When I thought I had sufficiently ripen'd him for the laudable point I had in view; one day that I expected him at a particular hour, I took care to have the coast clear for the reception I design'd him: and, as I had laid it, he came to the dining-room door, tapped at it, and on my bidding him come in, he did so, and shut the door after him: I desir'd him then to bolt it on the inside, pretending it would not otherwise keep shut. With sexual acts being viewed heavily as taboo within 18th-century England, Fanny Hill strayed far away from the norm in comparison to other works of its time. A large portion of books that focused on the idea of sex were written in the form of conduct novels: books that would focus on teaching women the proper ways to behave and live their lives in as virtuous a manner as possible. [33] These novels encouraged women to stay away from sexual deviance, for if they were to remain virtuous then they would ultimately be rewarded. One example of this is Samuel Richardson's conduct novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, in which the character of Pamela is able to resist sexual temptation, thus maintaining her virtue and being rewarded in the end with a prosperous life. Time Out wrote, "a relatively large budget and some respectable names in the cast list, but this is still limp softcore flummery sold on the half-remembered notoriety of its purported 18th century source...Lawyer Reed and madam Winters, meanwhile, seem as though they have their teeth gritted in the hope that it will all be over soon." [4]

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure/Letter the First Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure/Letter the First

A Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" et al. v. Attorney General of Massachusetts" (PDF). Princeton University. October 1965. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 June 2017 . Retrieved 27 February 2018– via HeinOnline. The young fellow had just dismounted, when the old lady immediately sprung up, with all the vigour of youth, derived no doubt from her late refreshment; and making him sit down, began in her turn to kiss him, to pat and pinch his cheeks, and play with his hair, all which he receiv'd with an air of indifference, and coolness, that showed him to me much altered from what he was when he first went on to the breach. In the mean time, one could not help observing the swell of his shirt before, that bolster'd out, and pointed out the condition of things behind the curtain: but he soon remov'd it, by slipping his shirt over his head; and now, as to ​nakedness, they had nothing to reproach one another.

Mr. H ———, so experienc'd, so learned in the ways of women, numbers of whom had past through his hands, doubtless soon perceiv'd this uneasiness, and without approving or liking me the better Kopelson, K. (1992). "Seeing sodomy: Fanny Hill's blinding vision". Journal of Homosexuality. 23 (1–2): 173–183. doi: 10.1300/J082v23n01_09. ISSN 0091-8369. PMID 1431071. Fanny Hill (Off-Broadway Musical, 2006), libretto and score by Ed Dixon, starring Nancy Anderson as Fanny. The flattering praises she intermingled with these invasions, contributed also not a little to bribe my passiveness, and, knowing no ill, I fear'd none; especially from one who had prevented all doubt of her womanhood, by conducting my hands to a pair of breasts that hung loosely down, in a size and volume that full sufficiently distinguished her sex, to me at least, who had never made any other comparison.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure/Letter the First Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure/Letter the First

The book exemplifies the use of euphemism. The text has no swearing or explicit scientific terms for body parts, but uses many literary devices to describe genitalia. For example, the vagina is sometimes referred to as "the nethermouth", which is also an example of psychological displacement. But who could count the fierce, unnumber's kisses given and taken? in which I could often discover their exchanging the velvet thrust, when both their mouths were double-tongued, and seem'd to favour the mutual insertion with the greatest gust and delight. In the mean time, the extension of my limbs, languid stretchings, sighs, short heavings, all conspired to assure that ​experienced wanton that I was more pleased than offended at her proceedings, which she seasoned with repeated kisses and exclamations, such as "Oh! what a charming creature thou art! —— what a happy man will he be that first makes a woman of you! ———— Oh! that I were a man for your sake ————!" with the like broken expressions, interrupted by kisses as fierce and falacious as ever I received from the other sex. Thus they kept me pretty long at table, and about six in the evening, after I was retired to my own apartment, and the tea-board was set, enters my venerable mistress, follow'd close by that satyr, who came in grinning in a way peculiar to him, and by his odious presence confirm'd me in all the sentiments of detestation which his first appearance had given birth to.Bates, Stephen (1 March 2010). "Father Hill and Fanny Hill: An Activist Group' s Crusade to Remake Obscenity Law". UNC / First Amendment Law Review. 8 (2): 59. For besides all the perfections of manly beauty which were assembled in his form, he had an air of neatness and gentility, a certain smartness in the carriage and port of his head, that yet more distinguish'd him: his eyes were sprightly, and full of meaning; his looks had in them something at once sweet and commanding. His complexion out-bloom'd the lovely-colour'd rose, whilst its inimitable tender vivid glow, clearly sav'd from the reproach of wanting life, of raw and dough-like, which is commonly made to those so extremely fair as he was. But I had not much reason to fear either, for she was so entirely taken up with her present great concern, that she had no sense of attention to spare to any thing else.

File : Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749, vol. 1).pdf

It was here agreed, that I should keep myself up and out of sight for a few days, till such cloaths could be procured for me as were fit for the character I was to appear in, of my mistress's ​companion, observing withal, that on the first impressions of my figure, much might depend; and, as they well judged, the prospect of exchanging my country-cloaths for London finery, made the clause of confinement digest perfectly well with me. But the truth was, Mrs. Brown did not care that I should be seen or talked to by any, either of her customers, or her Does (as they call'd the girls provided for them), till she had secured a good market for my maidenhead, which I had at least all the appearances of having brought into her ladyship 's service. Mr. H ——— continu'd kind and tender to me, yet, with all this I was far from happy; for, besides my regrets for my dear youth, which though often suspended, or diverted, still return'd upon me in certain melancholic moments with redoubl'd violence, I wanted more society, more dissipation.

Mr. H ——— whom no distinctions of that sort seem'd to distract, scarce gave himself or me breathing time from the last encounter, but as if he had task'd himself to prove that the appearances of his vigour, were not signs hung out in vain, in a few minutes he was in a condition for renewing the onset, to which preluding with a storm of kisses, he drove the same course as before with unabated fervour, and thus in repeated engagements, kept me constantly in exercise till dawn of morning, in all which time, he made me full sensible of the virtues of his firm texture of limbs, his square shoulders, broad chest, compact hard muscles, in short a system of manliness, that ​might pass for no bad image of our antient sturdy barons, when they weilded the battle-ax, whose race is now so thoroughly refin'd and fritter'd away into the more delicate and modern-built frame of our pap-nerv'd softlings, who are as pale, as pretty, and almost as masculine as their sisters. Prepared then, and disposed as I was by the discourse of my companions, and Phœbe 's minute detail of every thing, no wonder that such a sight gave the last dying blow to my native innocence. I lay then all tame and passive as she could wish, whilst her freedom raised ​no other emotions but those of a strange, and till then unfelt pleasure: every part of me was open, and exposed to the licentious courses of her hands, which like a lambent fire ran over my whole body, and thaw'd all coldness as they went. I then just hinted to him not to mention in the house his having seen such a person as me, for reasons I would explain to him more at leisure: and then, for fear of miscarrying by being seen together, I tore myself from him with a bleeding heart, and stole up softly to my room, where I found Phœbe still fast asleep, and hurrying off my few cloaths, lay down by her, with a mixture of joy and anxiety, that may be easier conceived than express'd. It was pretty late in a summer evening when we reached the town, in our slow conveyance, though drawn by six at length. 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.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Immortal Classics) Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Immortal Classics)

Holmes, Thomas Alan (2009). "Sexual Positions and Sexual Politics: John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure". South Atlantic Review. 74 (1): 124–139. ISSN 0277-335X. JSTOR 27784834. The novel consists of two long letters (which appear as volumes I and II of the original edition) written by Frances 'Fanny' Hill, a rich Englishwoman in her middle age, who leads a life of contentment with her loving husband Charles and their children, to an unnamed acquaintance identified only as 'Madam.' Fanny has been prevailed upon by 'Madam' to recount the 'scandalous stages' of her earlier life, which she proceeds to do with 'stark naked truth' as her governing principle. At table, the conversation was chiefly kept up by the two madams, and carried on in double-meaning expressions, interrupted every now and then by kind assurance to me, all tending to confirm and fix my satisfaction with my present condition: augment it they could not, so very a novice was I then. Whilst they were in the heat of the action, guided by nature only, I stole my hand up my petty-coat, and with fingers all on fire, seized, and yet more inflamed that center of all my senses: my heart palpitated, as if it would force its way through my bosom; I breath'd with pain: I twisted my thighs, squeezed, and compress'd the lips of that ​virgin-slit, and following mechanically the example of Phœbe 's manual operation on it, as far as I could find admission, brought on at last the critical extasy, the melting flow, into which nature, spent with excess of pleasure, dissolves and dies away. The opportunity however did not offer till next morning, for Phœbe did not come to bed till long after I was gone to sleep: as soon then, as we were both awake, it was but in course to bring our ly-a-bed chat to land on the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the love scene, I had thus, by a chance been spectatress of, served for a preface.As if this had been the signal agreed on for pulling off all their cloaths, a scheme which the heat of the season perfectly favoured, Polly began to draw her pins, and as she had no stays to unlace, she was in a trice, with her gallant's officious assistance, undress'd to all but her shift. AB - John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure has been described as the first erotic novel in English and is perhaps the greatest example of the genre. From the outset it was mired in disrepute. Cleland penned the novel to liberate himself from debtors’ prison, and the book’s manifestly lewd content led to its legal suppression within a year of publication. Though versions of the novel, nearly always abridged in some form, continued to find a way into print, the Memoirs remained an underground text until the 1960s. Only as that decade ushered in a culture less socially deferential and more sexually permissive was the moment opportune for the obscenity ban to be successfully challenged. Cleland’s novel is a triumph of literary style, resting on his invention of an entirely new, vividly metaphoric, terminology for describing sexual pleasure.This Broadview Edition provides a new text of the original novel alongside extensive materials on Cleland’s biography and career, contemporary censorship, and pornography and prostitution in the eighteenth century. When he had finish'd his stroke, and got from off her, she lay still without the least motion, breathless, as it should seem, with pleasure. He replaced her again breadthwise on the couch, unable to sit up, with her thighs open, ​between which I could observe a kind of white liquid, like froth, hanging about the outward lips of that recent opened wound, which now glowed with a deeper red. Presently she gets up, and throwing her arms round him, seemed far from undelighted with the trial he had put her to, to judge at least by the fondness with which she ey'd, and hung upon him. When I saw him thus mov'd, and fir'd for my purpose, I inflam'd him yet more, by asking him several leading questions; such as, "had he a mistress? ——— was she prettier than me? ——— could he love such a one as I was? ——— and ​the like;" to all which the blushing simpleton answer'd to my wish, in a strain of perfect nature, perfect undebauch'd innocence, but with all the aukwardness and simplicity of country-breeding.