Pleasure and power in John Cleland's Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a woman of pleasure

Abstract

The scope of this thesis is not intended to provide an entirely coherent alternative reading of the book, but I would like to stretch the boundaries of the critical debate about the Memoirs by considering a small number of issues and one generic characteristic. By drawing attention to the relevance of the picaresque genre to the Memoirs I hope to emphasise the independence, pleasure and humour which Fanny is endowed with. My reading of Fanny as a strong-minded, independent woman sets the tone for the discussion of wealth, women's manners, homosexuality, the picaresque and the sexual body. In examining the Memoirs' use of the picaresque I hope to illustrate how this feature disrupts the narrative. In doing this the picaresque allows Cleland to portray graphic sexuality without the restrictions of a moral or immoral reading. Freed from these restraints sexuality becomes amoral and a part of the unpredictable landscape of the picaresque novel. Cleland exploits the suspension of morality using humour, while Fanny's marginal position becomes a microcosm in which she thrives and is allowed the room for self growth. Chapter Three deals with readings of the Memoirs as pornographic, and while an in-depth critical evaluation is outside the scope of this thesis, some attempt to place the term in a historical context will be made. Attention to the male penis has often been marked as a component of pornography while repeated portrayals of the sexual female body (by a male author) have also sparked criticism. My reading argues for the phallus as potentially pleasurable but not all-powerful, while sexual representations of individuals outside conventional stereotypes couch sexuality as salubrious not dominating. For consenting characters sexuality is liberating, countering contemporary fears of the body as weak and sinful. Fanny's ability to create wealth is a means of empowerment and an outlet for her natural business talents. The utilisation of her skill has the additional effect of promoting Fanny as an individual, the novel never portrays her as a part of an oppressed sisterhood of women, as a character she stands alone and is judged alone. The Memoirs presents Fanny as a woman who increasingly develops her financial skill, her early encounters with money teach her its importance and the benefits of managing it herself. Financial success does not come by chance as it sometimes does for Defoe's Moll Flanders. Fanny's security by the novel's close has been bought about by systematic methods and her pride in her success id testament to its value in establishing her high self esteem. I will read the major male homosexual encounter as vital to my reading of the text. The incident is part of a larger programme of tolerance and mutuality, which are supported by a series of textual markers both verifying this reading, and unifying the sexual action. Cleland's representation of male homosexuality is genuinely subversive, this trait is reinforced by the extensive attacks made on the novel. Homosexuality is tolerated, if not celebrated as a legitimate aspect of adult attraction while incidents involving sex which is not mutual frame the passage and serve to endorse this view. Finally, homosexuality does not serve (as has been sometimes argued) to accentuate a moral hierarchy which attempts to place heterosexuality as an absolute. My final chapter addresses Fanny's marriage to Charles. As elsewhere the event is based on choice and mutuality and refutes contemporary portrayals of marriage as a finite and restrictive force against women. In the context of the novel, Fanny's marriage is an absolute rejection of the bonding decorum used to restrict freedom of choice and individual liberty. Throughout the thesis I have made reference to works by four of Cleland's contemporaries. Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, Samuel Richardson's Pamela, Frances Burney's Evelina and Henry Fielding's Shamela. I have no intention of drawing any close textual comparison, and fleeting impressions of these works act only to emphasise points made about the Memoirs. Part of the popular success of these works would have been their seen adherence to established convention and while each abounds with revolutionary ideas (which have been discussed at length by others), it is their conformity that I have accentuated.