcy, pleasure and pain. In order to answer whether they like London or not, the urban individual must be in constant motion, moving through the city, acting in the urban landscape and making of it what they will.

The above literary scenarios offer, I think, a brief view of the ways London is configured by eighteenth-century authors. While these authors may have had slightly different conceptions of the city and how individuals affected it and were affected by it, there are consistent topoi in their renditions. Whether an individual author found the city

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distasteful and dangerous or exciting and tempting the common thread is always motion

and space. The inherent question posed by authors such as Pope, Swift, and Bancks is

how the urban subject interacts with such polymorphous surroundings. The city and its

inhabitants are in perpetual motion, moving fluidly between spaces, unraveling the dark

corners and alleys of London while simultaneously being unraveled by them. For other

urban authors like John Gay and Daniel Defoe, as well as the ones mentioned in the

chapter, the city, its streets, its locales, and its people all contribute to the production of urban space and urban identity.73

Authors and scholars alike analyze the production of urban identity, investigating diverse and oftentimes divergent literary traditions to suggest that the city and its inhabitants co-exist. They have not, however, investigated how the molly/sodomite social type “fit” into Augustan urban space. It has been easy for scholars of early homosexuality to observe that sodomy was an urban phenomenon. However, to say simply that this social-type was an urban phenomenon begs the question of how it was configured in urban spaces. The historical records indicate that sodomy was both a public and private affair that occurred at the “Sodomite’s Walk” of Moorfields, the public latrines at Lincoln’s Inn, and the private molly houses in East London. Publicly characterized as sexually active and aggressive, the few depictions of molly houses and their participants do not highlight sex between men but instead highlight the spaces these men occupied in the streets of London and their effect on these spaces. However, the above scenarios rarely address domestic ideology; they seem, instead, compulsively attracted to the public, mercantile, sanitary, and interactive energies of the street. Most tracts devoted to urban behavioral mapping neglect domesticity in order to

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metaphorically separate the city and the “house,” to draw lines between urban pollution and urban chaos and domestic ideology. However, the mollies jeopardize the public streets and private “houses” because their fluid urban mobility is not orderly or organizing. They engage in private and disorderly “deviant” behavior in public “haunts” and private “houses” that, once disclosed, is publicly punished at the pillories and public marches. Thus, both textual embodiments of the mollies and their public punishments position them as usurpers of private space and corruptors of urban locales.

The two extant accounts of molly house sub-culture are both part of larger works.74 The most famous one is Ned Ward’s account in his History of London Clubs.75

There is, however, a lesser know version in Jonathan Wild’s response to a published attack he received from Charles Hitchin.76 As with other contemporary accounts, Wild

has a particular strategy behind his publication. He is retaliating to a vicious pamphlet

published by Hitchin that attacked Wild’s character as well as his unsavory business

practices. Jonathan Wild and Charles Hitchin have a long and tumultuous history. Wild

was a rather prolific and popular thief while Hitchin was the Under City Marshall and

was accused of abusing the power that came with his office. The point of Wild’s many

tales is to reveal Hitchin’s devious character as a defense of himself. What Wild’s tale of the molly house also does, however, is give a brief, although less detailed image than

Ward’s account of molly house sub-culture. What is initially striking about this account is the absence of the typically vitriolic rhetoric accorded sodomites in the period. Wild does not call them “unnatural” or “not fit to be named,” but instead uses “He-Whore” and

“Sodomite” as terms of identification, not condemnation. In other words, Wild talks of

the mollies as if they are a known part of the criminal underworld who occupy a distinct

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and non-threatening space in urban nightlife. This omission is further revealing because

of the account’s purpose, which was to lambast Hitchin’s character. Wild does not align

Hitchin’s character with the degenerate molly, but instead sets up the molly as a victim of

Hitchin’s vengeance.

Wild’s description of molly activity itself is not very different from other

accounts:

The Men calling one another my Dear, hugging and kissing, tickling and feeling each other, as if they were a mixture of wanton Males and Females; and assuming effeminate voices, Female Airs, etc. Some telling others that they ought to be whipped for not coming to school more frequently. (30-31)

However, the action that Wild describes is that of “Males and Females.” In all other accounts of sodomy and molly activity the men participate in illicit gender conversion which positions them as accepting “all female deportment” and thus their assumed femininity is never tempered by typical masculine behavior. They are, in other words,

men becoming women and not a “mixture” of those prescribed gender roles.

Furthermore, Wild calls their effeminacy “assumed.” Attaching the verb “assumed” to

“effeminate voices” firmly establishes them as men and not women. Their affected voices are not actually their voices at all, but are instead the voices of their feminine roles. Wild also terms this encounter an “Amusing Adventure” in which “M----l’s”

(Hitchin’s) man accompanies his master to the club only because it’s a “curiosity [he] has not hitherto met with” (30). The molly activity in the house was a “curiosity” and an

“amusing adventure” that positions its members as a harmless and clandestine London club, one that is desexualized, passive, and mobile. While they may kiss and hug, there is never any hint of penetrative sexual congress between the participants. This is not to

suggest, of course, that it did not occur, but to indicate that Wild found the club

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essentially harmless to both himself and the London he inhabited. The space detailed by

Wild in his account is not one of confinement but is instead one of mobility. The mollies are free to move about both within the private confines of the house and the public streets. It is not until Hitchin is “wronged” and the mollies leave the house that they are entrapped and persecuted by Hitchin.

Hitchin lays a trap for the mollies and captures them in full female regalia on the streets of London. Once prosecuted, the mollies are ordered to “be publickly convey’d thro’ the Street in their various Female Habits. The young Tribe of Sodomites were pursuant to my Lord Mayor’s Order.” This punishment was “so mortifying to one of the young Gentlemen, that he died a few days after his releasment” (40-41). Hitchin is eventually blackmailed into having the men released and is himself tried for attempted sodomy some years later, however, the final lines of the account do not simply tell of

Hitchin’s betrayal and blackmail; they also produce a sense of pity for the mollies and even seek to extol their civic character. The mollies in this tale do not resist punishment, they relinquish themselves to it without complaint. Also, the molly who died of shame is called a “Gentleman.” This type of language is rarely if ever attached to the molly social type in contemporary descriptions. While Wild’s purpose is to show Hitchin’s sinister character, he unmistakably paints the mollies as not only victims but also as innocent bystanders in Hitchin’s designs. In the end, the public street becomes the space in which the mollies are both captured and punished. Forcing them to walk the public streets in female garb is to put their punishment in action. Through this punishment the spectator associates molly and sodomitical activity with the city, with the streets on which they walk, and with the areas in which they meet. This civic-minded approach to public

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punishment is intended to introduce the sodomite to the inhabitants of the city in an

attempt to elicit civic surveillance. The city and its spaces, once sexually liberating, have become similarly limiting. While Wild may paint a more benign image of the molly sub- culture, the result is similar to those encountered in other contemporary publications.

These mollies, while not pilloried, are instead publicly shamed and publicly exposed to delineate the spaces they occupy and how they occupy them. Mollies occupied public

streets and private “houses” in the garb of “wanton” women. To position them, as the

Lord Mayor does, actively mobile in the streets, paraded in front of urban inhabitants,

and in feminine attire, is to specifically link mollies and their private activity to the streets

of London as sites of pollution, mobility, sensory plentitude, and spectacle. The mollies,

in this public display, are aligned with urban extravagance, clutter, and vice.

Furthermore, this public march attaches this group of mollies to a specific urban

locale. As with the pillory, sodomites and mollies are publicly punished in the area where the crime was committed. This scene is obviously no different. These mollies are directly connected with both specific urban space (the molly house) and the city as a whole. They stand in as the vice-ridden characters detailed in Hell Upon Earth and as the

“wild creatures” from A Trip from St. James to the Royal Exchange. Furthermore, just as

Swift observers that, “Filth of all Hues and Ordours seem to tell/What Street they sailed

from,” the mollies are “filth” associated with a specific urban location. In these ways, the

molly social type exudes urban associations because he is both an agent in the

appropriation of urban space and subject of the urban environment. Moreover, in

Bancks’ terms, the mollies make of the city what they can. They find brief moments of

respite in the privacy of molly houses only to be punished on the very same streets. The

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mollies’ connection to the city is one of production and destruction of urban space. By aligning mollies to the city, authors connect them to private corruption and urban ills. In this process, authors such as Ned Ward employ public punishment and private

“deviance” to enact discursive silence.

Sodomy, often termed “the sin not to be named” is “unnamed” in Ned Ward’s vivid description of a molly club. Because of its detail, Ward’s account has been one of the most actively mined sources of information for scholars interested in the sodomitical underground in the early eighteenth century. According to Rictor Norton, Ned Ward’s account in The History of London Clubs offers us “more trustworthy evidence” than other accounts. For Brian Cowan, “Ward’s purpose in these works was the standard satirical one of scourging ‘vice and villany’ in society at large but not with respect to particular persons” (349). Both Norton’s and Cowan’s account of Ward’s approach are equally incomplete. Norton fails to notice that Ward’s “trustworthy evidence” also includes entries on the Farting Club, the No Nose Club and the Bawdy Club. I have no doubt that molly clubs did exist, but I do not think that Norton’s reliance on Ward’s entry (or any others for that matter) can be viewed as definitive evidence or an accurate description of the men who frequented said clubs. While Cowan is correct that Ward is “scourging” urban groups, his critiques do more than simply satirize behaviors Ward finds amusing or detestable. Cameron McFarlane has posited a more useful approach to Ned Ward’s entry. McFarlane argues that what we are meant to see in Ward’s entry on the molly club, “is the mollies’ gleeful mocking of the very practice they are in the process of frustrating” (65). Moreover, for McFarlane, Of the Mollies Club ultimately functions

“less as an empirical ‘description’—as its manifest inconsistencies make quite clear—

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than as an endorsement for the ‘Reforming Society,’ an example of a threatening

deviance eradicated by effective and powerful forces of order” (67). To arrive at these

conclusions, McFarlane highlights the assumed misogyny often associated with sodomitical activity. Through the claim that sodomites are misogynists, Ward is able to recommend the continued policing and eradication of this behavior in the metropole.

Hence, in McFarlane’s analysis, Ward’s rendition is essentially an endorsement for the

SRM. While his analysis is useful in terms of the cultural reaction to assumed molly club activity it does not address the sodomitical “problem” as a discursive one. It is equally important for authors such as Ward to reduce the “space” accorded sex between men as it was to perpetuate cultural understandings of sodomy. What McFarlane and others term a

“cultural problem” is also a discursive issue in which sodomy is being written into the

historical record in order to write it out of history. Ward’s text approaches both of these

issues by attempting to “unwrite” sodomy while simultaneously perpetuating cultural understandings and injunctions against the sodomitical social type.

What is immediately noticeable in Ward’s entry on the molly club is the spatio-

temporal confusion produced by both the narrator’s comfortable anonymity and the

undefined urban space. All we are told about this “Gang of Sodomitical Wretches” is

that they are “in this Town” and meet at a “certain Tavern in the City, whose Sign I shall

not mention, because I am unwilling to fix an Odium upon the House” (265).

Furthermore, the narrator’s position is completely undefined. The reader does not know

how the narrator is viewing the mollies, from what position he views them, if he is

participating in the activities, how he managed to infiltrate their “house,” or what, if

anything, the mollies thought of him as an intruder. Unlike Wild’s account of the molly

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house, Ward’s narrator is not physically connected to the mollies at all. Never once does the narrator engage the mollies except to comment on their activities. The reader is also without temporal reference. All the reader knows is that the mollies meet “every night of the week” and that, in the end, through the cunning of the SRM, they are forced to “put a

Period to their filthy scandalous Revels” (268).

Ward’s entry on the mollies is framed by partial disclosure. While he may be detailing what the mollies do he does not detail where they do it. In this sense, Ward is concerned with public and, most likely, commercial space. Many molly activities took place in public houses on Sunday nights with the full knowledge of the proprietor.

Oftentimes, as was the case with Mother Clap, the owners of public houses that did not serve alcohol would fetch libations from nearby establishments in an effort to cater effectively to their clients. However, the narrator of this account does not want to “fix an

Odium” on the house. In his terms, the “house” and, by extension, its proprietor, are not to blame for the molly incursion. This suggests that the mollies were active in appropriating the tavern for their “beastly Obscenities.” In this case, the urban space of the tavern is being reclaimed and remade by the mollies as an act of aggression. The link here is two-fold: the mollies are sexually aggressive and can “entrap young men” and are spatially aggressive in their appropriation of urban space. The “house,” the private accommodations in which these men act, is infected by the molly “cull” but is not to blame for their incursion. In this sense, the city’s private structures as well as its public establishments are under attack from the mollies. The contradiction in terming a public house (obviously publicly accessible) a molly house (“house” certainly connotes a level of domestic privacy) is that both the private and the public are vulnerable to molly

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occupation. The relevance of the spatial distinction is that the molly is a usurper of space but is not an owner of space. This is first and foremost a tavern and secondly a molly house. The mollies have no urban place of their own and must constantly take space that is already claimed.

The spatial aggression evidenced in Ward’s account is similar to the temporal confusion that frames it. Just as the reader is unclear of the mollies’ whereabouts, the

reader is temporally confused. The account begins in the present tense, telling the reader

“there are a particular Gang of Sodomitical Wretches.” However, the account concludes

in the past tense: “were forc’d to put a period to their Scandolous Revels.” In beginning

the account with the present tense, the narrator claims that the mollies, as a group, still

exist in the urban underground. Furthermore, the actions associated with molly activity

(mock birth, mock baptism, tea-table discussion) are all configured in the present tense.

For the narrator, while he is viewing this “particular” group of mollies other molly groups are in circulation. This adds force to the narrative, using it both as an example of persistent molly activity and persistent surveillance of the “deviant” individual. The warning is that while this group may have been stopped, other groups still continue to practice these “Odious bestialities.” To end in the past tense is to not only “put a period” to this particular narrative or this particular “Gang,” but also provide a mode of moral assurance. The SRM, agents for moral protection and dispensation of justice, were, and still are, actively pursuing such “wretches.” The fluid, almost unnoticeable shift between tenses positions the molly social type as part of a frightening past and a present danger.

There is, in the narrator’s vision, a civic victory over the molly, but one that must be tempered with caution. The civic-minded urban subject must be made aware that the

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mollies, while still in circulation, are currently being rooted out and punished for their

transgressions.

In terms of spatio-temporal confusion, the narrator himself is relegated to

undefined space, a type of urban “spacelessness” in which the narrator is capable of full

disclosure without fear of reprisal. As I demonstrated in the first chapter, close proximity

to a sodomite could have dire legal and social consequences whether the individual was

“participating” or not. In Ward’s account, the narrator is given no definable personal or urban characteristics. In other words, we have no idea who he is, where he comes from, or how he had the time to investigate so many London clubs, often at night. In terms of the molly club entry, the narrator is wholly detached from the private molly activities, but connected to the public acts of reformation. As readers, we assume him positioned in the molly house and close enough to the activities to detail them. However, the lack of defined space (the narrator never tells us he is actually in the tavern) and the lack of notice the mollies pay to the spectator suggests that he is not part of the activities. The narrator does not “dally with the young sparks” as Hitchin did in Wild’s account, nor does he actively seek out the mollies for punishment. Instead, the narrator is already in

the house blanketed in anonymity. This “spacelessness,” I think, is in direct contradiction

to the space occupied by the mollies in Ward’s account. While the mollies appropriated

and defiled public space turning it into a private arena of “devilism,” the narrator

occupies no space and is thus positioned as one who does not appropriate the space of

others. Unaggressive and immobile, the narrator stands out against the backdrop of

activity in the molly club as a stoic, rational observer, an observer who is both safe and

informed because of his “spacelessness.”

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Ward’s account is framed in the above ways throughout the entry. The narrator

continues to use private space and the present tense to position the molly social type as a

current and continuous threat to London. It is not, however, simply the framing of the text that suffers from spatio-temporal confusion but also the internal narrative. The

“mock” activities of the mollies are not simply a way for them to “mock” heterosexual practices,77 but are also a way for the narrator to “unname” the molly. The “tea-table

discussion” is an example of the narrator’s ability to effectively silence the molly culls,

rhetorically “unnaming” them and thus effacing their rhetorical space.

Following the mock birth of the jointed baby, “every one was to Tattle about their

Husbands and Children. And to use no other Dialect but what Gossips are wont to do

upon such loquacious Occasions” (267). In this overtly public expression of private

matters, the mollies begin their discussion of their imagined private, married lives as they

adopt the imagined roles of wife and mother in their individual narratives. However,

even more telling is the production of a sexualized space:

One would up with a Story of her little Tommy, to shew the promising Genius of so witty a Child, that if he let but a Fizzle, would presently cry out, Mammy how I tink. Another would be extolling the Vertues of her Husband, and declare he was a Man of that affable, kind, and easy Temper, and so avers’d to Jealousy, that she believed, were he to see another Man in Bed with her he would be so far from thinking her an ill Woman, that no-body should perswade him they had been naught together. A third would be telling what a forward Baggage here Daughter Nancy was; for though she was but just turn’d of her seventh Year, yet the young Jade had the Confidence to ask her Father ‘Where Girls carry’d their ‘Maidenheads that they were so apt to loose ‘em?’ A fourth would be wishing no Woman to marry a drunken Husband, for her Sake; for all the Satisfaction she found in Bed with him, was to creep as close to the Wall as she could to avoid hi Tobacco Breath and unsavory belches, swearing that his Son Roger was just like him, for that the guzzling Rogue would drink a Pint of strong Ale at a Draught before he was three Years old, and would cry Mam, more Ale. A fifth would sit sighing at her ill Fortune, and wishing her Husband would follow the Steps of his Journeyman; for that was as careful a young Fellow as ever came into a Family. A sixth would express himself sorrowfully under the Character of a Widow;

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saying, ‘Alass, you have all Husbands, and ought to pray heartily that you never know the Miss of them; for though I had but a sorry one, when I was in your Condition, yet, God help me, I have cause enough to repent my Loss; for I am sure, both Day and Night, I find the Want of him.’ Thus every one in his turn, would make a Scoff and Banter of the little effeminate Weaknesses which Women are subject to when Gossiping o’er their cups. (267)

The tea-table discussion is interesting both at the local level of rhetoric as well as the overall global structure. The discussion is a pastiche of short narratives that, when viewed as a whole, coalesce into the assumed life of a singular married woman. The first brief narrative is of a mother’s little boy who is extolled as a “witty” child because of his response to his own bodily function. The second is that of a husband who would not be jealous should he find his wife in bed with another man. Moreover, he wouldn’t be jealous because he wouldn’t believe what he was seeing. The third tells of an older daughter asking about her virginity and how it is that so many lose theirs. The fourth discusses her husband’s unsavory appetite for drink and her son’s following in his footsteps. Of course, in this brief section the problem lies with heterosexual conjugal life. The molly telling the story recounts how he presses close to the wall to avoid his husband’s stench and, one would assume his heterosexual advance. The fifth complains of her family’s woeful economic situation and the final narrative, by far the longest in the discussion, makes clear that to have a bad husband and a dysfunctional family is better than having none at all.

This compilation of stories intimates a perceived image of conjugal life.

However, Ward terms their activities as “Juvenille Desires” and though he is speaking specifically about their sexual orientation, he is also speaking of their feminine guise. If their desires are juvenile then their comments on the family are also unlearned comments on the lives of heterosexual couples. While there were, of course, drunken and vapid

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husbands in the eighteenth century (just as there are today) to have the mollies speak in

multiple voices about feminine heterosexual experience produces exactly the opposite of

the spoken narratives. In the first place, these are men talking from a woman’s perspective about their lives as married women. Moreover, they have “Juvenille

Desires.” In other words, the entire discussion is a staged drama played out in the molly house. Because this commentary comes from unlearned men who are inclined to

“bestial” and “unchristian” activities, their commentary on the state of family life can be dismissed as the musings of “crack-brain Philosophers.”78 Many of the mollies discussed in contemporary publications were life-long bachelors and, as such, had no primary experience at being husbands. They have relinquished all “masculine deportment” through their rituals and sexual orientation. Thus, they have no rhetorical room to speak on these matters as men. They are not men, they are not women, they are not wives, and they are not husbands. Their only mode of discourse must, in some way, involve the mocking of heterosexual practices. If we call the “jointed baby” scene one of “mock birth” then this tea-table scene must be viewed as a “mock” tea-table discussion.

Obviously, the mollies are mocking mainstream culture’s’ staunch sexual orthodoxy. However, to mock mainstream culture in a text designed as humorous and, moreover, to allow the mocking to come from the mollies themselves repositions the criticism of sexual ideology. The mollies’ bodies do not function according to

heterosexual codes and neither do their ideas of heterosexual lifestyles. In an interesting rhetorical move, it is no longer the mollies mocking heteronormative ideology but is instead the heterosexual author, and perhaps the reader, mocking the mollies’ inability to

speak as productive members of a staunchly heterosexual culture. This hints at the

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recurring issue of naming the “unnameable sin.” At the beginning of the entry, Ward

highlights many of the usual prohibitions against this kind of lifestyle. In the process, he says that such deviant activity “ought for ever to be without a Name.” Of course, the names for sodomy are legion. Whether they are sodomites or mollies or their sexual activity is linked to atheism, bestiality, witchcraft, poor politics, bad education or lower socio-economic circumstances, the sodomite has always been named. These names were produced by practitioners of orthodox sexuality and are consistently reproduced by the same overtly homophobic writers of the period. To say that this activity should not be

“named” is not to assert that they should not be named in such a way that signals all of the above pejorative associations, but is instead to say that the sodomites should not be given rhetorical space to name themselves. While heteronormative culture has the space and the power to both name the deviant and then efface that name, the molly is not allowed the rhetorical space necessary to build and maintain a partisan political ideology.

The language of the molly is, in this sense, reduced to the ramblings of the uneducated and the unimportant. This is not to say that the sodomitical social type did not occupy an important place in the solidification of heteronormative ideology, but is instead to say that authors such as Ward found it imperative to take away any possible “voice” the

“deviant” homosexual could have had. Without language the molly had no feasible way of producing a distinct and definable identity.

To better solidify this position, Ward makes sure to name the children in the tea- table discussion as Tommy, Nancy and Roger. All of these names work to concretize a distinct rhetorical inversion. These three names, which loosely equate to lesbian, “sissy- boy,” and copulation, are used precisely to demonstrate the assumed inherent

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contradiction—that sex between men is not sex at all because it is not a method of

reproduction. I do not think it a coincidence that this tea-table discussion and these names are used immediately before the grand sexual finale which Ward only briefly mentions. All Ward says of their sexual activity is that, “they began to enter upon their beastly Obscenities, and to take those infamous Liberties with one another, that no Man, who is not sunk into a State of Devilism, can think of without Blushing, or mention without a Christian Abhorrence of all such heathenish Brutalities” (268). The tea-table discussion and even the “mock birth” may be modes of active foreplay for the mollies.

By using the names and the sexualized focus in the stories, the mollies are positioned as only interested in bodily desire and pleasure, a sexual congress whose productive output is “nothing.” Their sexuality, as is exhibited in many other contemporary publications is aggressive and tantamount to brutality. However, the same logic still applies. Just as the assumed rhetorical space is stolen away, so is the legitimacy of their sexual activities.

Ward dedicates very little actual textual space to the sexual activities of the mollies and there is no discussion of homosexuality by the mollies themselves. In the end, their sexual activities exist only in the back room of an underground club enveloped in both actual and rhetorical darkness. All that is left of the mollies, in Ward’s account, is

undefined space that was never molly space in the first place.

The narrator completes his account of the mollies in verse that typifies

contemporary discussions of sex between men. There is no confusion in Ward’s text as

to the polluted habits of these men and the consequences of their lifestyle. The poem that

concludes this entry only restates the author’s disgust with the mollies while

simultaneously showing that their confused space is “backward” space:

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‘Tis true, that Swine on Dunghills bred, Nurs’d up in Filth, with Offal fed, Have oft the flow’ry Meads forsook, To wallow Belly-deep in Muck; But Men who chuse this backward Way, Are fifty times worse Swine than they; For the less Savage four-leg’d Creature, Lives but according to his Nature; But the Bur’ranto two-leg’d Brute, Pursues his Lust contrary to’t; The brawny Boar will love his Sow; The Horse his Mare; the Bull his Cow; But Sodomites their Wives forsake, Unmanly Liberties to take….(269)

For Ward, as most other commentators, sodomites are worse than beasts because they do not conform to their nature. They are not men or women; they are instead “Brutes that pass for Men” (269). But it is the “backward way” the most troubles Ward and his contemporaries. While the “backward way” is an obvious pun on anal penetrative sex

between men, it is also a response to their “backward” nature, the “back” alleys and

public “houses” they occupy, the “backward” language they use, and the “backward”

dress they adopt for their meetings. Thus, it is not simply that homosexuality is

“unnatural” or “unmanly,” but that it inverts the assumed order and thus makes chaotic

that which was, and should be, ordered. Evelyn and Pepys were both worried by the

confusion of post-Fire London because of the inversion of socio-political and

architectural order caused by the Fire. Just as Evelyn and Pepys, authors concerned with

homosexuality in the period were worried about sexual inversion. The above poem is

Ward’s “final” note on the mollies. He has warned the public of their existence, effaced

their ability to name themselves, and has restated the standard and most forceful injunctions of an “unnatural,” unregenerate, and inverted nature. Ward’s entry keeps

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civic responsibility in the minds of his readers by asserting that mollies still exist, that the

SRM is still active, and that he, like other Londoners, have a civic responsibility to

expose and extirpate the molly “cull” from a city that was known as much for its urban

wonders as for the “dark secrets” contained in its alleys, streets, and public houses.

The mollies were distinctively urban characters who occupied urban spaces and defined various urban areas as their own. Because they were not accorded a rhetorical or urban space in contemporary accounts of their behavior, mollies were forced to appropriate space. However, contrary to accounts such as Ward’s, proprietors often catered to the mollies, harboring them in relative safety and providing them the necessary space to be mollies. The position of the spectator in molly house accounts has been, and still is, an untapped resource of information concerning the sodomitical sub-culture and the men who policed it. In policing this activity, men such as Jonathan Wild, Charles

Hitchin, and others had to tread lightly the rhetorical as well as physical spaces occupied

by the mollies. These areas were seen as dark and infectious spaces potentially

dangerous to heterosexual men and women. The mollies enacted a treachery of space in

which they appropriated both private and public urban space to participate in “devilism.”

They are further depicted in temporal terms that position them as simultaneously active in the city and threatening to it. However, their attachment to urban locales is not solely about punishment, but also demonstrates a modicum of safety offered by these urban spaces. Thus, the mollies of early eighteenth-century London are participants in a

homosexual continuum that positions them as urban agents and urban subjects. For them,

the urban spaces they inhabited were neither spaces of liberation or condemnation, but were simultaneously neither and both.

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Thus far, this dissertation has examined the three interrelated foci of law, botany,

and the city to show they provide distinct keys to understanding the discursive position of

the sodomitical sub-culture. The common element of all three is a discourse of

punishment and, at times, correction. The legal narratives, less concerned with sex

between men, were more interested in the sodomites’ productive and reproductive

capacity. Thus, the trial accounts repeatedly rely on a discourse of commercial enterprise

and familial responsibility. Although rarely exonerated, the sodomites’ connection to

civil disobedience and heterosexual inversion are also reasons for his trial and public

punishment. The accounts of a sodomite’s “unnatural” sexuality are similarly concerned

with his punishment, but are also interested in his correction. Sodomites were often

described as inverting sexual and, thus, natural order. In the botanical accounts there are

corrective measures for dysfunctional masculine sexuality that imply sodomy can, in fact,

be corrected through heterosexual means. But, as the example of Leondert Hussenlosch

shows, sodomites were considered degenerate and unregenerate figures who resisted all

correction. Hence, nature is both a mode of correction and punishment through which

sodomy is both defined and corrected. Accounts of the urban sodomite position the

social type in terms of urban pollution, urban mobility, and human offal. The sodomite was a product of the city, shaping the urban places he inhabited with his urban “sewer sexuality.” Yet, the fluid urban mobility offered by the dark streets of early eighteenth- century London is repositioned as both the mollies’ sexual liberator and corruptor. In two accounts of molly activity, the sodomite is described as an innocuous member of the criminal underworld and “devilish” corruptor of urban space. However, while urban accounts may temper disfavor with acceptance, the sodomite/molly social type is still

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punished in the streets; the urban landscape offered him sexual liberation yet doubled as the very means of repressing that freedom.

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CHAPTER 4

PEEPHOLE POLITICS: CURIOSITY, KEYHOLES, AND LIMINAL SEXUALITY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The mistake of my father, was in attacking my mother’s motive, instead of the act itself: for certainly key-holes were made for other purposes; and considering the act, as an act which interfered with a true proposition, and denied a key-hole to be what it was—it became a violation of nature and was so far, you see, criminal.

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 502

Thus far, this study has focused on the prohibitive discourse on sodomy, how sodomy was talked about in the first half of the eighteenth century, and the types of speech acts employed by those who came into contact with a sodomite. Because of the historical record, most publications on sodomy condemn it through institutional practices such as those belonging to the legal system and the civic duty associated with London’s urban inhabitants. However, the discourse on pre-emergent homosexuality was not always so condemnatory. At times, there is a locatable counter-discourse embedded in the dominant, virulent rhetoric that so often characterizes early eighteenth-century discussions of sex between men. This is not to say that certain texts proposed and supported a homosexual aesthetic that defended an act “so criminal,” but rather that the rhetoric of these texts underscores a congruence between the hetero- and homosexual margins that mainstream culture fervently denied.

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The most crucial method by which this clandestine counter-rhetoric emerged was

the peephole trope repeatedly employed by eighteenth-century authors to frame key

moments of carnal knowledge. In such scenes, the character’s and, perhaps, the reader’s responses are generated by accessing conversations and actions normally considered

“private.” At times, the rhetoric employed in these “private” moments renders the sodomitical social type less violent and aggressive, instead placing the “deviant” individual within an “erotic hierarchy” that more closely aligns him with the discourse on

heterosexuality. The peephole further adjudicates the issue of proximity (as discussed in

Chapter 1) by producing “real” distance between heterosexual and homosexual bodies,

and narrative distance between characters, readers, and the sodomitical spectacle.

The peephole positions the spectator’s gaze as one of power in a place of relative

safety. Thus, the peeping character and reader gain access to knowledge that would have

otherwise been out of their reach. While the peephole is the mechanism through which

both character and reader gain knowledge of, and thus mastery over, events and

information that may otherwise be unknowable, it also produces narrative momentum.

For many authors of the eighteenth century, the peephole simultaneously produces

restraint and disclosure, a process that titillates readers by revealing what should not have

been disclosed in the first place. What is oftentimes revealed through the peephole trope

is a discourse on sexuality or courtship that contributes to narrative progression and

reveals licit and illicit clandestine activities. At the same time, the peephole trope has the

contradictory effect of providing narrative momentum through what appear to be

digressions. Thus, the illumined spectacle, whether a conversation or action, is both part

of the character’s narrative experience and separate from it. This allows for a figurative

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“space” to disclose events ranging from heterosexual courtship to “deviant” sexual

behavior in relative narrative safety. To more fully understand the way depictions of

sodomites function in discourse and to understand how the peephole trope shapes

perceptions of sodomy, it is critical to recognize that the same device applied to heterosexual coupling. The peephole trope is used interchangeably and suggests a correlation between hetero- and homosexuality. Ultimately, I suggest it is no accident that such texts encoded sodomy in heterosexual terms.

The peephole as narrative device appears frequently in prose fiction of the early

eighteenth century. Novels such as Pamela, Clarissa, Shamela, Joseph Andrews, Tom

Jones, Tristram Shandy, and Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure all effectively use the

peephole to provide narrative progression by suggesting that the disclosure of clandestine

events will reveal something new and exciting, something the characters should not be

“seeing” and the readers should not be reading. In these cases the peephole serves as a

narrative device for both the reader and the character doing the peeping, thus satisfying

curiosity and publicizing the otherwise private matters happening behind assumed closed

doors. This pronounced doubling of the spectator’s and reader’s viewpoints often

collapses distinctions based on gender, morality, and narrative propriety. In a particularly

celebrated scene from Tristram Shandy, for example, Mrs. Shandy uses the keyhole to

spy on Uncle Toby as he assails the Widow Wadman. Walter Shandy, in contrast, views

spying through a keyhole as a “violation of nature” and a “criminal” act (502). For

Tristram Shandy, “key-holes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than any

other holes in this world put together” (502). While it is hard to ignore the sexually

charged diction at the end of the first chapter in Volume X of Tristram Shandy, it is even

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more difficult to ignore the typographical layout: “—which leads me to my uncle Toby’s amours” (502). The dash that begins this fragmented sentence suggests that the narrative progression of this chapter, while continuing to the next, could have been delayed had the keyhole not been used to satisfy the curiosity of Mr. and Mrs. Shandy. Moreover, the keyhole leads the reader and the characters to “Uncle Toby’s amours.” Neither reader nor character would be able to “see” Uncle Toby’s campaigns on the Widow Wadman without the keyhole. While Sterne uses the keyhole as narrative progression and to tantalize readers, he also discloses private matters that contribute to the perversion of either the spectator or the private individual being spied upon.

In Pamela, the peephole threatens to incite vice ridden characters to indecorous action or, conversely, virtuous restraint. In one of Mr. B’s early sexual affronts, Pamela, in a prone state, assumes she herself is being spied upon through the keyhole:

I got from him by a sudden spring, and ran out of the room; and the door of the next chamber being open, I rushed into it, and threw-to the door, and it locked after me; but he followed me so close, he got hold of my gown, and tore a piece off, which hung without the door; for the key was on the inside. I just remember I got into the room. I knew nothing further till afterwards, having fallen down in a fit; and there I lay, till he, as I suppose, looking through the key-hole, ‘spied me upon the floor….(63-64)

In this case, the keyhole demonstrates that Pamela is “watched in all [her] steps” and thus shows the reader the panoptic power of Mr. B. The keyhole is the space through which

Mr. B gazes on Pamela’s prone body. Although he calls Mrs. Jervis to help Pamela, Mr.

B and Pamela both know the power of the keyhole to disclose information that would otherwise be withheld. The piece of her dress that Mr. B tears off and that then lodges in the door suggests that the door itself is not a substantial barrier to knowledge or knowing and, perhaps, only heightens the curiosity of the spectator. The piece of dress,

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consequently, is a tangible connection between Pamela’s prone body and Mr. B’s

heterosexual desire. The spectator, Mr. B in this case, is simultaneously disassociated

from what is hidden and connected to it via the piece of dress and the supposition the he

is “looking through the key-hole.” In both Tristram Shandy and Pamela, the characters are intimately aware of these clandestine events while simultaneously separated from them. This duality of space places characters close enough to “know,” but far enough away as to not be implicated in the events. Without the peephole, these characters and the narratives to which they belong risk being static. In this way, the narratives depend on a certain level of omniscience from their characters, who achieve knowledge without the danger of being caught for their curiosity, an awareness provided by the peephole trope. In relation to sodomy, the peeping character witnesses the scene without being contaminated in the process. Thus, the distance between heterosexual spectator and sodomite is both intimate and detached, allowing the spectator a full view of sodomitical activity.

There are numerous eighteenth-century texts that disclose, in various ways, the sodomitical individual and his sexual predilections. As I noted in Chapter 1, the legal rhetoric of both the convicted man and the witnesses called at his trial revealed a tortured need to discuss the sodomite and his actions without being contaminated in the process.

One legal technique suggests that proximity to the sodomitical event is tantamount to participation in the “criminal” act. Thus, many of the witnesses are forced to disconnect

themselves from the act itself. This separation between heterosexual witness and homosexual defendant made gathering evidence nearly impossible. Hence, many sodomites are not condemned for committing sodomy, but instead punished for

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attempting sodomy. There are, in fact, several cases in which the peephole is employed

to reveal the actual act of sodomy (thus providing concrete testimony) and to maintain a safe distance from the sodomitical act.79 In both the trial accounts and Cleland’s

narrative, the peephole offers the heterosexual spectator a safe place from which to view

the act of sodomy and the opportunity to comment on it. The sodomitical body does not

conform to heteronormative conceptions of natural and mechanical sexuality.

Furthermore, it possesses the ability to incite immoral behavior in those who witness the

act. As in the instances in works such as Tristram Shandy and Pamela, when keyhole

peering shapes heterosexual acts, the peephole trope in descriptions of sodomy provides

the space through which liminal and oftentimes reprobate sexuality is disclosed to public

view and sanction. This contributes to a different type of discursive shaping in which

sodomy is no longer monstrous and aggressive, but is instead aligned with heterosexual

activity. In these instances, the spectator is safe from sodomitical infection and the

sodomite no longer contains an infectious sexual identity.

The amorous counter-discourse associated with sodomitical peephole scenes is

under-represented in the critical landscape. There are, however, numerous effective

accounts of the peephole and its effects as a narrative device used to disclose private

moments for public scrutiny. In her study, Keyholes in Eighteenth-Century Novels as

Liminal Spaces between the Public and Private Spheres, Greta Olson briefly comments

on the trial of Charles Hitchen, in which Hitchen’s sodomitical activity is witnessed

through a keyhole. Of this trial, Olson only says, “While historically the keyhole

provided the means by which privacy was achieved, it also proves sometimes to be the

avenue by which private acts are documented and punished publicly” (162). While this

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assertion is most certainly the case (a brief look at some of the trials shows this), Olsen

fails to examine the connection between the sodomitical scene and its rhetorical

construction. There are no stories, to my knowledge, of homosexual men using keyholes

or peepholes to spy on heterosexual couples. In other words, those involved in the active viewing are heterosexual subjects who view the object from a position of “natural superiority.” This type of “witnessing” put into circulation a body of knowledge that

reaffirms the dominance of orthodox sexuality through the construction of a discourse

dedicated to vilifying the aggressive sodomite. As Foucault claims, and as I discussed in

my introduction, it is more important to examine the applications through which power is

exercised than to define power itself. Power in the eighteenth century, at least in relation

to the homosexual man, was certainly applied at the institutional level, as Olson suggests.

However, it is also applied at the discursive level in which the prolific publication of

sodomitical trials and narratives simultaneously produces a way of “knowing” the mores

of the sodomitical underworld and also a way to punish them. In other words, the

peephole functions as a means through which a staunchly heteronormative and

homophobic culture learns to “see” a sodomite. Sodomy, if viewed through the peephole,

does not endanger the spectator.80

In his analysis of Thomas Rodin’s trial, George Haggerty clarifies that while the

accused sodomite is on trial, dangerous proximity to the event is also a persistent

concern. Defoe’s intense reaction to publicly punishing the sodomite with which I began

this study demonstrates perhaps the core fear associated with the sodomitical act.

Sodomy has and will continue to infect a culture whether it is seen as criminal or not.

This makes certain, at least in the “eyes” of Defoe’s contemporaries, that not only can

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sodomy spread plague-like through the streets of London and its surrounding boroughs, but that even the most staunchly heterosexual audience will be infected by its rapaciousness and utter lack of conformity. Sodomy’s unnaturalness “poisons” a culture.

Its disregard for heteronormative ideology and proper ethical behavior can incite an individual to illicit activity not only by ostensibly spreading disease but by inciting illicit curiosity. Defoe uses as his exemplar the case against Captain Rigby. While he does not use Defoe’s commentary in his study, George Haggerty examines two legal cases that employed keyhole testimonies to investigate the claims that the sodomite was always predatory and that close proximity to the sodomitical scene can and will be detrimental to heteronormative ideology and its constituents.

For Haggerty, the trial against Rodin demonstrates that, “proximity implies guilty association [and thus] such accounts are often framed as ‘keyhole testimony’” (168). In the trial the prosecutor relied on direct visual evidence obtained from Henry Clayton. He observes that Thomas Rodin drank with a stranger and brought him up to his room where

Clayton saw “the prisoner lying with him [stranger] in the Nature of carnal Copulation, as a Man lies with a Woman.” While Clayton witnesses this scene by moonlight, he says of himself that “he did not put his hand between them.” The court immediately asks

Clayton “How long it was before you spoke of this.” Clayton’s reply “I spoke on’t the next day.” From this point on the court continues to discredit Clayton’s account because it took him a day to report the crime. Because of Clayton’s delay, “Rodin is exonerated and Clayton is shamed.” The court assumes, in this account, that because Clayton delayed reporting the crime that he is somehow implicated in its occurrence. As Daniel

Defoe professed in his Review, publication of sodomitical activity amounted to close

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proximity and thus reading about or seeing the sodomite could lead to a loss of inhibition.

This implies that the character of the witness, Clayton in this case, is important in sodomy trials. In other words, only someone who has lost inhibition would witness such an act. As mentioned in the first chapter, the character of the witness is integral to the trial of the accused sodomite. Hence, as Haggerty rightly notes, the witness, the event, and the mode through which the sodomite is viewed are all important. While his brief analysis of this trial certainly demonstrates both the assumed homosexual predation as well as the problem of proximity, Haggerty spends little time on Clayton’s seemingly innocuous observation of the “Moonlight Night.” In response to this, Haggerty observes that, “Sodomy is dangerously seductive, as this moonlit scene suggests. Clayton can hardly keep his hands away from the copulating couple” (168). This, for Haggerty, is further evidence that the closer one is to the sodomitical scene the more alluring it becomes. Clayton is enticed by what he is witnessing.81

This romantic and seductive rhetoric, while not always attached to the sodomitical scene, does appear notably in the trial against John Dicks. This trial account and, specifically, the keyhole testimony “gives precedence to a visual account of the scene and offers a new set of erotic dynamics” (Haggerty 168). One of the witnesses, William

Rogers:

Saw the Prisoner and the Boy come in together, and go into an Apartment by themselves. There was but a thin partition between them and me. I could plainly hear him kiss the Boy, and call him his Dear, and his Jewel, and his precious little Rogue. I sent the Alehouse-Boy in, to see what they were about, and he came out and told me and a Woman who was in the same room with me, and she and I both look’d thro’ a slit in the Partition. I saw the Prisoner in the very Act of Sodomy, making several motions with his Body, and then I saw him withdraw his Yard from the Boy’s fundament. It was not long before he began to Repeat his unnatural Leudness; ad then the Woman, who had been peeping all the While, cry’d out, I can look no longer—I am ready to Swoon—He’ll Ruin the Boy! We

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both rushed in and seized the Prisoner, as he lay bupon the Boy’s baskside. We charged him with the Fact, and tho’ we Surprized him, in so indecent a Posture; he made the greatest Protestations of his Innocence. (150)

Haggerty claims that accounts such as this “serve as a kind of cultural primer: this is how to read sodomy; this is the threat that is implicit in molly-house activity” (169).

Haggerty’s overall claim is that “sodomy emerges as a site of voyeuristic pleasure” and that the keyhole is integral to the reader’s tantalizing association with the sodomite.

While Haggerty’s view here is compelling, he pays little attention to the passionate

diction in the passage itself. In his discussion of the trial against John Dicks, Haggerty

ignores the seductively romantic rhetoric attached to the scene. The Woman’s horrified

rhetoric is there “to insure that the act of sodomy is seen as tantamount to brutal sexual

assault” (170)82 and that “The conversational endearments that are recorded—‘Dear,’

‘Jewel,’ and ‘precious little rogue’—all work to underline this erotic hierarchy, and terms

that could express intimacy and affection instead become the sign of grotesque predatory

sexual aggression” (170). In Haggerty’s estimation, the “erotic hierarchy” being exposed

is a paradoxical one in which heterosexual terms of endearment become ones which

suggest sexual predation. However, his observation signals a further discursive element

that portrays the sodomite as “grotesque” and “predatory” and one that possesses a

psycho-sexual lifestyle not unlike heterosexual spectators. There is, at least at the

discursive level, a tacit recognition that while the homosexual man and his object of desire may be “unnatural,” the only way to name and describe him is through language normally reserved for heterosexual desire. This is not to suggest that early eighteenth- century culture was becoming more or less sympathetic to the homosexual man as some scholars argue.83 But it does suggest that the abused and marginalized sodomite did

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possess emotive qualities similar to his heterosexual counterparts. The “moonlit scene” and the rhetorical endearments of the above two cases, while positioned to demonstrate sexual predation, contain an embedded counter-discourse that highlights the contradiction inherent in the linguistic derision attributed to sodomy. In other words, the discourse on sex between men, while nearly always equated to sexual predation, is sometimes discussed in terms that more closely align it with heterosexual desire.

Whether through a keyhole, peephole, adult spy, judge, or jury, the perceptions of the heterosexual body is always disassociated from the sodomite to insure that proximity is not a problem. Once the issues of proximity and disclosure are negotiated, the carnal act can be observed, catalogued and commented on to educate the reader. These publications function as pedagogical treatises designed to guide the reading public on deviant sexual activity and the course of action one should take when encountering such men. The peephole alleviates the issue of proximity by producing a space from which the sodomitical scene can be “known.” The issues of sexual exposure and education are important in John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. This text is not simply about the sexual escapades of Fanny Hill and her “sisters,” but is instead concerned with teaching his main character and his readers about varied bodies and sexualities. This sexual pedagogy relies on various images of heterosexual bodies and desire to produce an effective discourse of inclusion. This discourse does not profane any form of sexual congress but instead punctuates the pleasures one receives from both participating in and looking at sexuality in varied forms.

Memoirs employs the peephole in order to educate the spectator who occupies a safe space both connected to and separate from the spectacle. Fanny Hill’s early sexual

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life is dominated by the peephole trope through which she witnesses, explores and

becomes proficient in heterosexual behavior. For Fanny, this trope is the normalizing

agent for her sexual maturity and mastery of heterosexual conventions. The product of

her peephole education is mastery over her sexual self and the heterosexual men she

encounters throughout her “adventures.” As numerous period accounts demonstrate, the

sodomitical act normally elicits fear and horror from spectators. However, the language

in peephole sodomy scenes is a confused mix of amorous utterance and disgusted

disbelief intended to teach the spectator and, perhaps, the reader.

Just as Fanny is educated through the peephole, the reader is also educated

through Fanny. As Roy Roussel notes, “we can see that these readers will find their

desire diverted, displaced into the experience of reading as a kind of erotic viewing. In

this context these early incidents, with their emphasis on spectacle and masturbation,

seem almost to function as a set of instructions intended for those who are unfamiliar

with the use of pornographic texts” (49). However, the reader’s education is contingent on both Fanny’s gaze and her current level of sexual experience. At any point in the text,

“The clarity of our vision seems to confirm our omnipotence. The object subserviently submits to our gaze. It becomes an image of our power which attracts and fascinates us.

The immediacy with which our look seems to possess this image returns us to ourselves as complete, definitive, and independent of the world beyond this horizon” (53). Fanny is, as Nancy K. Miller suggests, “an I in drag, a female impersonation” that constructs

Cleland’s text as a homoerotic one where a man impersonates a woman in order to demonstrate how his sexual desires affect her. In other words, Cleland’ text demonstrates

“masculine dominance and authority” (Miller 54).84 Taken in conjunction with Roussel’s

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observations, Miller’s contention suggests that Cleland’s text is concerned with showing

the reader what pornography is, the effects it should have on the reader, and how these

effects depend on the reader occupying a state akin to transvestism in order to fully appreciate the pornographic text. Thus, for Miller and Roussel, Memoirs is a masculine,

heterosexual fantasy. In these terms, the sodomitical scene unfolds as yet another

condemnatory warning and virulent prohibition of sexual congress between two men.85

While Fanny may echo some of the prohibitive rhetoric in circulation during the

eighteenth century, her description of the sodomitical scene suggests a different “view”

of the sodomitical social type.

Cameron McFarlane revises Miller’s argument to suggest that Fanny “is not

simply an ‘I in drag,’ she is also an ‘eye in drag,’ a frequent voyeur whose desiring gaze is repeatedly riveted upon the specularized male body and its ‘wonderful machine’”

(161). He further observes that, “As a spectator, Fanny functions less as a fantasized projection of the presumed male reader, than as a surrogate for him, mirroring in the masturbatory pleasures of her erotic viewing the masturbatory pleasure of erotic reading.”

For McFarlane, “In Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, desire is discovered by means of erotic spectatorship” (162). McFarlane concludes that because the reader is asked over and over again to gaze on the male body in both the form of Charles and the numerous

“machines” present in the text, Cleland’s Memoirs “is a sodomitical fantasy” (160).

McFarlane’s claim of “sodomitical fantasy” is a dubious one when we take contemporary understandings of sodomy into account. The act of sodomy, as defined in most eighteenth-century publications is aggressive, violent and infectious. However, Cleland’s text, while constantly asking readers to look at the male machine, does not portray

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masculinity, or sodomy for that matter, as violent. Instead, exposure in Cleland’s text depends on the verbal display of the male member without the associative violence.

Because of this, Cleland’s text is not a homosexual or heterosexual fantasy, but is instead a “body fantasy.” A fantasy of exposure that highlights varied forms of pleasure and an individuality of body types. According to Raymond Stephanson, the history of the male member is devoted to demonstrating the “complexities of individual men” (52).

Cleland’s text highlights these “complexities” through multitudinous bodies instead of varied subjectivity. In other words, Cleland’s male characters are known by their bodies and not through violent sexual congress.

McFarlane further claims that, “there was no discursive space for homoerotic fantasy outside of its condemnation” (161). This suggests that condemnation and prohibition are inherent in this “sodomitical fantasy” as they are in other texts that discuss sodomy. This claim contradicts the assertion of “sodomitical fantasy.” If this text were a

“sodomitical fantasy” then a reader would likely find more rhetoric damning the sodomites and the dysfunctional men that constitute this “fantasy.” However, there is very little condemnatory rhetoric in the novel, and even the discourse on dysfunctional male members could hardly be considered punitive. Of Mr. Norbert, who’s

“machine…was one of those sizes that slip in and out without being minded,” Fanny commends his “stiffly bearing against that part” (133). Furthermore, Mr. Norbert, normally impotent, makes Fanny “perfectly rage with titillating fires (139) when unable to produce an erection. The desires of the flagellant, Mr. Barvile, also impotent until he is flogged, confuse Fanny at first, but then become a token of diverse pleasure that produces a fully functional member and pleasure for Fanny. While initially displeased

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with being flogged by Mr. Barvile, Fanny acquires a “pleasingly irksome sensation”

when the lashes she received were “converted into such a prickly heat, such fiery

tingling, as made me sigh, squeeze my thighs together, shift and wriggle about my seat,

with a furious restlessness” (151). Even in the most extreme cases of masculine,

heterosexual dysfunction, Fanny finds the promise of pleasure and extends her rhetoric to suggest as much.

McFarlane’s account also excludes a nuanced approach to the peephole on which

Cleland’s text is dependant and how the peephole affects issues of proximity. For

McFarlane:

The spectacle of sodomy functions as the culmination of the text’s embedded sodomitical desire—culmination in the sense of the most complete expression of it, apparently realizing what the text has been flirting with all along in its lingering descriptions of the male body and in the pseudo-sodomitical scene at the masquerade. (168)

McFarlane asserts that the “rejection of sodomy depends on Fanny, not to mention the

reader, remaining a detached, disgusted observer begins by emphasizing Fanny’s

masculinized and eroticized position as spectator” (168). In fact, as he rightly notes,

Fanny penetrates the partition thus allowing her penetrating gaze into the adjoining room.

Moreover, Fanny stands above the sodomites on her chair, looking down on them and

judging them from a privileged position both spatially (up high) and ideologically

(heterosexual). McFarlane notes that these two rooms are essentially the same room. As

Fanny notices, “the partition of our rooms was one of those moveable ones that when taken down, serv’d occasionally to lay them into one” (157). For McFarlane, the physical space of the room points to “Fanny’s involvement in, rather than detachment from, the erotics of the sodomitical spectacle, an involvement that threatens to undermine

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her pose as a ‘female’” (169). Here, McFarlane’s approach downplays the peephole as both narrative device and pedagogical tool. While Fanny may be “involved” in the

sodomitical spectacle she is simultaneously detached from it because of the peephole. To

assert that Fanny is either involved or detached from the sodomitical spectacle is to

effectively reduce the peephole that she purposely created to a nondescript mode through

which to view “deviant” activities. The peephole is the device through which Fanny

“commands” the room in the first place, thus positioning her as not only “master” of the room both spatially and ideologically, but also “master” of the activities occurring in the room. This gives her the authority to assume the role of “tuteress” in order to educate the reader and warn all young men of the dangers of sodomy.

Two heterosexual peephole scenes reveal Fanny’s sexual education as one dependant on safety, distance, and masturbation. An important aspect of these scenes, and the novel, is that Fanny witnesses sex as someone who possesses a rudimentary knowledge of both male and female anatomies and how they function as sexual systems.

While these two scenes shock Fanny because of their novelty, they only confirm what she has been taught all along: that the male and female bodies are perfectly made to pleasure one another. In the process, Fanny needs a “tuteress” to guide her to peepholes that reveal heterosexual intercourse and help her explore her own body. Fanny possesses only rudimentary knowledge about sexuality and its effects on her body. For Fanny, viewing these scenes through the peepholes offers her the opportunity to explore herself as well.86

What is expected, then, is what occurs through most of the novel. There are numerous

scenes of heterosexual activity where sex is mutually pleasurable for both the male and

female. Moreover, apart from one sexual escapade with a sailor, all scenes take place in

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private and safe confines.87 This produces a “fantasy [that] is excited by sex that is safe, comfortable and accompanied by love” (Trumbach, Modern Prostitution, 72). The peephole is an integral space that helps produce this outcome. However, witnessing sexuality foreign to her experiences challenges her heterosexual education and her assumptions about homosexuality.

Fanny’s heterosexual education begins with the peepholes that expose her to male and female genitalia and their proper function. Following her successful refusal of Mr.

Crofts, Fanny has “recover’d of [her] fever” and is comfortably resting in Mrs. Brown’s closet. She hears a rustling in the bed-chamber that was “separated from the closet only by two sash-doors.” These sash-doors allowed Fanny an opportunity to peek into the bed-chamber and to command a “full view of the room” (24). While peeking into the next room, Mrs. Brown and the horse-grenadier enter and Fanny stays “still and hush….lest any noise should baulk my curiosity.” Fanny’s curiosity leads her to watch this scene in its entirety thus exposing her to her first heterosexual experience. As the young grenadier undresses revealing “that wonderful machine…which [Fanny] had never seen before, and which, for the interest of my own seat of pleasure began to take furiously in,” Fanny is “too much concenter’d in that now burning spot of mine, to observe any thing more than in general the make and turn of that instrument, from which the instinct of nature, yet more than all I had heard of it, now strongly informed me, I was to expect that supreme pleasure which she has placed in the meeting of those parts so admirably fitted for each other” (25). Fanny’s position as spectator leads here to “follow mechanically the example of Phoebe’s manual operation…..[bringing] on at last the critical extasy” (25).88 While the “machine” is surprising to Fanny, not least because of

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its size, she knows what to expect of male genitalia. Fanny’s first visual introduction to

heterosexuality essentially confirms what she expects. The peephole offers her a safe

distance from which to view her first sexual act while simultaneously offering her a

private location for the autoeroticism that is important for her to “know” the parts of her

body susceptible to pleasure. Fanny’s education, however, is far from complete and

Phoebe takes her student to a closet to demonstrate heterosexual pleasure.

Guided by her “tuteress,” Fanny’s second experience with the peephole is vastly different. Taking a position where she can again “see all objects only by applying [her] eyes close to the crevice” Fanny spies on Polly and the Italian. Unlike the previous peephole experience with Mrs. Brown and the grenadier, these two participants have

“exquisite” bodies and there is a manner of caring involved in their relationship. In typically graphic fashion, the sexual scene is displayed for Fanny as one of mutual pleasure and affection the consequence of which is the “adieu all fears of what man could do unto me; they were now changed into such ardent desires, such ungovernable longings, that I could have pull’d the first of that sex that should present himself, by the

sleeve, and offered him the bauble, which I now imagin’d the loss of would be a gain I

could not too soon procure myself” (31-32). Fanny watches Polly and the Italian couple

a second time after which she “could bear to see no more: so overcome, so inflamed at

this second part of the same play, that, mad with intolerable desire, [she] hugg’d, [she]

clasped Phoebe” (33). From these scenes, Fanny learns what it is she desires. She and

Phoebe retire immediately to their room where:

[Phoebe] takes hold of my hand, and having roll’d up her own petticoats, forced it half-strivingly towards those parts, where now grown more knowing, I mist the main object of my wishes; and finding not even the shadow of what I wanted, where very thing was so flat! Or so hollow! In the vexation I was in at it, I

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should have withdrawn my hand, but for fear of disobliging her. Abandoning it then entirely to her management, she made use of it as she though proper, to procure herself rather the shadow than the substance of any pleasure. For my part, I now pin’d for more solid food, and promis’d tacitly to myself that I would not be putt off much longer with this foolery from woman to woman. (33-34)

Through both peephole scenes, Fanny learns about her body, its desires, and “provinces of pleasure.” She also affirms that the male “machine” is perfectly suited for this type of pleasure. So solidified in her brief but effective education, Fanny is willing to dismiss her “tuteress” for more “solid food.” These early peephole scenes are pedagogical tools

that provide Fanny a way of knowing sexuality. Just as the trials against John Dicks and

Thomas Rodin instruct readers on the sodomite and his activities through the peephole,

Fanny is conditioned to see heterosexuality as a relatively private, safe, and pleasurable experience. Both the trials and the novel seek to educate their readers by using rhetoric that positions the spectator not as objective judge, but instead as a detached participant in the spectacle. Fanny’s autoeroticism was a way for her to participate in the heterosexual peephole scenes she experienced without actually having intercourse. The sodomitical scene, however, resists sexual participation, calling instead for punitive participation.

This simultaneously attaches and detaches her from the spectacle.

Fanny’s simultaneous attachment and detachment from sodomy is evidenced in the descriptive language detailing sex between men and the prohibitive rhetoric defining

sodomy prior to and following her description of the sodomitical scene. Climbing on the

chair out of a “spirit of curiosity” suggests that she expects to see something novel,

something exciting through the peephole. The peephole signals a moment of repetition

and an opportunity to gain “knowledge” and mastery over the spectacle. Having said that

she was sexually “green (17),” Fanny is presented as a child learning the nuances of new

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skill. While Fanny attains sexual mastery through the peephole and through her own

heterosexual exploits, the sodomy scene is one that Fanny is unable to master. As she

climbs the chair and punctures the partition with her bodkin, Fanny believes she already

possesses mastery over the situation.89 She stands above the adjoining room,

“commanding” a complete view through a peephole she produced. However, while she

may have found it relatively easy, safe, and pleasurable to learn and master heterosexual

conventions, the peephole she has made of her own accord reveals a scene as foreign to

her as Mr. Barvile’s predilections for flagellation. Even though Fanny recounts her initial

disgust when confronted with this scene of “preposterous pleasure,” Fanny restrains

immediate judgment out of a “spirit of curiosity.” The result of her constraint is an

educational treatise on this “alien” activity and the alienating desire these two men demonstrate, a surprising rhetoric of sexual desire consistently reproduced throughout the

novel.

Preceding the sodomitical scene, Emily relates a story to Fanny and Mrs. Brown

in which, at a ball, Emily, in the guise of a shepherd, is seduced by an older gentleman.

Of course, the older gentleman believes her to be a young man and, although the

confusion is cleared up before the sex act, “he was so fiercely set on a mis-direction, as to

give the girl no small alarms for fear of loosing a maiden-head she had not dreamt of”

(155). Of this occurrence, Fanny says, “I could not conceive how it was possible for

mankind to run into a taste, not only universally odious, but absurd, and impossible to

gratify, since, according to the notions and experience I had of things, it was not in nature

to force such immense disportions” (156). Fanny lacks the ability to conceive of a “mis- direction” as pleasurable. She harbors the cultural notions that sodomy is “odious” and

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“absurd.” As she begins to describe the sodomitical event, she interrupts the description

to comment that “their [all young men] innocence may not be betray’d into such snares,

for want of knowing the extent of their danger, for nothing is more certain than, that

ignorance of a vice, is by no means guard against it” (158). For Fanny, this scene of vice

has the potential of “snaring” any man. Out of curiosity, Fanny describes the sodomitical

scene to provide young men the knowledge necessary to guard against the aggressive

sodomite. Sexual knowledge, the “knowing” of vice, is tantamount to gaining mastery

over it. At the beginning of the novel, the peephole allows Fanny a place to see, know

and master heterosexual conventions, which are then deployed throughout the rest of the

novel. She will use her assumed mastery over sodomy in this scene to punish the

sodomites and educate those young men reading her story. Fanny has, in this scene,

become the “tuteress” from whom she learned earlier in the novel.

Fanny watches the entire scene to “gather more facts” and, in so doing, adheres to

a strict heterosexual code demonstrated in trial accounts. It is the individual’s civic duty

to “gather facts” about sodomites and immediately use those facts to prosecute offenders.

However, as in many other publications on sodomy, Fanny’s decision to watch the scene

in its entirety and to gather facts is also meant to educate men about the dangers of

sodomy and what to do if they should cross paths with a sodomite. Fanny has already

assumed both ideologically and spatially that she can “command” the scene before her

and use what she witnesses to complete here civic duties of education and prosecution.

However, unlike the earlier peephole scenes, Fanny is not on stable ground here.

Standing atop a chair and peering through a tiny peephole, Fanny’s command is as awkward as her body on the chair. In effect, her peephole viewing is unstable from the

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very beginning. While she believes she has command over the room, her instability increases as she witnesses the scene.90

While awkwardly positioned on her chair, Fanny describes the sodomitical scene in as much detail as earlier heterosexual peephole scenes:

Slipping then aside the young lad’s shirt, and tucking it up under his cloaths behind, he shew’d to the open air, those globular, fleshy eminences that compose the mount-pleasants of Rome, and which now, with all the narrow vale that intersects them, stood display’d, and expos’d to his attack: nor could I, without a shudder, behold the dispositions he made for it. First then, moistening well with spittle his instrument, obviously to render it glib, he pointed, he introduc’d it, as I could plainly discern, not only from its direction, and my losing sight of it; but by the writhing, twisting, and soft murmur’d complaints of the young sufferer; but, at length, the first straights of entrance being pretty well got through, every thing seem’d to move, and go pretty currently on, as in a carpet- road, without much rub, or resistance: and now passing one hand round his minion’s hips, he got hold of his red-tipt ivory toy, that stood perfectly stiff, and shewed, that if he was like his mother behind, he was like his father before; this he diverted himself with, whilst with the other, he wanton’d with his hair, and leaning forward over his back, drew his face, from which the boy shook the loose curls that fell over it, in the posture he stood him in, and brought him towards his, so as to receive a long-breath’d kiss, after which, renewing his driving, and thus continuing to harass his rear, the height of the fit came on with its usual symptoms, and dissmiss’d the action. (158-159).91

This description contains neither the expected vitriol of an enraged witness nor the predatory aggression of a practicing sodomite.92 Instead, what Fanny witnesses and describes is mutually pleasurable homosexual sex between two willing partners. Similar to Charles and Fanny’s relationship where, “their mutuality improves sexuality, imbuing it with a significance deemed to outlast ephemeral sexual acts” (Smith 191), the satisfying sodomitical moment aligns with descriptions of significant and satisfying heterosexual moments. The first part of her description recalls her own early experiences with sexuality. Just as she referred to her own genitalia as the “mount-pleasant of those parts” she describes the boy’s backside as the “mount-pleasants of Rome.”93 For

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McFarlane, this description “relocates the mons Veneris and evokes the familiar

association of sodomy with Italy in general, and with papists in particular” (170). While

sodomy’s association to Italy, Catholicism, and foreign activity are very popular in contemporary discussions of sodomitical practices, Fanny’s use of this association is much different. Early in the novel she refers to the exact site of pleasure on her body as

the “mount-pleasant” and recycles this terminology to discursively align the hetero- and

homosexual margins. Fanny sees in the early stages of this description that homosexual

sex can, and in fact sometimes is, pleasurable for both parties. This is not to suggest, of

course, that the predatory sodomite so often depicted in trial accounts sometimes did not

exist, but that sexual aggression was not an innate sodomitical characteristic. Fanny

witnesses a sexual act that has been heavily stigmatized, but the result of this act is very

similar to her own emotional attachment to sexuality. She sees in these two men a

hetero- and homosexual congruence that surprises and shocks her. In response, Fanny

recycles the nautical metaphors she used consistently throughout the novel to describe

safe and comfortable heterosexual activity.

Fanny comments in her description that “the first straights of entrance being

pretty well got through, every thing seem’d to move, and go pretty currently on, as in a

carpet-road.” As the nautical term suggests, a “carpet-road” was a “smooth, sheltered

water ‘near the shore, where vessels may lie at anchor in safety’” (201). Throughout the

novel there are numerous uses of nautical metaphors to intensify the oftentimes rough but

pleasurable experiences Fanny and her “sisters” encounter. Moreover, when finally

recovering her relationship with Charles at the end of the novel, Fanny compares her

impending domestic bliss to coming “snug into port” (187). Not unlike the pleasure

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Fanny experiences in her numerous encounters or the expectation of domestic bliss with

Charles, these two sodomites also “know” pleasure and safety in one another. Fanny further tells the reader that there was not much “rub, or resistance” between the two men and finishes her description with a “long-breath’d kiss.” In her description, Fanny rhetorically aligns the homosexual act with heterosexual desire and mutual gratification.

This discursive re-alignment suggests that not only can sex between men be a pleasurable, safe and loving experience for the participants, but that heterosexual witnesses must attend to sodomy in different ways. Fanny approaches this scene as she has many others—from the peephole where she “commands” a view and expects to master the scene before her. However, in repeating her approach she has encountered something wholly new to her, something she is unable to reproduce and thus unable to master. Thus, she comments on the activity in language that suggests homosexual comfort and discursively positions sodomitical activity as she would heterosexual desire and satisfying heterosexual intercourse.

In response to witnessing “so criminal a scene” (159) Fanny attempts to bring the sodomites to “instant justice.” However, Fanny, “with such an unlucky impetuosity, that some nail or ruggedness in the floor caught my foot, and flung me on my face with such violence, that I fell senseless on the ground” (159), which results in the sodomites’ escape. Her reaction to the “real” spectacle she witnesses produces an unexpected result.

The outcome for Fanny is an inability to negotiate what she “knows” about sodomites and what she witnesses. The outcome of this inability is to revert back to her civic responsibility of exposing the “deviant” young men. The scene itself, as described through her own rhetoric, is pleasurable and safe and thus conflicts with her pre-supposed

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knowledge of sodomy. Thus, while her body has always responded to the peephole in a pleasurable way because she masters heterosexual conventions, this scene inverts the

expected results. Unable to fully negotiate the difference between the real and the

imaginary, Fanny falls to the floor, an action that confirms her initially awkward position,

while watching the sodomites and the incoherent ideological stance she borrows from a

“real” sodomitical scene.

Regaining her senses, Fanny returns to Mrs. Cole and relates the entire

“adventure.” Mrs. Cole, in contemporary fashion, declares that, “there was no doubt of

due vengeance one time or other overtaking these miscreants” and “she protested against

any mixture of passion, with a declaration extorted from her by pure regard to truth”

(159). She further condemns sodomitical activity and reinforces what Fanny knew before

she witnessed the scene:

…that whatever effect this infamous passion had in other ages, and other countries, it seem’d a peculiar blessing on our air and climate, that there was a plague-spot visibly imprinted on all that are tainted with it, in this nation at least; for that among numbers of that stamp whom she had known, or at least were universally under the scandalous suspicion of it, 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, stript of all the manly virtues of their own sex, and fill’d up with only the very worst vices and follies of ours: that, in fine, they were scarce less execrable than ridiculous in their monstrous inconsistency, of loathing and contemning women, and all at the same time, apeing their manners, airs, lisp, skuttle, and, in general, all their little modes of affectation, which become them at least better, than they do these unsex’d male-misses. (159- 160)94

While the preponderance of Mrs. Cole’s diatribe against sodomy echoes the beliefs of her

contemporaries, her lesson is framed by the assertions that there is no “passion” in either

homosexual activity or the spectator, and that her beliefs are grounded in the “truth.”

Fanny’s response to Mrs. Cole’s dissertation on the evils of sodomy and the scene she

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witnesses is to “wash her hands of them [sodomites].” Mrs. Cole, in order to assuage

Fanny’s guilt, restates earlier assumptions concerning sodomy and what culture can learn from their existence. For Mrs. Cole, sodomites bear a recognizable taint and, even though they escape punishment this time, they will inevitably be caught and punished.

To further comfort Fanny, Mrs. Cole asserts that, even though Fanny fails to perform her duty, the sodomites will undoubtedly suffer future punishment. Mrs. Cole suggests that sodomites are always under the proverbial microscope, are always seen and recognized by any conscientious observer. Thus, Mrs. Cole is re-substantiating Fanny’s earlier notions of homosexuality and, in the process, both comforting her for not prosecuting them and assuring her that they will receive just punishment. This “panoptic” approach to seeing and knowing is similar to that employed in Pamela and Tristram Shandy.95 It provides a narrative progression, a place for Fanny to re-enter “the stream of [her] history” while also producing a rhetoric of knowing. In Fanny Hill, Fanny associates homosexual sexual desire with heterosexual desire instead of using homosexual desire as an inversion of heterosexual order. In this case, just as in Pamela, Fanny and the sodomites are intimately connected, just as are Mr. B and Pamela, even though they are on opposite sides of the door. However, unlike Mr. B and Pamela, Fanny actually occupies the same physical space as the sodomites. Fanny describes the partition as “one of those moveable ones that when taken down, serv’d occasionally to lay them [the

“separate” rooms] into one, for the convenience of a large company” (157). The rhetorical connection between homosexual and heterosexual is further substantiated by their physically occupying the same space. The alignment of both body and language is an attempt to re-inscribe sexuality, whether hetero- or homo-, as diverse pleasures that

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share similar characteristics. In these terms, Fanny attempts to re-write the homosexual body in heterosexual terms and provides a counter-discourse that aligns hetero- and homosexuality both physically and ideologically. In light of this, the “deviant” subject ends up being the spectator who assumes specious positions from which to view

“deviant” sexuality.

In the above accounts, proximity is important to viewing and “knowing” the sodomite. Fanny views the scene through a tiny hole in the partition and from a room that is technically the same room. Fanny is, to put it bluntly, in an awkward position on a chair, peering through a tiny hole gazing on a scene of “preposterous pleasure.” Fanny’s descriptions of the scene do not construct it as preposterous or criminal. For McFarlane,

“their [the sodomites’] would-be prosecutor is transformed, then, into their unwitting savior. Unlike the debauched Mr. Norbert who is made to die of a high fever in Bath, the sodomites, for all the narrative bluster, are not punished in any way for their sexual pleasures” (172). Lee Edelman sees Fanny as “embody[ing] the instability of positioning that radiates out from the sodomitical scene and demonstrates that it was not without reason, after all, that Cleland named her Fanny” (186). Fanny is the agent in her own awkward positioning as both heterosexual spectator and homophobic commentator.

Although more discreet than the SRM, Fanny is essentially reproducing their approach to reveal and punish sodomites. It is her ideological and spatial positioning, as well as the rhetorical and spatial alignment of hetero- and homosexual desire, that makes her stumble and knocks her unconscious. This convenient “stumble” from her chair acknowledges the positions from which sodomites are viewed. In other words, it is not sodomy that produces an awkward heterosexual spectator, but is instead the position of the

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heterosexual spectator both spatially and ideologically that produces inaccurate renditions

of sodomitical desire.

It is difficult to ignore the fact that the sodomites escape punishment because of

Fanny’s misstep. In the process of revealing to Fanny and the reader that sex between men can be passionate and loving, Cleland may also be issuing a warning to sodomites.

Fanny witnesses this entire event through the narrow space of the peephole. She enters

this scene with specific presuppositions about sodomy and the men who practice it and is

disrupted by the passion she sees. Fanny’s sexual escapades have been safe and

enjoyable and she sees a similar event between the two young men. I think the peepholes

in this text, both in the hetero- and homosexual scenes, suggests a narrow and confined

view of all forms of sexuality, deviant or otherwise. What Fanny’s interaction with the

sodomites suggests is that she simply did not, nor could not understand the sodomitical

sexual position. She could not understand how one man could feel sexual desire for

another. However, what she learns is that her initial position regarding sodomites was,

indeed, mistaken and that sex between two men may be just as passionate as that between

a man and a woman. This lesson, learned in spite of her narrow ideological focus,

reconfigures the homosexual margin by removing the violence and aggression often

attributed to it.

What follows on the heels of Fanny’s introduction to sodomy is perhaps the most

violent and aggressive heterosexual scene of the entire novel. In an attempt to find out,

“whether the general rule held good with regard to this changeling and how far nature had made him amends in her best bodily gifts, for her denial of the sublimer intellectual ones” (161) Louisa and Fanny seduce Good-natur’d Dick to appease their own curiosity.

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Again, Fanny enters a sexual scene with certain expectations which are then confirmed.

Of the changeling’s “machine” Fanny comments, “it was positively of so tremendous a

size, that prepar’d as we were to see something extraordinary, it still, out of measure

surpass’d our expectation, and astonish’d even me, who had not been us’d to trade in

trifles” (162). However, as with earlier scenes of sexual education and the peephole,

Fanny is simply a spectator of the events. Louisa is the active participant in the act and

suffers “such a pain of distention, that [she] cry’d out violently, that she was hurt beyond

all bearing, that she was kill’d” (163). Of the changeling’s behavior during the carnal act,

Fanny comments that:

…his eyes shooting sparks of fire, his face glowing with ardours that gave all another life to it: his teeth churning; his whole frame agitated with a raging ungovernable impetuosity, all sensibly betraying the formidable fierceness with which the genial instinct acted upon him: butting then, and goring all before him, and mad, and wild, like an over-driven steer, he ploughs up the tender furrow, all insensible of Louisa’s complaints: nothing can stop, nothing can keep out a fury like his; which having once got its head in, its blind rage soon made way for the rest, piercing, rending, and breaking open all obstruction: The torn, split, wounded girl cries, struggles, invokes me to her rescue, and endeavours to get from under the young savage, or shake him off, but alas, in vain! (164)

In this scene, the changeling is violent, dissociative and, as Jad Smith observes, “operates by the sheer mechanics of sensation” (188). For Smith, Cleland positions the changeling

as a demonstration of one end of the sexual spectrum to show that, “While the body may give its ‘passive’ assent to pleasure, ‘active delight’ involves understanding sexuality as a relation mediated through a logic of sociality and assent” (191). In Lockean terms, the changeling is classified as “something between man and beast” only capable of experiencing coitus at the mechanical level of sensation. The changeling, incapable of communication and lacking sufficient sociality, “retain’d only a confus’d memory of the

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transaction” and “would when he saw her [Louisa], for some little time after, express a

grin of joy, and familiarity, after his idiot manner, and soon forgot her, probably in favour

of the next woman tempted on the report of his parts to take him in” (166). What is

equally important in this sexual narrative, however, is not solely the changeling’s

inability to move beyond sensation, but also Fanny’s position as a spectator of the

“transaction” and the narrative’s close proximity to the sodomitical scene.

Just as in Fanny’s other spectatorial encounters throughout the novel, she makes

very clear that she “had sincerely no intention to push the joke further than simply

satisfying [her] curiosity with the sight of it alone” (162). However, once it is clear that

Louisa wishes to “push” the encounter, Fanny stays to “see fair play” and to “observe

what appearances active nature would put on in a natural, in the course of this her darling

operation” (162). Fanny’s position in this scene suggests that she is watching only to

learn something about the changeling. As in many other scenes, education and

distinction are inextricably linked. Fanny will use her position as spectator to satisfy her

own curiosity and to educate the reader. In this case, both are not only learning that the

“saying is true,” but also witnessing the natural body in its purest and most violent form.

Both Fanny and Louisa look on the changeling’s naked form with terror and adoration.

The pure and natural male body harbors both the potential for pleasure and the potential for pain.

If, as Jad Smith points out, Fanny “encounters the extremities of the sexual spectrum” (187) in her sexual encounters then I think we are forced to ask what effects the changeling scene has on this spectrum and how this correlates to the sodomitical scene immediately preceding it. The homosexual man certainly represents one end of the

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spectrum as a completely “unnatural” and “unnameable” occurrence, and the changeling

occupies the other end of the spectrum as purely instinctual, natural and driven by

sensation. For Cleland, the most fulfilling form of intercourse is that which moderates

these extremes. Charles is the exemplar of that moderation because he possesses the perfect combination of masculine sexual deportment and feminine gentility.96 This

allows for a harmonious heterosexual relationship and places Fanny in a rewarding

marriage to Charles at the end of the text. However, Fanny’s description of the

sodomites is quite different from that of the trials with which I began this study. Many

trials, as I have suggested, portray the sodomite as a sexual aggressor only interested in fulfilling his sexual needs. Yet, that is not entirely the case with the sodomites Fanny encounters. In fact, her description of the sodomites suggests a closer association to

Fanny’s relationship with Charles than it does Louisa’s encounter with the changeling.

This, coupled with the seamless transition from sodomy to hyper-masculinity suggests that heterosexuality can be just as aggressive and just as terrifying as sodomy. By juxtaposing the sodomites and the changeling, the text is inverting the assumed positions of hetero- and homosexual men. In other words, the changeling, although wholly controlled by his nature, becomes an “unnatural” representation of heterosexual desire while the sodomites are portrayed in more congenial terms. I think the distinction here is a significant one in terms of the juridical rhetoric used throughout the early period. The numerous rhetorical endearments in the trial records do, as Haggerty suggests, signal

“grotesque predatory sexual aggression” (170). However, in Cleland’s text grotesque sexual aggression characterizes the staunchly heterosexual man driven only by sensation.

The sodomites are not portrayed as sexual aggressors and are not driven solely by

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sensation. Memoirs has effectively reconstituted the sexual extremes and given a sexual space to the sodomite. Homosexuality is no longer a marginalized predilection subject to brutal punishment, but is instead a social-sexual lifestyle that can, and does, contain similar characteristics to a fulfilling heterosexual relationship. The changeling is the foil to the cultural homophobia that perpetuated a hetero- homo- polarization that believed heterosexuality was natural and homosexuality was not.

For all of its fantastic images and sexual explicitness, Cleland’s Memoirs is in the

end a “safe” piece of pornography. Not only are Fanny’s sexual encounters safe (even

the changeling did not brutalize them) but so were the positions from which she learned

about sexuality. Fanny’s education, “the stream of her history,” is not complete until she

finds herself in the comfort of conjugal bliss. While this story is about sex, it is more

poignantly about Fanny’s detours before she is “snuggly into port.” What is apparent in

the end is that while “key-holes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than any

other holes in this world put together” they are also the occasion for (re)education, for a

re-constitution of sexual morality. The trial of John Dicks demonstrates the beliefs

circulated at the time. It specifically highlights the citizen’s assumed civic responsibility

by identifying what an individual should do to uphold their responsibility by entrapping

and prosecuting known sodomites. Publications like the trial against Dicks are a “cultural

primer” showing how to recognize and prosecute a sodomite. Cleland’s text marks a

distinct separation from the previously disseminated treatises on sodomites. It

specifically addresses the stark polarization of heterosexual preference to suggest that not

only is the hetero- homosexual dichotomy problematic, but that mainstream

heterosexuality can indeed be just as licentious and just as dangerous as homosexuality.

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At the center of this panoptic exploration are the peepholes Fanny uses to safely explore

and master various types of sexual experiences. The one sexual scene she cannot incorporate is the sodomitical scene. It is not, however, the two men committing sodomy that throws her off balance, but is instead the pleasure the two men experience. Her awkward positions both physically and ideologically, lead her to re-evaluate her assumptions about sodomites, thus forcing her back to her “teacher” for advice.

Although her earlier assumptions are tacitly confirmed by her “teacher,” the scene Fanny witnesses stands in opposition to what she “knows” of sodomites. Perhaps this is why

“key-holes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than any other holes in this world put together.”

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CONCLUSION

A “DEFENSE” OF SODOMY: REGULATION, RESENTMENT, AND CODED HOMOPHOBIA

I say even in modern times; for there is one circumstance which should make this taste where it does prevail much more likely to be exclusive at present than it was formerly. I mean the severity with which it is now treated by the laws and the contempt and abhorrence with which it is regarded / by the generality of the people. If we may so call it, the persecution they meet with from all quarters, whether deservedly or not, has the effect in this instance which persecution has and must have more or less in all instances, the effect of rendering those persons who are the objects of it more attached than they would otherwise be to the practise it proscribes. It renders them the more attached to one another, sympathy of itself having a powerful tendency, independent of all other motives, to attach a man to his own companions in misfortune.

Jeremy Bentham, Essay on Pederasty, 1785

Although attempts to silence sex between men persisted well into the nineteenth century, by mid-eighteenth century sodomy was a well entrenched example of societal excess, sexual vice, and degenerate identity. This project has explored how these men came to assume an important role in the lives of urban inhabitants through the various discourses used to identify, judge, and punish sodomy in the early half of the eighteenth century. Although there are examples in the historical record that treat sodomy less as a crime and more as a moment on a sexual continuum, they are few in number. The courtrooms, public houses, and streets of London, as well as some deserted islands, served as both real and symbolic spaces that isolated the sodomite, paradoxically positioning him as an important figure in discussions of sex, city, commercial enterprise, civic duty, and global expansion by conspicuously dismissing him from view. At times, the convicted sodomite evaded public humiliation, at the pillory for example, but rarely

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did he escape sexual injunction. In other words, the preponderance of historical evidence suggests that the accused sodomite could sometimes protect his body, but never his homosexual identity.

Because the discourse on sodomy is often punitive, this project has focused on the prohibitive rhetoric used in three distinct discourses to regulate sex between men and, at the same time, to show that orthodox sexuality was similarly regulated through different discursive techniques. The legal, natural, and urban discourses on sex between men are probably the most crucial conceptual frameworks for the purpose of understanding the rhetorical control of sexual deviance in the eighteenth century. Nearly all accounts prohibiting sex between men are concentrated in these three areas of control. The legal discourse on sodomy is arguably the most important for the study of sex between men in the eighteenth century because it makes available profound accounts of sodomites, their behavior, and the cultural reactions to it. Legal discourse punished those accused of sodomy while codifying the importance of orthodox sexuality by aligning it with a functional mercantile culture and the importance of sexual reproduction in London. In many cases, the legal discourse appears less concerned with sex between men than with the individual’s urban productivity and civic responsibilities. Many of the legal narratives portray sodomy as an example of civil disobedience and thus align sex between men with urban ills both created and negotiated by those living in the city.

While the legal narratives deal specifically with the institutional location and punishment of sodomites, “natural” and “unnatural” portrayals of deviant sexuality show that control is also maintained beyond human means of regulation. Sodomy’s

“unnaturalness” is one of the most common verbal injunctions of the eighteenth century.

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This injunction positioned the sodomitical act as “unnatural” thus placing it in direct opposition to “natural,” orthodox sexual behavior. This prohibition aligned sodomy and sodomites with a degenerate character while also showing that they possessed

“unnatural” impulses punishable by nature itself. Thus, the institutional, man-made means employed to punish sodomy were portrayed as only one means of control. The sodomite would be punished beyond institutional borders by the natural world to show that while sodomites may escape legal retribution, they will inevitably be punished. Their punishment, however, is not solely for illicit sexual congress, but also for relinquishing the assumed “masculine” ability to conquer nature in order to contribute to the expansion of the empire. Leondert Hussenlosch’s narrative is a revealing example of nature’s power to punish the “unnatural” sodomite, but also a telling example of the sodomite’s inability to survive in the natural world. Unlike Crusoe, Hussenlosch does not possess the necessary “masculine” traits to survive on Ascension Island. His masculine deficiencies are linked directly to his “deviant” sexual character and thus become markers of social and spiritual degeneracy.

The eighteenth-century urban discourse on sodomy connects sodomy, and specifically the molly, with the dangers of eighteenth-century metropolitan life. The available historical record shows that sodomy was an urban phenomenon. In the years following the Fire of 1666, urban reconstruction sparked a flurry of publications detailing the ways urban inhabitants navigate the streets of London. Oftentimes, these “maps” comment on the ways inhabitants behave in the public streets and instruct travelers on ways to avoid urban pollution in their perambulations through a confusing urban environment. These behavioral cartographies suggest that the city and its inhabitants

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existed in a symbiotic relationship in which urbanites affect the city and are affected by it. Thus, the city is made by its inhabitants and also produces an urban identity. The defining characteristics of this identity are the ways urban inhabitants move cautiously

through the streets avoiding commercial pollution and human waste. Furthermore, their

at times objectionable contributions to the city lead to portrayals of London as both a site of limitless possibility and stifling regulations. Accounts of the urban molly house align molly sub-culture with human waste and urban excess through accounts of public sexual congress at places like the “Sodomites Walk” and private behavior in the molly houses.

The mollies are consistently put on display to both demonstrate their illicit sexual behavior and remind urban inhabitants of their civil responsibilities. Thus, urban sodomites are punished not only by the legal system or the natural world, but also by the urban inhabitants with whom they associate.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the legal, natural, and urban discourses on sodomy is its intricately coded language. As this project has demonstrated, scholars

interested in sodomy during the first half of the eighteenth century pay little attention to

the language used to locate, judge, and punish this behavior. A consequence of this has

been an over-reliance on the historical record as a “factual” account of sex between men.

Hence, most scholars diligently work to uncover new and revealing texts that provide a more robust view of homosexuality in the period. The archeological work of Rictor

Norton, Randolph Trumbach, and others has made it possible to study the coded language

embedded in many period accounts of sex between men. This language reveals that

although sodomy was equated to other “deviant” activities prior to the long eighteenth century, the category of “sodomy” was associated with a different list in the eighteenth

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century. While sodomy was still linked to bestiality, witchcraft, coitus interruptus, and a

host of other “deviant” activities it was more specifically associated with masculine

sexual dysfunction. The discourse on sodomy, while certainly about penetrative sex

between men, is also concerned with an individual’s commitment, or lack thereof, to

functional metropolitan life. Thus, this discourse positions sodomy as a symbolic

extension of urban problems and the ills of each individual urban inhabitant.

What all three of the above foci have in common is the production of a discourse

that situates the sodomite and the molly as both an integral part of eighteenth-century

London society and one that deviates from it. These three areas also employ the most

common and forceful categories used in attempts to regulate the sexual lives of urbanites.

In some cases, the language used to regulate sex between men positions sodomy on a

sexual continuum, aligning it more closely to orthodox sexual practices. In these cases, sodomy retains at the very least a romantic and passionate quality normally reserved for

descriptions of heterosexual activity. In Fanny Hill, this language suggests that the

violent pederast sometimes portrayed in contemporary accounts of sex between men was

not the only “type” of sodomite. Instead, Fanny’s description suggests that sex between men can, and sometimes is, consensual and mutually pleasurable for both parties. This sexual consent, consequently, portrays sex between men as a diverse sexual practice that, like heterosexuality, can sometimes be aggressive and violent or passionate and fulfilling.

Describing sex between men as Fanny does, however, is extremely rare in contemporary accounts of sodomy. There are no accounts of an accused sodomite being defended in the courtroom for his sexual practices and only a few accounts of a convicted sodomite being protected while on public display.97 However, a few do exist. When

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Charles Hitchen was taken to the pillory, it is said that many “’Friends and Brethren’ had

wisely barricaded the side-avenues with coaches and carts so as to impede the angry

mob” (Norton 132). In 1762, a man named Shann was brought to the pillory for sodomy

(after his request for transportation was denied) and was initially protected by his friends

until the mob:

Fell upon the Wretch in the Pillory, tore off his Coat, Waistcoat, Shirt, Hat, Wig, and Breeches, and then pelted and whipped him in a most severe Manner. He was once pulled off the Pillory, but hung by his Arms till he was set up once again, and stood in that naked Condition, covered with Mud, till the Hour was out, when he was conducted back to Newgate. (St. James Chronicle, November, 1762)

This account is similar to what most condemned sodomites could expect in the pillory.

However, in Hitchen’s and Shann’s cases there were attempts to protect the accused.

Norton believes that these examples constitute “gay resistance” (132). It is impossible to

say, however, that these men were protected because they were homosexuals. It is just as

likely that they were protected because they were well liked in their community or

contributed to the economic security of their urban neighbors.98 In these cases of

protection, just as in cases of punishment, sodomitical activity serves a crucial discursive

purpose. It exposes and condemns sodomitical behavior through coded language in order

to distance itself from illicit sexual congress. What appears as a bold defense is actually

coded discourse that reflects the culture’s persistent homophobia. The song from James

Dalton’s Genuine Narrative that according to Norton “reflect[s] an authentic molly oral tradition” is actually an example of coded homophobia in the period.99 Although its

“backward” use of discursive injunctions normally leveled against sodomy appears to defend sex between men, in this molly song the rhetoric of homophobia retains its pervasive regulatory function. Thus, what appears to be representative of a “molly oral

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tradition” is actually more representative of the homophobia that pervaded eighteenth- century discourse concerned with sodomitical activity.

Supposedly sung by the French immigrant Miss Irons (aka John Hyons), this molly song takes the punitive language normally attached to sodomy and repositions the sodomite as one unrestrained by contemporary polarized sexuality:

Let the Fops of town upbraid Us, for an unnatural Trade, We value not man nor Maid; But among our own selves we’ll be free, But among, etc.

We’ll kiss and we’ll Sw[iv]e, Behind we will drive, And we will contrive New Ways for Lechery, New Ways, etc.

How sweet is the pleasant Sin? With a Boy about Sixteen, That has got no Hair on his Chin, And a Countenance like a Rose, And a Countenance, etc.

Here we will enjoy The simpering Boy, And with him we’ll toy, The Devil may take the Froes, The Devil, etc.

Confusion on the Stews, And those that Whores do chuse, We’ll praise the Turks and Jews, Since they with us do agree, Since they etc.

They’re not confin’d To Water or Wind, Before or behind, But take all Liberty, But take etc.

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Achilles that Hero great, Had Patroclus for a Mate; Nay, Jove he would have a Lad, The beautiful Ganymede, The Beautiful etc.

Why should we then Be daunted, when Both Gods and Men Approve the pleasant Deed, Approve the etc. (1728)

This poem refashions much of the verbal abuse aimed at sodomites into language of

justification. While sodomites are normally equated to Turks and Jews for various

pejorative reasons, this author praises them because they “agree.” The author also

provides a classical precedent for homosexuality by aligning contemporary sodomy with

the affair between Achilles and Patroclus. However, the most consistent use of

ameliorative language in this poem is one of liberation. The author suggests the molly

“trade” may be considered “unnatural” because while the mollies “value neither Man nor

Maid,” they are also “not confin’d.” Furthermore, as the last stanza shows, the mollies

should feel undaunted because they have on their sides “Both Gods and Men.”

This poem may certainly be a text written by a homosexual man defending

homosexuality. However, it was just as likely written by a heterosexual man coding in

this bawdy song the typical violent portrayal of eighteenth-century sodomites. The third stanza reflects the sexual predation and dangerously seductive qualities often included in period descriptions of sodomites who are seen to desire “a Boy about Sixteen.” The fourth stanza completes this portrayal by suggesting that the mollies “will enjoy/The simpering Boy.” The “simpering Boy,” with his peevish and affected smile, is a victim of both sodomy’s seduction and its aggression. The mollies are the active participants,

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the aggressors who will “toy” with the boy. The boy in this poem is an object of sexual

gratification for the mollies. This highlights the typical image of molly sub-culture as

rigorously guided by sexual pleasure or, as Jad Smith notes of Good Natur’d Dick, individuals guided by “ the sheer mechanics of sensation” (188).

While it has been argued that the above poem is a defense of homosexuality, it

also parades verbal tyranny over sex between men. By masking a verbal attack on molly

sub-culture in a poem spoken by a molly and justifying molly behavior, the author of this

poem suggests that the mollies themselves acknowledge the “debased” nature of their

activities. Embedded in what at first appears a defense of homosexuality is encoded

homophobia by a molly himself. This type of self-deprecation and self-loathing further

substantiates the perceived “sexual inversion” of sex between men in the period by

having the “guilty” admit their sin.

However, in the end, it is difficult to say with any certainty whether this poem is

or is not a defense of homosexuality. Thus, as with many period accounts of sodomy, the

question of “fact” or “fiction” is not only difficult to negotiate, but has the potential of

derailing analyses of texts describing the sub-culture. There are dangers when texts such

as these are interpreted as a defense or attack, as a “factual” or “fictional” account of sex

between men. If we count publications such as the above poem among a newly

resurrected textual space appropriated by homosexuals in the early half of the century

then we run the risk of forgetting the subtly encoded homophobic voice at times locatable

in pieces such of this. These “defenses” could just as easily be more nuanced and

effective ways of silencing the sodomitical sub-culture. The practice of sodomy was

viciously attacked from multiple positions, the most common of these being the legal,

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natural, and urban discourses investigated in this project. However, for the author of this poem, the sub-culture is attacked from within and by one of its own. As with some spies for the SRM who both participated in the sub-culture and testified against it, the mollies are portrayed as possessing not a homosexual identity exactly, but sometimes a homophobic self-implicating identity. This further complicates the assertion that molly sub-culture possessed a definitive homosexual identity by highlighting the lack of political awareness and group solidarity. These men are just as interested in attacking one another as they are in defending the sub-culture to which they belong.

However, at the same time, to not recognize the potential in a piece such as this is to separate the real sodomite from the discourse on homosexuality in the period. The story of the sodomitical sub-culture is a complicated one because, while in part produced by the men who were punished, it is written by those who did the punishing. To ignore the liberatory rhetoric in a piece such as this suggests that all apparent “defenses” are encoded homophobia. This has the undesired effect of silencing any voice the eighteenth-century sodomite may have had. While no text written by a sodomite about sodomy has been uncovered, that is not to say they do not or did not exist. When investigating period descriptions of sodomy it is vital to stay cautious when defending or denying the existence of a homosexual identity. Instead, it is important to remember that descriptions of sodomy are cultural constructions that bear within them both “real” and

“imagined” depictions of the sodomitical sub-culture. Thus, at the moment I think better and more effective questions are how these men were punished, how they were talked about in contemporary literary embodiments, how the ways in which each of the areas discussed in this project, and others, overlap to form a discourse on sodomy, and how the

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public responded to these men. In the end, we know exactly why these men and millions

of others have been unjustly and maliciously prosecuted over the last three-hundred

years. Unfortunately, for most homosexual men in the eighteenth century, we only know

them through their urban locations, public punishments, and the words of those

individuals integral to their publication.

There is, however, a text that most contend a direct defense of sodomy (and other

“illicit” activities) that does not code in its language cultural homophobia. A

Philosophical Dissertation on Death (1731) is a defense of not only sodomy, but also

suicide, theft, adultery, fornication, treachery, and a host of other activities that were

thought to be threatening eighteenth-century London. This text, composed by a “Friend

of Truth” to “console the Unhappy,” begins with an explanation of the cosmos and the

role of nature in human perceptions of death. According to the author, humans are taught

to be fearful of death and thus, by extension, taught to be fearful of “whatever we call

bad” (29). The author uses this claim and examples of other cultures to support his

assertion that the concepts of good and bad or right and wrong are culturally derived and

thus those activities considered “bad” or “wrong” are societal constructs and not absolute

truths.

While it is unnecessary at this point to engage in each “illicit” activity discussed

by the author, the issue of sodomy arises at multiple times in the text. The author initially claims that, “we are experimentally taught, that all whatever we call Bad, as Murder,

Theft, Adultery, Fornication, Incest, Sodomy, Rebellion, Treachery, etc. have always

been, and still are believed, by abundance of different People, to be Good; as Histories,

both ancient and modern, do testify, and the several Customs of sundry Nations, in all

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Ages, do sufficiently confirm” (29). While the author is suggesting that while England

brands the above activities “sinful” other nations, at various points in history, deem them

acceptable behavior in certain circumstances. For example, “Theft was esteemed a

commendable and virtuous Action among the Spartans; and adultery the same among

both the Romans and the Lacedemonians” (29-30). Other “sins,” including sodomy, are approached in similar ways. Each act is defended as acceptable in certain situations and justified through both ancient and modern cultures and traditions.

In terms of sodomy, the author claims that to stem the production of offspring,

“Minos made a law in Crete, which compelled the Husbands to separate themselves from their Wives…to quench their Concupiscence with Sodomy” (31). Furthermore, sodomy was held in “high veneration” because it was an “Order from Jupiter” (31). Similarly, in

China “Adultery and Sodomy are tolerated, in the Men, by the Laws both Divine and

Human” (39). The author makes clear that in the above cases sodomy is sanctioned both by secular order and divine principle. The author further contends that these cultures were taught to “have not any Horror to the filthy act of Sodomy, because none ever taught them that the same was bad, but their Laws declare it rather to be good, and that they ought to do it. On the contrary, the Jew and the Christian have it in the utmost

Abomination, because,…they learn that it is a very monstrous Evil” (57).100 The author’s

final note on sodomy argues against sodomy’s assumed “unnaturalness”:

There are some who attribute these Disorders [Sodomy and Theft] to a bad Inclination or Nature inherent in these Men, being in themselves naturally disposed to Evil; but they are mistaken: Since Human Nature, simply considered, disposes not either to Good or Evil, but merely to Self-Preservation, as we see in other Animals, and in Men really Savage, or intirely free and independent of each other. (69-70)

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Hence, for the author of this “pro-sodomy” tract, sodomy is not simply acceptable, but is, at times, a beneficial mode of behavior. Further, sodomy has been sanctioned by both the common and canonical law in other cultures. However, even more telling, is that nature in this text does not extend human means of regulation or guide prohibitive legal rhetoric.

Instead, human nature is devoted to “self-preservation” and the absolute binaries of good and bad or right and wrong effectively become cultural constructs rather than effective or rational means for approaching the “bad” or “immoral” behaviors outlined in this text.

For this author, England’s morality is the “problem.”

As a “defense” of sodomy written at a time of heightened public awareness over the sodomitcal “problem,” this text, to my knowledge, has not received any serious critical attention. This suggests at least one inherent problem in the critical landscape as it now stands. As scholars interested in this area of study we are engaging in a type of retroactive silencing begun by the moral majority of the eighteenth century. The silencing of Cannon’s text in the eighteenth century and the current critical silence on the

Dissertation are not all that different. If we are to produce a more accurate and thorough account of sex between men in eighteenth-century London then we need to account for the very real silencing of Cannon’s text and the critical silence on the Dissertation as moments of sexual regulation exercised at the level of discourse. In other words, whether the text is destroyed or ignored it is still an indication of our inability to move beyond the oftentimes punitive and violent rhetoric so prevalent in the period. This is not to say that we can ignore the power of discourse, but is instead to suggest that current approaches to eighteenth-century homosexuality must account for both texts violently opposed to sodomy and those, no matter how few, that defend it.

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It is also important to note that texts such as the Dissertation, even in their

revolutionary rhetoric of acceptance, align sex between men with other forms of “illicit”

behavior. While the Dissertation may be a distinct and telling defense of behavior it is, more specifically, a critique of English education and morality. To say that China

“tolerated” sodomy is not to say that it thought sodomy beneficial or “right.”

Furthermore, even though the author discounts the most common injunction against

sodomy (that it is unnatural) the rhetoric still speaks of sodomy’s “immorality,”

“filthiness,” and non-productivity. Although there is no coded homophobia as there is in

Dalton’s Narrative, the reader is constantly reminded that sodomy is “wrong,” “dirty,”

and does not contribute to heterosexual (re)production. Furthermore, the author aligns

sodomy with adultery, theft, incest, treachery and rebellion in an effort to critique

England’s morality. While it is impossible to estimate the effects, if any, a text such as

this may have had, at the rhetorical level it indicates that sodomy still holds its place in

the list of objectionable activities.

The sodomitical underworld, once called the “dark secret” of the eighteenth

century, is now firmly established as an area of investigation for both social historians

and literary scholars alike. While social historians such as Rictor Norton and Randolph

Trumbach continue to unearth new texts and produce a more complete image of the sub-

culture in early eighteenth-century London, other scholars such as Cameron McFarlane

and George Haggerty have analyzed these texts to offer a more vivid account of why sex

between men was so violently punished. However, none of these studies attempt to

analyze the discourse on sodomy to explore how it was talked about. The three spatial

foci on which this project focused offer some of the most conclusive, comprehensive and,

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at times, jarring accounts of sex between men. From the vast amount of legal narratives

to popular botanical erotica, and in contemporary news accounts and political periodicals, the sodomitical social type, whether daytime sodomite or effeminate molly, became a firmly entrenched social type symbolizing the faults of London and its inhabitants. The existence of early eighteenth-century sodomites and mollies also complicates Foucault’s thesis that “the psychological, psychiatric, medical category of homosexuality was constituted from the moment it was characterized—Westphal’s famous article of 1870”

(43). Homosexuality may have been named and categorized in the nineteenth century, but this categorization stems from its early eighteenth-century predecessors. As the eighteenth century came to a close, however, accounts emerge that question the violent, public treatment of sodomites.

For Norton, Bentham’s Essay (with which I began this epilogue) is a “cool, calm, clear-headed defence of homosexuality [and] is a breath of fresh air in the otherwise stifling atmosphere of prejudice and ignorance that would prevail well into the twentieth century” (220). Although Bentham’s Essay was unpublished, it is one of the first known defenses of sex between men and suggests that, at the very least, the treatment of sodomites was coming under scrutiny. It further suggests that Bentham sees in their punishment the method through which they would build a group politic. For Bentham, the sodomitical sub-culture would find group cohesion and sympathy in their violent punishment. Norton’s comment on Bentham’s Essay is revealing for the study of homosexuality and is a pertinent retrospective on the sodomite/molly sub-culture that

“emerged” in the first half of the eighteenth century. While we may differ in our conceptions of homosexual history, his observation suggests that the sodomite/molly

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social type did not “emerge” in a vacuum, but is a moment on a sexual continuum defined both by its violent regulation and its cultural fortitude.

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1 I use this word with caution because the word “homosexual” connotes an underground sexual identity. It is not the intention of this chapter to assert the existence of a homosexual identity in the eighteenth century. This is a matter of great debate among scholars of sodomy in this period. As Tim Hitchcock observes in English Sexualities, 1700-1800, “Among the literate and educated elite it is possible that there would be an awareness of the existence of molly houses, possibly through the libertine culture with which they were sometimes associated, but for the most non-metropolitan, plebeian and middling-sort sodomites, their behaviour was part and parcel of ‘normal’ sexual behaviour—a grievous and mortal sin, certainly, but not an identity” (64-65). This chapter deals specifically with the “middling-sort” sodomite and thus not the question of whether there was an identifiable homosexual identity among this class of men. For a more thorough approach to the formation of a homosexual identity, see Rictor Norton’s Mother Clap’s Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England 1700-1830.

2 The Dutch would eventually publicly execute over sixty convicted sodomites.

3 There are a number of scholars who oppose Foucault’s assertions. Rictor Norton, in his study Mother Clap’s Molly House, has been perhaps the most vociferous opponent of Foucault’s claim, saying “Contrary to the claims of modern social historians influenced by the theorizing of Michel Foucault, most eighteenth- century writers demonstrate a clear understanding of the concept of sexual orientation and a clear understanding that sexual desire lay near the core of one’s being” (15). In light of this, Norton argues that the terms “molly” and “sodomite” were used interchangeably to refer to men who had sex with other men and that “To reserve the term ‘molly’ strictly for those men who frequented molly houses and participated in the organized commercial molly subculture, and to reserve the terms ‘indorser’ or ‘sodomite’ for those men who frequented cruising grounds or were the subject of anti-sodomitical satires, would set up a false boundary between the world of the molly subculture and the world of cruising grounds and boghouses” (14-15). He further notes that the constructionist narrative of homosexual history which argues for a linear evolution of homosexuality is mistaken and that “Continuities rather than radical shifts will be readily perceived in the following study.” While I think he is correct in asserting that continuities need to be investigated, it is also important to notice and investigate the radical discursive shift that takes place in the early eighteenth century. Moreover, his contentions that “it is more than likely that most of these men shared a common sense of identity based on an awareness of their sexual orientation” (15) and that “many eighteenth-century gay men not only identified themselves as gay men, but also as members of a gay community” (17) appears to me a bit over zealous. If the above terms were used interchangeably to refer to the same caste of men and yet these men participated in quite different forms of underground sexual behavior then it would seem that there was some confusion rather than clarity among the people lambasting this lifestyle. Furthermore, while the historical record does demonstrate that some men crossed the line between nighttime sodomite and 24-hour molly, many men did not. While the terms were used interchangeably the actions of the men were very different. I think this suggests a cultural confusion in terming the behavior of these men and, thus, solidifies Foucault’s assertion that the articulation of power not only hinders, but also creates. Those “witnessing” this underground behavior or subculture used language to name, organize, categorize and punish these men. In other words, the discourse was used to “know” these men. Also, I do not doubt that these men were quite aware of their own sexual predilections and were just as aware that other men like themselves were prosecuted for their “crime,” however, this does not constitute a cohesive sexual identity. Norton uses a few specific cases to argue for the “emergence of a gay identity and a gay lifestyle—and even the first stirring of gay pride” (17). However, there are numerous instances that reject this conclusion. While the point of this project is not to argue for or against the existence of a homosexual identity in the period, it is important to note that this project assumes that the molly/sodomite dichotomy is useful for analyzing the discourse on these social types. Moreover, to assert a homosexual identity in the period is, in some ways, contradictory to a desire to analyze “continuities” instead of linear history. The molly subculture may in fact have been a cohesive subculture, but to call it an identity is to look at a radical shift. Perhaps the molly and the sodomite were, instead, a pre-emergent homosexual subjectivity.

4 For more on the kinaidic figure see John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire, Maud Gleason, Making Men and Craig Williams, Roman Homosexuality. This portion of Halperin’s essay is deeply indebted to their work on the kinaidic figure in revising Foucault’s claims. 184

5 To more fully demonstrate the difference between a sexual morphology and sexual subjectivity, Halperin uses Apuleius’s tale of the baker’s wife in book 9 of The Golden Ass in contrast to Boccaccio’s tale of Pietro di Vinciolo of Perugia (tenth story of the Fifth Day of the Decameron). The outline of Apuleius’s story is that a man dining at the home of a friend has dinner interrupted when his host detects his wife’s lover hidden in the house. Dinner being interrupted, the guest returns to his own home ahead of schedule and tells the story to his indignant wife who herself has a lover hidden in the house. Instead of killing the young man, the husband has sex with him and lets him go. While Apuleius’s tale makes no remark of the baker’s predilections for men, Boccaccio goes through great lengths to mark Pietro’s desire for other men. For instance, when Pietro discovers the youth in his house he recognizes him as “one whom he had long pursued for his own lewd ends.” In response, Pietro, instead of punishing his wife suggests a bargain to share the young man between them. However, one wouldn’t know Pietro was a sodomite by looking at him. As Halperin notes, “nothing about his looks or his behavior gives him away or gives his wife any advance warning about the nature of his sexual peculiarities” (106). In other words, there is nothing in Pietro’s actions that suggest he harbored deviant desires. What is at stake in Boccaccio’s story, as Halperin rightly notes, “is not gender deviance, but sexual deviance” (107). Hence, in Apuleius’s tale, the husband “enjoys” his wife’s lover only as a matter of revenge and does not express any distinct sexual taste. However, the husband in Boccaccio’s tale is “the subject of deviant sexual desires” who is more than happy to exploit his wife’s lover. Pietro’s actions, however, do not point to sexual orientation or imply in any way a categorical sexual identity. There are no outward signs of Pietro’s sexual preference. There are no mannerisms, no outward sensibility or “gender presentation” that suggests he possesses a homosexual identity. In other words, Pietro does not flaunt his sexual desires. Pietro’s deviancy expresses itself through his tastes and desires –through his deviant subjectivity while the husband in Apuleius’s tale expresses himself through his actions—through his sexual morphology. What Halperin is asserting through these two texts is twofold: that “sexual acts could be interpreted as representative expressions of an individual’s sexual morphology” and that “sexual acts could be interpreted as representative expressions of an individual’s sexual subjectivity” (107-108). Hence, morphology and subjectivity are two distinct logics for connecting sexual acts to general features of an individual’s identity. What defines the husband in Apuleius’s tale is a “shameless appetite for pleasure…along with a deviant gender-style” while Pietro “expresses himself through his sexual tastes, preferences, or desires” (108). In response to this reading, Halperin asserts that what we need are “ways of asking how different historical cultures fashioned different sorts of links between sexual acts, on the one hand, and sexual tastes, styles, dispositions, characters, gender presentations, and forms of subjectivity, on the other” (109).

6 As Norton observes, “Men who strictly speaking were bisexuals probably would not have become actively involved with the organized molly subculture for fear that their wives and family would hear of it; instead of contributing to the social life of the subculture, they sought same-sex partners in privies and cruising grounds or simply at haphazard” (152). It also must be noted that men who were not married also did not become involved with the sub-culture.

7 Barry Smart organizes these five precautionary methods as “the form, level, effect, direction and knowledge ‘effect’ of power” (78). Formal analysis addresses the “techniques which have become embodied in local, regional, material institutions” and not the varied legitimate forms of power. Secondly, analysis should focus on the ways power is exercised, the field of its application and the effects of this application and not with the intention or possession of power. Thirdly, power is not possessed by an individual, group or class but instead functions through the social body and, thus, all members of society are affected by power and are the agents of its articulation. Fourthly, Foucault asserts that the analysis of power should be built from the ground up investigating power at the “micro-institutional” level instead of the macro-institutional level.

8 Cynthia Wall, in The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London, comments on the importance of lists in the eighteenth century citing Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels as texts in which “the literary details of everyday life live more in itemized lists than in visual description. Lists become part of the restructuring of the experience of urban space in London after the Fire” (26).

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9 For more on this see Theo Van der Meer’s compelling essay, Sodomy and the Pursuit of a Third Sex in the Early Modern Period.

10 Interestingly, Johnson’s Dictionary does not contain entries for sodomy, sodomite, molly, or buggery; nor does it contain entries for dildo or masturbation. Furthermore, his entry on Priapism reads “a preternatural tension” but does not contain period definitions of a persistently erect penis and its association with masturbation. While this may seem further evidence for the confusion of the categories sodomy and buggery, it also suggests that Johnson may have found such indecorous words inappropriate for his dictionary.

11 John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure contains the most vivid description of a sodomitical scene. This scene and Good Natur’d Dick are more expressly discussed in Chapter four of this study.

12 McFarlane spends much of his time discussing An Account of the Proceedings Against Capt. Edward Rigby (1698). This trial narrative is important because of its popularity. Reproduced in broadside ballads and various pamphlets, the Account was used by Daniel Defoe as an example of the dangers sodomy posed to both the man committing the act and those familiar with it. Also, the account rivaled the popularity of Mervin, Lord Audley’s trial and was a watershed moment in the publication of sex between men in the first half of the eighteenth century. In this account, Rigby “demurs” thus not admitting guilt or innocence. Instead, he claims he was drunk and that anything could have happened. Similarly to other accounts, sodomy never took place although there is the suggestion that Rigby ejaculated on Minton’s fundament prior to penetration. However, no material evidence was gathered in the case. Also, this is the first case revealing the process of entrapment that would later be associated with the Society for the Reformation of Manners (SRM). In this case, Rigby aggressively pursues William Minton and “Put his Privy Members erected into Minton’s Hand, kiss’d him, and put his Tongue into his Mouth” (237). Following this, Rigby asks Minton to meet him at George’s Tavern to which Minton agrees. Minton goes to a friend for advice following which they contact the constable and proceed to entrap Rigby at George’s Tavern using Minton as bait. Rigby does not confess to the crime nor does he deny it. Because of this, the court finds him guilty, sentences him to three 2-hour pillory sentences, 1000 l. fine and one year in prison. However, what McFarlane and others find interesting in this early case is Rigby’s reason for demurring. Rigby knew that by demurring he would be found guilty without going to trial. Thus, Rigby “demurr’d to the Indictment, in hopes thereby his Crime would not be disclos’d” (242). However, his situation was put in narrative form, was widely published and widely read.

13 The sodomitical spectacle, while not prevalent in the legal proceedings, was realized at the pillory. Large crowds would gather at the public punishment to harass, both physically and verbally, the condemned man. There are numerous accounts of men (and one woman) being pulled from the pillory because of the abuse. There are also accounts of the accused dying soon after they were pilloried. For more on the pillory as spectacle, see Jody Greene, “Public Secrets: Sodomy and the Pillory in the Eighteenth Century and Beyond.” In this article, she details an account of pillory punishment for attempted sodomy in which William Smith and Theodosius Read are abused by a crowd “armed with projectiles including dead dogs and cats, as well as stones” (204). William Smith, who was unusually short, ends up dying at the pillory.

14 The trial against John Dicks is more fully investigated in Chapter four and is used here only to demonstrate that the keyhole/peephole trope and the inclusion of the family unit in trials, while an important observation in some cases, are not consistently present in the early legal narratives.

15 This essay is discussed in greater detail in Chapter four.

16 Because sodomy came to mean penetrative sex between men and was culturally understood as such, it is no longer necessary to distinguish what an eighteenth-century commentator meant by buggery or sodomy.

17 Because the presence of ejaculate was necessary to condemn a man for committing sodomy, there are cases of surgeons being called for the prosecution in order to corroborate the presence of semen on 186

clothing. While this is a rare occurrence, the participants of the trial were definitely aware that the authoritative language of a surgeon could be enough to punish the accused for sodomy and not attempted sodomy. The former being a capital crime usually entailed a trip to the gallows.

18 Punishments for sodomy and attempted sodomy varied. The most common punishments for attempted sodomy were a two-hour stay at the pillory, a fine based on income and a jail sentence of a year or more. If convicted of committing sodomy, the accused would be hanged. There are also instances of transportation . Also, depending on the severity of the crime, some men were sentenced to multiple trips to the pillory in different areas of London.

19 There was, of course, no centrally organized police force at this time. However, I don’t think Foucault is necessarily referring to a police force, but instead an ideology that “policed” the sexual acts of a culture and punished those whose actions were counter to those of the centralized culture. The Society for the Reformation of Manners (SRM) was an important extension of this social “police” force. They are responsible for many of the prosecutions in the early period and, thusly, for much of the available historical record.

20 While Foucault, I think, is absolutely correct in his approaches to the discourse on sexuality, it is also important to focus our attention on the vagueness, the “talking around” of sodomy as an effort to police both homosexuality and heterosexuality in the ways Foucault has mentioned. However, because of the problems inherent in studying the sodomitical subculture of the enlightenment—namely the positions of the author/narrator of sodomitical texts—we are left with little recourse in how we study sodomy of the period. Like most social historians, we can look to the cultural formations and reactions to the sodomitical “underworld,” however, we can also look specifically at this rhetorical vagueness and the discourse on sodomy to further elucidate how speech acts were employed by the state to further regulate sexuality.

21 Kristina Straub, in her book Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology, observes that, “the structure of the gaze empowers the spectator over the spectacle is a historical construction, probably just emerging in the eighteenth century (5). She further notes that, “while gender certainly becomes a crucial determinant in this relationship in the eighteenth century, class, race, and ethnicity fuse together with gender in the hegemonic workings of the gaze” (5). While I am not centrally concerned with the gaze, these observations help to demonstrate that the authors recounting the sodomy trials were spectators most likely as disgusted, horrified, excited and judgmental of sodomitical activity as was most of eighteenth-century British society.

22 There are a few narrative accounts that position themselves as “true” first person accounts of sodomy and homosexual relations. The story of Leondert Hussenlosch is one of these texts and is thoroughly investigated in the second chapter of this study. Also, Rictor Norton argues that Love-Letters Between a certain late Nobleman And the famous Beau Wilson is the most authentic textual evidence of homosexuality even though, “there is argument over whether it records genuine homosexual experience or simply demonstrates the perception (or construction) of homosexuals” (Norton 51).

23 Cameron McFarlane attends to the issue of whether there is an “it” to study, if an identifiable homosexual identity “emerged” in the eighteenth century, and if we can accept the teleological emphasis in gay studies that asserts “sodomite becomes molly becomes invert becomes homosexual becomes gay” (12). There is definitely an “it” to study, whether that “it” is defined as a sexually deviant subject, a cultural perception of a sexually deviant individual, or the linguistic representations of the deviant individual. In all of these instances there is a “subject” to analyze and conclusions to be made. However, what is more difficult to ascertain is whether there was an identifiable homosexual culture and whether the teleology as outlined above is relevant to this question. Many recent scholars agree that the molly “emerged” out of the sodomite and, consequently, tend to subscribe to the above teleology.

24 While the terms molly and sodomite are used interchangeably in the eighteenth century, each social type is identified with very specific characteristics. A molly was certainly a sodomite, but also cross-dressed

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and was an assumed member of the molly club underground. A sodomite, however, was not always a molly and did not participate (to our knowledge) in any form of underground club.

25 It is arguable that the legal system inadvertently provided the eighteenth-century homosexual man with solidarity and a group politic. While the legal records are notoriously unreliable they are a rich source for cultural assumptions about sex between men and do not demonstrate any form of group solidarity.

26 This is typical of the narrative renditions of the legal proceedings. At times, however, the actual legal proceedings are included in later publications. For instance, the story of Leondert Hussenlosch in the second chapter was republished in later centuries with the actual trial appended to it. For more, see the most recent edition entitled The Queer Dutchman.

27 Honest not only bears with it legal ramifications for the current and future ability of the defendant to abide the law, but is also derived from the Latin honor, which often meant esteem or official.

28 Prosecution for submitting to sodomy is not wholly uncommon in the trial accounts. In these cases, the accused is guilty of associating with the act itself and thus guilty of being too close to sodomy.

29 Prosecution for the intent to commit criminal activity is not uncommon for the legal system of the early eighteenth century. Cases of intended rape, murder and theft are often prosecuted with corporal punishment being the end result. While much of the legal rhetoric concerning rape remained unchanged in the eighteenth century, the laws did develop. As Antony Simpson notes, “Varying interpretations of general legal standards greatly affecting the outcomes of rape prosecutions were applied in the period. These concerned the competency of witnesses, the level of force applied and resistance offered, and the precise intent of the aggressor (my italics)” (181).

30 For more on the history of sodomy laws see, Wayne C. Bartee and Alice Fleetwood Bartee, Litigating Morality: American Legal Thought and its English Roots. They discuss sodomy’s transition from a religious crime to a secular one in which, by the early eighteenth century, there was no “benefit of clergy” (34). While rare, reprieves did occur.

31 Randolph Trumbach, in Sex and the Gender Revolution, demonstrates through three case studies “that gossip about a man’s actual sexual misbehavior could circulate in a neighborhood for some time until some conflict made the gossip a convenient weapon against a neighbor” (51). In his brief discussion of sodomy, he asserts that “male reputation after 1730 came to depend on the ability to prove at any stage of life that one was exclusively attracted women” (55). To be indicted for the intent to commit sodomy would have life-long consequences for the accused in terms of gainful employment, lodging and intimate relationships. Furthermore, in another of Trumbach’s investigations, “Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London,” he argues that “The law both reflected the culture and helped to shape it” (90). In terms of the accused sodomite, Trumbach notes, “for a man to be labeled a sodomite had a much more devastating and pervasive effect on his life than for a woman to become a prostitute” (89).

32 Oddly enough, Holiwell did not have any character witnesses. The reasons for this could be many, but it is likely that he either had none or, more likely, the witnesses he would call would not be able to defend him in the necessary ways because they had prior knowledge of his sexual preference.

33 In this period, a Waterman could connote a number of different occupations. He could have been a ferryman who provided transportation, a sailor involved in the expanding trade economy of the metropole, or, more likely, a man employed in the distribution of water. This last occupation could include being a fireman, a man employed in the pumping and carrying of water or a person involved in the irrigation of meadows necessary to productive agriculture. Whatever the exact occupation Huggins held, all of these occupations are integral to a properly functioning metropole—especially the latter. Also, it is clear that

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Huggins has different employment in this trial. This could have occurred for numerous reasons, but this is the same man who was on trial multiple times.

34 There were a number of men who infiltrated known sodomite cruising grounds or “haunts” as they were known. The most active were Willis, Stevenson, and Joseph Sellers. These men normally entrapped sodomites at the bogs of Moore-Fields on the East end of London. Moore-Fields was known as a sodomite cruising ground as well as a district of prostitution. While we are uncertain if they were spies for the SRM or just moral reformers, there is evidence that Willis and Stevenson did, at times, work for the SRM. Also, Chrarles Hitchin was a spy for the SRM and used his position to extort money from bawdy houses and molly houses. He also had a complicated relationship with Jonathan Wild who was hanged in 1725. Hitchin was also brought up on charges of attempted sodomy. For more on these spies see the trials against William Griffin, William Brown, Thomas Wright, and Martin Mackintosh

35 Thomas Wright was charged for committing buggery with Thomas Newton (the same man from Brown’s trial) in April 1726. Because of Newton’s and Sellers’ testimony, Wright was found guilty and hanged at Tyburn on May 9, 1726.

36 Oddly, Norton asserts that “gay men had their say in the dock, which was the only time they were allowed to speak for themselves” (13). I don’t disagree that this was the only time they were able to speak for themselves, but this has the danger of leading one to believe that the men accused of sodomy rigorously defended themselves at trial. Thus far, I have not seen this to be the case.

37 While it was extremely difficult for the courts to prove sodomy, it was similarly difficult for the men accused of attempted sodomy to prove their innocence. Furthermore, with the rash of prosecutions, punishments and publications on sodomy during this period, it is likely that he was intimate with both the difficulties in proving his innocence and the dangers of rigorously defending himself.

38 Other than the numerous trial accounts in which a spy was employed to entrap sodomites and mollies, Ned Ward’s account of the Molly Club is a further example of sodomitical surveillance. I discuss Ned Ward’s entry more fully in Chapter three of this study.

39 For more on mixed conversation, see Roy Roussel, The Conversation of the Sexes: Seduction and Equality in Selected Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Texts where he suggests that there is an “area of ambivalence…created between a man and a woman when his sense of the fixed opposition of their sexual identities is put into play. This area encompasses the erotic—or one aspect of the latter—a place where pleasure establishes a certain reciprocity between masculine and feminine which seemingly enables them to meet on equal terms” (6).

40 As has been noted, sodomites were viciously attacked at the pillory. While they were punished for inverting sexual order, in could be argued that the crowd, which normally consisted of the middling sort, was also punishing the sodomite for inverting class order. Furthermore, prostitutes were especially brutal to the condemned. See Letter from the Drury Lane Ladies for more on this.

41 Hitchcock observes, “The French were the model and the warning” (52) for the consequences of mixed conversation. In other words, the French were the model for the production of a refined gentleman, but also demonstrated the effeminacy of men through the same mixed conversation. Hence, some scholars needed to “ensure that English politeness would be free of the effeminacy of French Politeness” (53). Hitchcock notes David Fordyce’s solution which was that “young men should converse not with women but with a variety of men” (53).

42 In recent studies on sexuality and the emerging botanical world, terminology has been a source of contention. Julie Peakman notes that, “the eighteenth-century reader did not use the same categorizing faculty that we use today. No boundary was made between pornographic, erotic, libertine, gallant or licentious images, or differentiation from other forms, such as philosophical, political or moral genres” (5).

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Nonetheless, we use these words (and many others) to describe at times the same literature and, at others, very different types of writing. Writings of a sexual nature have been labeled pornographic, erotic, smutty, obscene, clandestine, and forbidden. At other times, as amorous prose, amorous fiction, books of amorous intrigue and the proverbial, dirty books. Consequently, as Peakman tells us, “An artificial delineation between mainstream literature and erotica has been made in today’s world which simply did not exist at the time it was published and first being read” (5-6). For the purposes of this and subsequent chapters it is important to note that I will be using the terms “erotic” and “erotica” to signify the entire category of books on sex and will be using the term “pornography” or “pornographic” to signify those texts that explicitly mark and market themselves as “obscene.” Furthermore, by terming any text erotic I am not only signaling the whole category of writing on sex, but further distinguishing it as writing that is not explicitly sexually titillating. In other words, the use of euphemism and metaphor or any other device used to “hide” sexuality in the text is a defining characteristic of erotic literature. Conversely, to call a text pornographic is to signal that text as overtly explicit in its description of sexual acts and/or the body parts involved in sexual congress. Hence, I consider these botanical texts erotic because of their propensity to obfuscate sexuality by couching it in another category such as botanical writings while pornographic writings, such as Fanny Hill, make explicit the sex act by thorough descriptions of both the body parts involved and the act itself.

43 The “emerging” is a bit misleading. I would argue that the sodomitical sub-culture did not “emerge” but was instead published more often and more graphically than ever before. For a more thorough account of this with a focus on class and the “emergence” of the homosexual underground see Steven Shapiro’s convincing essay, “Of Mollies: Class and Same-Sex Sexualities in the Eighteenth Century.” He argues that immigration to the metropole and rising populations in London’s plebian pleasure areas had a profound impact on the “emergence” of the homosexual subculture and its exposure.

44 While there is only one scene of graphic homosexuality in the text, it is the first time that the sex act had been exposed in the popular press.

45 Oddly, other than botany, the medical field and other sciences ignored sex between men. Only recently has a rare case been found in which a surgeon, John Marten, speaks in any way of sex between men. For more see, Same-Sex Desire in the English Renaissance: A Sourcebook of Texts, 1470-1650. Also, for a brief discussion on this silence in the medical field see, The Strange Medical Silence on Same-Sex Transmission of the Pox, 1660-1760.

46 See chapter 4 for a more thorough discussion of Fanny Hill and the implications of publishing and authorizing sex between men.

47 The novel form appears an unacceptable place for the inclusion of sex between men. To my knowledge, other than Fanny Hill the only other novels to include the sodomitical social type in its pages is Henry Fielding’s Amelia and Tobias Smollett’s fiction. Early in the novel, the reader is introduced to the “sagging prostitute” Blear-Eyed Moll who has a wandering eye and is noseless because of advanced syphilis. In prison, Moll and her companions “got possession of a man who was committed for certain odious unmanlike practices, not fit to be named.” It is obvious that this man was committed for sodomy. What Fielding is attempting to do in this scene is “to define sodomy as not simply different from cross- gender sexuality, but specifically antagonistic to it, even in heterosexuality’s most debased form—the debilitating, commercial intercourse that this prostitute embodies” (Shapiro 156).

48 There was a rather codified and lucrative market for the publication of sexualized travel narratives that purport the exposure of distant uncivilized landscapes. While Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe are the most well-known by today’s standards, The Voyage to Lethe, Little Merlin’s Cave, A Journey to Merryland, and many others were printed and sold to an audience interested in the untamed, hyper- sexualized worlds that these texts claim to expose.

49 By the 1720s, Linnaeus was familiar with Vaillant’s Sermo de Structura Florum (1718) which comments on “the loves of the plants” and “emphasizes the sexual functions of the stamens (androecium) and pistil (gynoecium)” (Stearn 23). This influenced Linnaeus’ own taxonomy. As William T. Stearn makes clear, 190

“Linnaeus’ adolescent imagination sought human parallels. Comparing the stamens to husbands, the carpels to wives, the disc to a marriage bed, and the ray florets to harlots or concubines, he found in the sexual arrangements of plants an entertaining array of situations” (24). His system of classification would be used well into the nineteenth century. Richard Bradley and Phillip Miller, both popular botanists of the early eighteenth century, did not have a lasting impact on the botanical sciences. Bradley became the first professor of Botany at Cambridge and was a Fellow of the Royal Society. Miller was chief gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden of which fellow botanist Peter Collinson commented, “it excels all the gardens of Europe.” Miller was also a Fellow of the Royal Society, trained a number of chief gardeners and was relatively prolific in his life. The Gardener’s Dictionary, arguably Miller’s most important work went through eight editions during his life and was applauded by Linnaeus. However, Miller did not fully adopt Linnaeus’ binomial nomenclature until the 1768 edition of his Dictionary.

50 As Darby Lewes notes in her study Nudes from Nowhere: Utopian Sexual Landscapes, British pornographers “created an entire pornographic genre that presents women’s bodies (or more accurately, a generalized female body) as a pseudogeographic site of male pleasure: a utopian sexual landscape” (2). She goes on to coin the term “somatopia” derived from the Greek soma (body) and topos (place). However, similar to most terms involved in the discussion of pornography and erotica of the eighteenth century, this term is “ambiguous: a ‘body place’ could be a place either composed of a body or designed for a body (as in providing bodily pleasure). Yet the term works both ways, for the places are simultaneously composed of female bodies and designed for male bodily satisfaction” (2-3). Just as the word pornography as derived from the Greek porne (prostitute) and graphin (to write) no longer simply signifies writing about prostitutes, somatopia, too, takes on a more complex and ambiguous connotation than even Lewes acknowledges. For, just as the term signifies body places composed of generalized female bodies exposed for male pleasure, they also expose masculine desire in very distinct ways. Lewes adheres to a strict polarization that sees somatopias as “pornography stripped bare” (9). For her, somatopia reveals:

The land/woman metaphor [that] graphically demonstrates how the sexual and political can become indistinguishable from one another as they blend into a model of male control and female passivity. The obscenity of these texts lies not in their varying degrees of sexual titillation but in their establishment of a hierarchy of male subject over female object. In somatopia, human endeavor—whether agricultural, aesthetic, or political—is essentially male endeavor. The female is little more than raw material for male creativity: a sexually insatiable thing, totally at the mercy of her biology, longing to be conquered and used. (9-10)

Of course, many of the “somatopias” she discusses do just this. Erotic landscapes such as those found in Little Merlin’s Cave, A Voyage to Lethe, and the corpus of texts devoted to revealing Merryland serve to demonstrate that the female “body landscapes” at the center of these texts are unknown and available for penetrative exploration. In A Voyage to Lethe, Captain Samuel Cock skirts the globe in search of new and fantastic locales. Each of these “body places” are replete with pintle trees and monuments, furry mouthed caves, female natives with insatiable sexual desires and male natives with enormous, full functioning “machines.” The natural world and its inhabitants are, for Captain Cock, feminine materials primed and ready for exploitation. His is a narrative of conquest for both the empire and the masculine body and, thus, a conflation of sexual and global politics. Furthermore, these erotic productions of “body landscapes” make expressly clear that the historic binaries equating masculinity to the proliferation of British culture across the globe and femininity to the virginal natural world ripe for the plucking exists firmly in the appetites of both the authors and the reading public. However, texts such as these also include the various botanical metaphors used in texts such as Arbor Vitae and Frutex Vulvaria. While texts such as Merryland and A Voyage to Lethe construct whole landscapes composed of the female body (and the male as well) they incorporate botanical images into their pages thus weaving together a tale of both cultural/sexual conquest and sexual definition. In other words, these erotic “bodyscapes” draw specific connections between the delineation of two separate sexes, their proper functionality and the results of this functionality. It is not only that these texts adhere to the binaries that position women under men both literally and figuratively, but that these texts also affirm the sexual contentions of botanical erotica. Hence, while the consequences for the female body as observed by Lewes and others are certainly evident, there

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are also consequences for the male body. Namely, that male bodies need to conform to a certain type of functionality for the binary to be in place. The visible and linguistic phallus exposed by somatopias is either an always already erect phallus or one that will, at some point, be erect. Flaccid pintles cannot “plough the earth” nor can they enter the “furry caves.” These defunct members are a matter of ridicule for the author of these texts and become an identifiable characteristic of a dysfunctional man and, subsequently, a dysfunctional culture. In a sense, while Lewes discusses these texts as “sexual utopias” where the female landscape is always available, they are also part of a negative inversion: namely, these texts function simultaneously as “sexual dystopias” in which a flawed male body gums up the works of functional heterosexuality. Much has been written about the chronic masturbator, the impotent man, the cross dressing and/or sexually repressed woman, the dildo using woman as well as the aggressive and brutal sodomite and the effeminate molly. However, none have discussed the later categories in terms of the discourse on the two distinct sexual models that appear in the erotica of the early eighteenth century. While scholars such as Peakman and Lewes have helped to refine discussions of erotica and pornography while simultaneously exposing readers to new texts, both tend to shy away from the masculine form necessary to their analyses of female bodies in these texts. It is not to say that the male body comes first in this discussion, but is rather to say that both the female and male bodies coexist in varying degrees to demonstrate either one of the aforementioned positions. However, lost in the polarized views of both the authors of erotica and the scholars who study them is the body that exists both at the center of discussions on sexual “deviancy” and at the margins of proper sexuality.

51 In his article, Mixed Feelings: the Enlightenment and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Roy Porter suggests that the eighteenth century was not only a watershed moment in the history of sexuality, but became such through a more progressive attitude towards heterosexual relations. He discusses the proliferation of prostitution, relaxed views on adultery, the comfort with which eighteenth-century culture engaged in heterosexual relationships and the sheer amount of publication both in textual form and actual sex shows to demonstrate both culture’s view on sexuality and how it came to be this way.

52 It is important to note that the later 1741 edition of Arbor Vitae contains a title page with a revealing image of Merryland and an introductory poem that reads:

In Stem most straight of lovely Size, With Head elate this Plant doth rise; First bare—when it doth further shoot A Tuft of Moss keeps warm the Root: No Lapland Muff has such a Fur, No Skin so soft has any Cur; This touch’d, alone the Heart can move, Which Ladies more than Lap-Dogs love.

The above suggests, as does the earlier version, that both sentiment and physical proximity to the opposite sex can move the tree to function. However, this poem also makes a direct reference to Carl Linnaeus’ botanical work in his Journey to Lapland in which, just as his System Naturae, he finds human sexuality an effective correlative to botanical distinctions.

53 While a complicated series of negotiations, the Treaty of Utrecht essentially ended the Spanish War of Succession and preserved the European balance of power. The negotiations occurred in March and April of 1713.

54 The word “tree” is not only suggestive of the male member, but of the family tree that properly sexual men are naturally supposed to produce—that is the lineage that sodomy (a supposedly sterile practice) cannot engender. There is also a pronounced religious and Biblical connotation to the “Tree of Life.” It is possible that the aural echo of fruit in the word frutex is therefore meant to suggest the fruit of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” The recourse to natural law is reinforced by allusions to divine law. Moreover if the botanical definition of frutex is “A plant having a woody, durable stem, but less than a tree; a shrub,” then a sexual/gender hierarchy has been subtly validated. 192

55 The Drury Lane Ladies were a group of prostitutes particularly troubled by sex between men. While their poem is used here to demonstrate how sex between men was seen as a “fashion” their letter is also used to demonstrate another trend which was to term these men women-haters or misogynists. A particularly effective example of this is The Women-haters Lamentation (1707).

56 For more on this see, Raymond Stephanson, The Yard of Wit: Male Creativity and Sexuality, 1650-1750.

57 For more on botanical erotica and the sexualization of scientific discoveries see Julie Peakman Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in Eighteenth-Century England.

58 In April, 1730, 250 men were summoned before the authorities on the charge of sodomy. Of these, 91 faced exile for being absent and 60 were sentenced to death.

59 There are many instances of perceived sodomitical “infection” that contributes to it becoming a “growing fashion” among men. Their suggestion that this behavior has become “in vogue” is representative of other responses to the sodomitical sub-culture in the early half of the eighteenth-century.

60 Similar to the section on Defoe with which I began this study, not only has sodomy itself become “fashionable” but its mention as well as its spectacle was dangerous for any onlooker. However, it was not simply that sodomites possessed a seductive potential, but was also the assumed immorality that accompanied any form of discourse on sodomy. Thus, even the rhetoric of admonition was thought to lead to licentious and inappropriate behavior.

61 This could, of course, be from various depravations, however, they seem less a matter of providence and more glaring oversights.

62 These were planted on May 12th and had thus been in the ground for nearly two months. This and other contradictions are prevalent in the text.

63 Bougre, according to the OED, was a name given to a sect of heretics deriving from Bulgaria and was applied to all heretics. However, the word “bugger” was derived from “bougre” to signal those who participated in abominable practices.

64 Although it is not certain whether he died, the text points in that direction.

65 For more on this see Lincoln Faller Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth-Century England.

66 For more on the Great Fire of 1666, urban reconstruction, and the effects on eighteenth-century urban life see, Stephen Porter, The Great Fire of London, Harold Priestley, London: The Years of Change, Maureen Waller, 1700: Scenes from London Life, and Rosamond Bayne-Powell, Eighteenth-Century London Life.

67 According to Randolph Trumbach, “In the first generation of the new system of three genders, sodomites met each other either in the relatively safe enclosed spaces of their own rooms or of a molly-house that catered only to them, or they picked up in the streets, the public gardens or the arcades of shops in Covent Garden, London Bridge or the Exchange, men and boys who were often not sodomites, and invited them to the more enclosed space of a public toilet or private room in a tavern” (London 91). While the physical spaces and enclosed structures were relatively safe, they were also dangerous because spies for the reforming societies would infiltrate the molly ranks. Also, while these were safe spaces the discourse on the enclosed spaces was another form of violence.

68 The “luxury” of contemporary homosexual studies is that the production of homosexual space can be defined and documented by homosexual men.

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69 Steve Poole in, ‘Bringing Great Shame upon this City’: Sodomy, the Courts and the Civic Idiom in Eighteenth-Century Bristol, investigates Bristol’s “reputation as a city in which sodomy was endemic and rarely punished by the civil power” (114). It can hardly be said, however, that Bristol was a village. Bristol had, in the 1730s, “outgrown Norwich as Britain’s second largest urban centre and come to dominate the tobacco, sugar and slaving trades” (115) and although not the urban center in England, many of the London issues in this chapter are also prevalent in Bristol. While Bristol had a sodomitical population, there is no evidence of molly houses. It appears that the molly house was not only an urban phenomenon, but a London one as well.

70 It is difficult to say what exactly occurred in molly houses. The two narratives by Wild and Ward and brief accounts in trial records suggests that there was ordered activity in molly houses. The men were all dressed as women and normally had “molly names” such as Princess Seraphina (a popular molly butcher mentioned in James Dalton’s Genuine narrative), Peggy Whale (John Whale’s alias), Plump Nelly (Samuel Roper’s alias. Roper had a molly house as well), Mary Magdalen (John Towleton’s alias), Judith (Thomas Mugg’s alias), Miss Muff (Jonathan Muff’s alias), Molly Softbuttocks, etc. Most accounts show that the mollies sing, dance, and drink heavily throughout the evening. At some point in the evening the men would pair up and participate in mock marriages where, in at least one account, a mock reverend was present to bless the union. After the ceremonies, the individual pairs would take turns retiring to the “chapel” where it is assumed they would consummate the marriage. However, no observer speaks in detail about what happens in the “chapel” even though the door is normally left open. In the meantime there are tea-table discussions like those found in Ned Ward’s account and the mock birth of a “jointed-baby” who is then christened with a molly name. Also, all accounts end with the mollies incarceration and subsequent punishment. Never, at least in the existing accounts, do they continue to practice their “devilish schemes.”

71 The Habermasian formulation of the bourgeois public sphere in the eighteenth century has been heavily revised, and for good reason. We are now able to assert with some certainty that the public and private spheres were not mutually exclusive categories and, in fact, that the “public and private intertwine, and public life is sustained by private affiliations and alliances that to modern eyes look scandalous or corrupt” (Richetti 117). For Habermas, the emergence of the public sphere is dependent on private individuals who, because of their economic power come together “to form a new sort of public” (115) interested in revising the ways of the absolutist state. Habermas explains that this is done in two ways: “veritas non auctoritas facit legem (truth and not authority is the source of law” (Habermas 53) and “A political consciousness developed in the public sphere of civil society which, in opposition to absolute sovereignty, articulated the concept of and demand for general and abstract laws and which ultimately came to assert itself (i.e., public opinion) as the only legitimate source of this law” (54). Hence, in this formulation law is conceived as “permanent and universal norms rather than as an imposition by the sovereign” (Richetti 115) and the truth can only be found through rational argument in open and public debate. This sphere includes private individuals who share a desire to debate in public the ways to regulate the private sphere. Thus, “the two spheres are crucially linked, as a redefined private sphere leads to a correspondingly revised public reality” (115). The two spheres exist in a cyclical relationship in which private individuals publicly meet to redefine their private lives. This overview is not especially unique but is especially compelling when we configure it with the main critique that “Habermas neglect[ed] all those who were excluded in the public domain: the underclass and women” (Olson 152). While Habermas may have neglected to mention those excluded from the public sphere, he did ask a very important question about these neglected classes: “But how much, and how correctly, would we think if we did not think as it were in common with others, with whom we mutually communicate” (104). Of course, women and the underclass did not think in common with those who had economic power and a voice in the public sphere. Of course, the sexually deviant sodomite was “voiceless” in the public sphere as well. To say that the practicing sodomite did not think in common with the voices of the public sphere would be a drastic understatement. The sodomite was antithetical to heteronormative ideology that underpinned both the public and private spheres. He did not contribute to the production of offspring and was morally bankrupt. Furthermore, most sodomites were of the underclass and thus did not contribute to the public sphere because they lacked the necessary economic power.

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While the sodomite was not given a voice in the public sphere (there were no protests for gay rights or private letters written in direct contradiction to the treatment of homosexual men), the neglected and underrepresented did have a place in the public sphere. As Habermas points out, “The Law of Opinion judged virtues and vices; virtue, indeed, was measured precisely in terms of public esteem” (91). “’Opinion’ denoted the informal web of folkways whose indirect social control was more effective than the formal censure under threat of ecclesiastical or governmental sanctions” (91). In the eighteenth century sodomy was no longer a matter for the ecclesiastical courts. The crime was tried and punished ostensibly in a secular court, but more so at the pillories to which these men were confined. Jail time and fines were certainly an unpleasant form of punishment, but to be pilloried meant that the public had a say in your punishment. Oftentimes, the public spoke with stones, dead animals, rotten fruits and virulent language. Even more troublesome to the convicted individual was that he would be forever branded a sodomite. His crime, his unnatural nature, had been published to a culture of avid “readers” both tantalized and disgusted by his crime. The sodomite, once relegated to an area outside of popular culture has, through unrelenting publication, become a matter of public discourse.

72 For more on John Gay’s Trivia; or the Art of Walking the Street, see Erik Bond’s extremely thorough account Reading London: Urban Speculation and Imaginative Government in Eighteenth-Century Literature. Bond argues that, “Gay’s poem offers a variety of ways for readers to identify their position in London, which in Gay’s terms means a position among a moral hierarchy of professions as well as among buildings and streets” (31). Through the concept of “conduct,” Bond asserts that Gay “yok[es] morality to geography” in order to produce a “mental map for readers on the go” (34-35). For Bond, Gay’s text is a highly moral approach to walking the streets of London in which the reader is responsible both for their ability to read the city and their ability to write the city.

73 For more on Daniel Defoe’s urban characters and urban identity, see Simon Varey Space and the Eighteenth-Century English Novel. For Varey, “This isolation and alienation of Defoe’s principal characters are imagined spatially: in Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack the spaces of the city are important in spite of their notorious lack of specificity, because they enable a subject in a discourse of power to establish her or his own subjectivity and so overcome the least desirable consequences of their alienation. In Moll Flanders, according to Varey, “Moll reminds us that self-protection lies in other people’s ignorance of both their identity and the space she occupies” (143). Varey, along with other scholars such as Dorothy Van Ghent, Max Byrd, and George Starr, all point to a “paucity of visual detail” (Starr xx) and an urban detail that is “not at all vivid in texture” (Van Ghent 34-35). I agree with Cynthia Wall that “we need to recognize a different cultural perception of space in the early eighteenth century as the source of its different textual representation—that we should not expect Defoe and other early novelists to furnish us with Dickensian detail. But neither should we miss the presence and resonance of the novelistic spatial detail that does exist simply because we might be expecting something else, something less ‘other’” (215).

74 James Dalton’s Genuine Narrative is also a valuable record of molly club activity. For a brief look at Ward’s, Wild’s and Dalton’s accounts see Craig Patterson’s The Rage of Caliban: Eighteenth-Century Molly Houses and the Twentieth-Century Search for Sexual identity.

75 For more on London’s clubs see, Robert J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London.

76 Charles Hitchin (or Hitchen) was the Under City Marshall and was a prominent “thief-taker.” Hitchin was tried and convicted for assaulting Richard Williamson with sodomitical intent and was pilloried on Catherine Street on the Strand on May 2nd, 1747. At the pillory, “’Friends and Brethren’ had wisely barricaded the side-avenues with coaches and carts so as to impede the angry mob” (Norton 132). For Norton, this act “was one of the first acts of gay resistance in modern times” (132). To pay his legal fines, Hitchin sold his position as Under City Marshall. Jonathan Wild was a notorious criminal and essentially the boss of a codified criminal syndicate. However, he began his career as Hitchin’s assistant. Following his punishment, Hitchin became a member of the SRM, which likely added to his power in the underworld. Early in Hitchin’s career as the Under City Marshall, he was suspended for complaints that he abused his office. There is evidence to suggest that Hitchin and Wild became jealous of one another which prompted Hitchin to publish A True Discovery of the Conduct of Receivers and Thief-Takers in 1718 which attacked 195

Wild as “the king of the gipsies” and “King among the thieves, and Lying-master-general of England, Captain-general of the Army of plunderers and Embassador Extraordinary from the Prince of Air” (7). To this, Wild responded with An Answer To A Late Insolent Libel. At Wild’s trial, William Field turned evidence on Wild who was hung on May 24th, 1725. Field was eventually hanged as well. Both of these men figure prominently in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera where the character “Fitch” is based on William Field and “Peachum” is Jonathan Wild. James Dalton was a member of Field’s gang.

77 Scholars such as Randolph Trumbach, Rictor Norton, Timothy Hitchcock, and Cameron McFarlane ground, in some ways, their positions on the molly sub-culture with the assertion that the molly is mocking various heterosexual codes in their “celebrations.” While this observation is an important one, it does not distinguish how mollies mocked these codes nor does it take into account the position of the observer.

78 This phrase is repeated throughout Ward’s History to refer to uneducated men who had misguided reading practices.

79 For more examples of the keyhole/peephole trope in the trial records see the trial against Thomas Wright in which a door that is slightly ajar is a critical component of the text. Also see the trial against Charles Hitchin in which Joseph Cockroft and Christopher Finch used the keyhole to bring the sodomite to justice. In the trial against William Holiwell and William Huggins, John Rowder looked through the light of the stairs. For another account of counter-discourse see the trial against Charles Banner who used dear and precious to refer to Nicholas Burgess, a fifteen years old boy. In the trial against George Duffus, Duffus calls Nicholas Leader “his dear” and claims he “meant nothing but love” in his sexual overtures. There are many examples of the sexually aggressive sodomite. For more see the trial against Isaac Broderick who attacked boys of ten and eleven. See also the trial against Gilbert Lawrence who attacked a boy of fourteen while referring to him as “a very pretty fellow.” Finally, see the trial against Peter Vivian as another example of sodomitical predation.

80 She echoes Ian Watt’s view that, “Richardson’s impersonal and anonymous role allowed him to project his own secret fantasies into a mysterious next room: and the privacy and anonymity of print placed the reader behind a keyhole where he, too, could peep in unobserved and witness rape being prepared, attempted and eventually carried out” (199). Olson further refers to Laura Mulvey’s analysis of scopophilia “in which she takes up Freud’s theory of sexual perversion to isolate the objectifying gaze of desire in the context of film” (Olson 156).

81 For Alan Bray, the details of the trial records are less important than the image generated by the records themselves. However, I agree with Haggerty that most of the trial accounts “are meant to codify a particular understanding of sodomy as unnatural, as victimizing, and as a violation of the terms of human intercourse” (Keyhole Testimony, 169).

82 There is a portion of the trial curiously omitted from Haggerty’s assertion that “The relative ages of the participants are crucial: this is by no means an encounter between equals, but, again, a victimization that puts the younger boy at the mercy of the older, sexually driven sodomite” (270). The narrative of the ale- house boy is brief but important in explicating both the type of surveillance occurring and its relationship to the construction of a “cultural primer:” The Ale-house Boy. When I went in, Meeson was lying upon the bench, and the Prisoner asked me to sit down and drink, which I did, and then he begun to kiss me, and thrust his Hand in my Breeches, whether I would or no: Upon which I got up, and went out, and told Mr. Rogers and the Woman, what he had done to me, and they peep’d thro’ the Partition, and afterwards went in and seized him. (150-151) This seemingly innocuous and brief section of the trial actually demonstrates a number of crucial elements for both the trial accounts and their function as a “cultural primer.” The scene with the ale-house boy obviously demonstrates the victimization of the boy and the aggressiveness of the sodomite’s actions as a sexual predator. However, it is not solely their aggression or predilection for younger boys, but also that sodomites possess a blatant disregard for proper modes of behavior in public and are grossly negligent

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when it comes to their own actions. In other words, the sodomite seeks to fulfill his sexual needs regardless of location, relative ages, or clear and present danger. There are numerous accounts given such as the one by the ale-house boy and all demonstrate this central desire for homosexual pleasure regardless of the object’s age. Moreover, the ale-house boy’s story functions as a narrative device constructing the necessary motivation and curiosity to insure that Rogers and his companion make use of the “slit in the partition.” There is, at least in this instance, both discreet and indiscreet surveillance at work. The indiscreet surveillance of the ale-house boy who is told to go in and see what the two men are up to is predicated on the notion that once inside he will be “attacked” by Dicks. While this occurs, however, it is not enough to accuse Dicks of sodomy.

83 Look at Evan Davis’ account as described in Chapter 2.

84 Trumbach asserts that men were known to be men “because they did not know what it was like to desire men” (Modern Prostitution, 75). In this he suggests that Cleland was not supporting male authority but was instead commenting on his own supposed homosexuality.

85 For Kevin Kopelson, the sodomitical scene “represents the only instance known to Fanny of successful anal penetration” and “represents the only sexual act felt by Fanny to be morally outrageous” (Seeing Sodomy, 175-176). Peter Sabor notes in his introduction to Memoirs, “The converse of Fanny’s delight in heterosexual love is her abhorrence of homosexuality” (xxiii). Kopelson, Sabor, and many other scholars make note of Fanny’s “abhorrence” of homosexuality, but spend relatively little time in analyzing the details of the scene itself.

86 Later in the novel, Fanny refers to “self-viewing, self-touching, self-enjoying” as “self-knowledge” (108).

87 It is also important to note that the sailor was “knocking desperately at the wrong one [door]” to which he responded “any port in storm” (141).

88 Not coincidentally, Fanny refers to her own genitals as the “mount-pleasant of those parts.” This phrase is repeated in the later sodomy scene to refer to the buttocks of the younger boy.

89 Jad Smith asserts, “In her room, she [Fanny] discovers a ‘peephole,’ through which she sees two young men romping” (198). It is important to remember that Fanny actually discovers a paper-patch which she punctures with her bodkin. Hence, she does not “discover” a peephole, but instead makes one. She is the agent in the construction of this peephole and thus controls what is visible and invisible.

90 Jad Smith again comments on this, suggesting that “Female ‘interest’, especially for a ‘working girl’ like Fanny, lies in the criminalization of this form of desire, which tends to cut women out of the profitable economy of pleasure” (199). Fanny’s description of this scene suggests that she is unconcerned with her own promise of fiscal stability because of the amorous rhetoric accorded the sodomites.

91 As Peter Sabor makes clear, the detailing of male homosexual sex is omitted from most eighteenth- century and subsequent editions of the text. For a more thorough account of the textual history of Memoirs and a brief critical history, see Peter Sabor’s article “From Sexual Liberation to Gender Trouble: Reading Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure from the 1960s to the 1990s.”

92 As Netta Murray Goldsmith notes in her study, The Worst of Crimes: Homosexuality and the Law in Eighteenth-Century London, “From the trials described…a picture emerges of the life of a homosexual in mid-eighteenth-century London. Casual sodomy committed by young single men was probably commonplace and tacitly accepted, if it took place with young effeminate adolescents. The older homosexual was viewed more sternly, even if few people wished to see him put to death” (93). While the trial records do suggest this, I find Fanny’s reaction to the scene more than tacit acceptance.

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93 Jad Smith also comments on this, asserting that “Here, the anus threatens to ‘pass’ for the vagina, and the possibility of a kind of bisexuality, of the male possessing both penis and vagina, threatens to undercut sexual difference” (198). While this may seem a likely proposition, Fanny’s reaction to what she sees uses identical rhetoric to describe both her “place of pleasure” and the sodomite’s. However, nowhere in her description is it suggested that she is “threatened” by this.

94 In response to Mrs. Cole’s speech against sodomy and the sodomitical scene, David Weed contends that, “Memoirs constantly inscribes a range of sexual practices only to thwart them in favor of vaginal intercourse between men and women. The novel titillates the reader with the possibilities of female masturbation, lesbianism, heterosexual anal sex, and sodomy, but it concurrently suggests that these practices are incomplete and misdirected, dead ends and wrong tums on the sexual highway” (11).

95 Refer to Chapter 3 on Ned Ward’s text and the molly house.

96 Many scholars have observed Charles’ sexual constitution as one that combines both assumed masculine and feminine sexual deportment.

97 There are also discursive attempts at protecting and legitimating sex between men. In 1749, Thomas Cannon published a pamphlet in defense of homosexuality entitled Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplified. While no copies of this text exist and there are no detailed descriptions of its contents, in 2006 Hal Gladfelder discovered nine documents relating to the case.

98 Shann was a sixty year old master of a China shop whose stay at the pillory prompted the publication of a broadside ballad entitled This is not the Thing; or, Molly Exalted.

99 According to trial accounts, the song “Come, let us fuck finely” was supposedly sung at Mother Clap’s molly house.

100 Earlier in the text, the author blames Christians for the violent approach to punishment. The author writes, “it must be acknowledged, that the majority of Christians have been and so still continue, the cruellest and most blood-thirsty People in the whole World” (47).

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