50 pages • 1 hour read
John ClelandFanny Hill
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1748A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Socio-Historical Context: Sexuality, Sex Work, Censorship, and Consent in Mid-18th Century England
Mid-18th-century English society was moving away from the relatively free sexual expression of late 17th- and early 18th-century Restoration art and literature into the Georgian and Victorian sensibilities of sexual repression and modesty. With this transition also came a shift in gendered perspectives: Whereas women were seen as inherently lusty and amorous through the Middle Ages, by the Georgian period in the mid-18th century, they were starting to be seen as the gatekeepers of sexuality through passive disinterest. Fanny Hill reflects these changes, along with a longstanding social trend in which men have the freedom to experiment with sexuality with minimal consequences while women are forced to give up their reputations and chances for social improvement if they want to explore their sexuality. Throughout the novel, men suffer few or no consequences, on the whole, for their sexual exploration, while women are generally urged to restrain their sexuality, usually for the benefit of men.
Many of the female characters in Fanny Hill—including Fanny—turn to sex work as a result of the social repercussions of their explorations of sexuality. Sex work in 18th-century England was a major industry, with brothels and sex workers operating in both major metropolitan centers like London and the countryside. For women, sex work represented one of the few opportunities to make a living without dependence on a husband or family, and often the only opportunity for work for women who had been socially ostracized. Sex work was acknowledged to be widespread, though it was frowned upon by society as a whole. Censorship was common and legal in 18th-century England, and most sexual content was censored by public officials to avoid blasphemy, corruption, and indecency. Cleland was arrested on a charge of corrupting the king’s subjects when Fanny Hill was published, leading to centuries of the novel being passed around underground to avoid similar charges.
An issue that runs in tandem with sex work and censorship is that of consent, which was understood differently by Fanny Hill’s Georgian audience as compared to contemporary views of sexuality and sexual assault. Women did not have individual rights; legally, women were usually considered the property of their fathers, brothers, or husbands. Cases of sexual assault rarely made it to court, and such cases were treated as situations of damaged property rather than personal harm. The expectation in Georgian England was that women were not supposed to know about sex, which meant that sex workers were immediately discounted as untrustworthy or indecent, while any woman without the protection of a man could not make a legal case against her attacker. In situations such as Harriet’s in Fanny Hill, the mere fact of her isolation at the time of her assault would have been seen by a Georgian audience as a kind of complicit consent. Her assault renders her morally compromised and ineligible for a respectable marriage, leaving sex work as her best avenue to support herself.
Genre Context: Erotic and Conduct Literature
Erotic fiction has a rich and longstanding history, and sexuality has always been a part of human expression and art. Fanny Hill is considered one of the first erotic novels to be published in English, though it draws on the often-pornographic literature of the Restoration period, such as the poetry of John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester. Views on erotic literature vary; while some readers dismiss erotic literature as “smut,” others argue that sexuality, as a fundamental aspect of humanity, can and should be expressed in art. Conventions of the genre in the early modern period usually involved young men or women, such as Fanny in Fanny Hill, exploring or experimenting with sexuality and romance. Many erotic novels including Fanny Hill expand upon openings for sexuality that exist in other genres of fiction. For example, Moll Flanders, in Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel Moll Flanders, experiences a similar path to Fanny, engaging in sex work for a significant portion of her youth. However, Defoe’s novel does not detail Moll’s sexual experiences in the way that Cleland does with Fanny.
Fanny Hill runs parallel to another genre of literature common in the 18th century: conduct literature. Some scholars even consider the novel to be a kind of parody of conduct literature. Conduct literature is literature that seeks to provide guidance and instruction for readers on the proper way to live and act. In the 18th century, it was usually aimed at audiences of young adults and most commonly focused on marriage and love. The earliest popular example of a novel that sought to fulfill the aims of conduct literature is Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, in which a young woman, Pamela, becomes a servant in the home of a wealthy landowner named Mr. B. Throughout the novel, Mr. B attempts to seduce Pamela, and she resists his advances. Once Mr. B acquires and reads the letters Pamela writes to her parents, he discovers her genuine virtue. His respect for her morality overcomes his reservations about their class differences, and they marry. While Pamela purports to teach its readers the value of virtue—its subtitle is Virtue Rewarded—many of its critics have noted the inherent eroticism in the text, which depicts several of Mr. B’s attempts to seduce Pamela as well as the very intimate experience of Mr. B reading Pamela’s letters. Fanny Hill represents one response to such criticisms, in that it makes the implicit eroticism of Pamela explicit.
