Talk:Fanny Hill
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I am missing a description of the content of the novel; sad. Bgohla 21:25, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)
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[edit] Plot in
I've read the novel, so I tossed in what I remember of the plot. It's an interesting read, as well as a titilating one, and Cleland's literary skill is miles beyond that of the hack pornographer. At the same time, one can have no illusions that the book was written for any moral, or even political, point. It was written to sell. I had to correct a misstatement at the outset, though. Fanny Hill didn't cause any kind of a stir in legal circles when it was published. I believe it took two years for anyone on the religious side to react, and the evidence they used when pointing to why it should be banned was the depiction of sodomy. The chapters that depicted the sodomy were from a pirate edition not authored by Cleland, and even in those Fanny is shocked and outraged at what she sees and cannot imagine what on earth the men are gaining from what they're doing. Geogre 18:54, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
[edit] sex toy
Can someone find a good way to write a note of fanny hill butt plug to the article, so it doesn't sound stupid. It is named after her, right? --Easyas12c 13:12, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
- Not sure it would be a good thing to talk about here, as it's simply another appropriation of the name to say something is "fun, classy, and sexual," like someone talking about a "Caterbury Tales Walking Stick." A thing not mentioned in this article, though, is that the word "fanny" was both a familiar form of Francis and a British slang term for the vagina. Consequently, the "fanny hill" is either the buttocks or the mons veneris, depending upon one's point of view. Geogre 11:53, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Correction to plot
There are many errors in the summary of the plot, I would like to add some corrections and I think it is really important to write a summary as close as possible to the text, especially when it appears in Wikipedia's first page. Do not let Wikipedia be corrupted !!
“[Fanny] begins as a poor country girl who is forced by poverty to leave her village”:
More precisely, she left her native “small village near Liverpool, in Lancashire” because her parents “were both carried off by the small-pox” when she was fifteen years old.
“she is corrupted by a handsome man to whom she loses her virginity, and who leaves her after professions of love which turn out apparently to be false. Fanny then seeks the help of a woman who is, in fact, a madam. This woman introduces Fanny to lesbianism and the ability to make a living by prostitution.”
This is totally wrong! Fanny was left alone on her arrival in London. On the second day, she went to the “intelligence office” to find a place. There, a “lady” who is in fact a “Madam” (called Mrs Brown) proposed her a place as a “servant” (planning to make her become a prostitute). At Mrs Brown’s, Fanny experienced homo-eroticism with Phoebe, one of the prostitutes. She only met Charles (her first lover)AFTERWARDS and fled with him on her own accord. She gave up her virginity to Charles out of pure love and lived with him for eleven months when he “was sent away at least on a four years' voyage” in the South Seas by his father. What is sure is that he did not deliberately left her and his “professions of love” were certainly true as he accepts to marry Fanny at the end.
“Fanny … repeatedly sells her "virginity."”
She gave up her virginity to Charles out of pure love and only sold a "pretended virginity" once to Mr Norbert, a man whose fancy was to deflower young virgins and abandon them afterwards.
“[Fanny] does realize that she is being exploited.”
The narrator (i.e. Fanny) never says so. Neither her body nor her money has been exploited while she worked at Mrs Cole’s (another “Madam”). She clearly expresses that everything that happened there was done with consent of each partner, and that Mrs Cole never took advantage of Fanny, even when she could. Near the end of the novel, when Fanny lived in “easy circumstances”, she was “indifferent to any engagements in which pleasure and profit were not eminently united”.
- More precisely, she explains her "modesty and reserve" at the time were "less the work of virtue than of exhausted novelty, a glut of pleasure, and easy circumstances", which made her indifferent to pleasures. So she isn't saying that she likes prostitution per se, she is saying that she was tired of sex and wouldn't do it without profit. It's far from the end of the novel - eventually, she reunites with her sweetheart, quite monogamously.
- Concerning the exploitation part - they certainly tricked her into prostitution, and there certainly was an old repugnant "brute" that they would make her have sex with in the beginning. However, it's true that she was described as kinda prosperous and enjoying her profession in some later parts of the book. --194.145.161.227 11:03, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
“Further, Fanny acts as a picaro, for as a prostitute she shows the wealthy men of the peerage at their most base and private.”
This is should rather be applied for Defoe’s Roxana who is a “courtesan” at court.
- Corrections by Marion 24/04/06*
[edit] Miller Test
The Roth Standard is no longer the current test for Obscenity, it is the Miller Test. Sources may be needed for my addition, but I figured I would add it anyways because it seems important to note that it passes the miller test since publishers are selling the book since the article left it up in the air whether the book was still banned or not. 132.170.36.235 (talk) 03:50, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
