Fanny Hill



Fanny Hill is John Cleland's classic erotic novel, originally published in 1748 under the title Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.

The book is written as two (very long) letters from one middle-aged rich Englishwoman named Frances "Fanny" Hill to another woman who is identified only as "Madam", where Fanny proceeds to recount her early life with alleged complete honesty. This life was marked by the death of her parents, her times as alternatively a prostitute and a kept woman, and her love story with Charles, a former client and First Love to whom after many adventures she becomes Happily Married. Along these stories we are told very detailed and extensive recounts of numerous sexual escapades, not only Fanny's but also the ones of the people she met during the most scandalous stage of her life.

This novel was (and to a point still is) highly controversial, to say the less - despite being on the conventional morality of the era (that frowned on homosexuality and vice and approved only of heterosexual relationships based in mutual love), its depicted sexual politics were extremely against what was considered the proper conduct for women at the time, and Fanny's Happy Ending marked her a Karma Houdini for the standards of the era. It is considered one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history: it was banned in the United States until 1966.


 * Anything That Moves: Phoebe... Louisa...
 * Author Appeal: Cleland wrote it from prison, as a young man.
 * Band of Brothels: Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Cole's establishments, though they differ exceedingly in particulars...
 * Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: Mrs. Brown and Mr. Croft.
 * Be a Whore to Get Your Man: Fanny's M.O., really.
 * Bury Your Gays
 * Come Back to Bed, Honey
 * Do Not Do This Cool Thing: "...if I have painted vice in all its gayest colours, if I have deck'd it with flowers, it has been soley to make the worthier, the solemner sacrifice of it, to virtue." Sure you did, sweetie.
 * Double Standard: Around every corner.
 * Epistolary Novel
 * Even the Girls Want Her: Fanny.
 * Everybody Has Lots of Sex: Duh.
 * Heroes Want Redheads: Fanny. "Auburn". Right.
 * High-Class Call Girl: Fanny, eventually.
 * IKEA Erotica: Only rather purple-y.
 * Interplay of Sex and Violence: Oh, Norbert...
 * Jizzed in My Pants: Mr. Croft.
 * A Man Is Not a Virgin: Except maybe Charles, and probably William. Not that they last long.
 * Meaningful Name: As Wikipedia speculates, Fanny Hill is "possibly an anglicisation of the Latin mons veneris, mound of Venus", although the use of "fanny" as an euphemism for the female genitalia was reported at least a century later.
 * My Girl Is a Slut: Bless her heart.
 * Of Corsets Sexy
 * Out with a Bang: Mr. Norbert, in the most recent film version, at least.
 * A Party - Also Known as an Orgy
 * Pimped-Out Dress: Or rather, a dress in which to be pimped out. Interchangeable, really.
 * Ready for Lovemaking: Heeeey Wiiiiilliam!
 * Really Gets Around: Several of the girls. Every girl we meet, actually.
 * Rule 34: And HOW! Wikipedia even has some of the illustrations created for some of the XIX editions of the novel.
 * Sex Montage
 * Show Some Leg
 * Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: Somewhere around Level 2, mostly.
 * STD Immunity
 * Technical Virgin: For a good 45 pages, anyway.
 * Unreliable Narrator, on two levels
 * In universe: Fanny claims to have suffered a Convenient Miscarriage but many critics suspect she actually had an abortion. She's been abandoned, she owes the equivalent of 200 years' wages (at an honest job) to her landlady, and the landlady is an abortionist. She also can't work as a prostitute while pregnant at the time.
 * In Real Life Cleland took his plot from stories he was told by the prostitutes he met in prison. Unfortunately, it appears that their stories were nothing but self-justifying lies, since prostitution at the time wasn't anything like Cleland describes.
 * Unusual Euphemism: The word "machine" will never be the same.
 * Whip It Good