dirk vanderbeke - fanny hill, or: what's so exciting about mossy mounts

Style: Volume 46, Nos. 3 & 4, Fall/Winter 2012 439

Dirk VanderbekeFriedrich-Schiller-University, Jena

Fanny Hill, or: What’s so Exciting About Mossy Mounts?

John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (MWP), a.k.a. Fanny Hill, is

unquestionably a literary classic, albeit of quite a different kind than the other texts

discussed in this issue. It has a long history of censorship, and while many books

that were banned for their allegedly scandalous or obscene content were eventually

fully exonerated – James Joyce’s Ulysses, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover

and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita readily come to mind — John Cleland’s bid to fame

has not quite lost the flair of the forbidden book. And when one comes across a

secondhand copy, chances are that it will open more readily on some passages than

on others or even bear the unmistakable marks of selective scrutiny on its pages.

Admittedly, when an unexpurgated version was published in 1963, it found quite a

few supporters in the subsequent trials in England and America who argued that it is

an important historical source, that it is not simply a dirty book for dirty minds and

that it actually transmits laudable ideas. Peter Wagner describes the text as “a novel

thoroughly dominated by eighteenth-century bourgeois thought,” as “a fusion of

natural sexuality acceptable to a middle-class audience and an aesthetic framework

incorporating the current of sentimentalism” (Eros 243). Slepian and Morrissey

suggest that the “main thing that Fanny Hill herself learns from experience is the

value of reason and self-control” (68), and they reach the conclusion:

The rhetoric, theme and structure of the Memoirs give it some genuine literary merit. Any book that can be read in as many ways as this one can is not just pornography. Judges and reviewers can be wrong: those who were merely titillated would do well to look again. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure deserves to be read as carefully as John Cleland wrote it. (75)

All this shall not be put into question, even though it is quite puzzling why literary

quality and pornography seem to be mutually exclusive, and why, if a text is well-

structured and well-written, it automatically ceases to be pornography.1 Be this as

it may, on the following pages the book will be treated as a very successful and

possibly even paradigmatic pornographic text that has managed to survive for

more than two centuries in the literary underground and still attracts an audience

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that finds pleasure in the adventures of a woman of pleasure. Of course, with more

liberal attitudes prevailing on the modern campus, the text is now readily taught in

classes on 18th-century literature and culture (e.g. Saxton), and among the reasons

for its persistent success the literary qualities and the frequently pastoral language

should not be underestimated. After all, it is this text that survived from a time

in which the “market was already awash with pornography” (Stevenson, 39), and

thus its specific features most likely played a favourable role. However, I tacitly

assume that the readership that kept Fanny Hill in print from its first publication

to the lifting of the ban in 1963 did not chiefly consist of academic critics or of

highly sophisticated connoisseurs of literature who relished a well-turned phrase or

the sparkling humour and witty metaphors that are unquestionably part and parcel

of the text, but that the recollections of Fanny were — and by many readers still

are – cherished for their depiction of sexual delights and the stimulating effects of

such a literary endeavour.

The question which then raises its head is what we can learn about human

sexuality and its evolution from a text that managed to attract and arouse the interests

and the libido of huge audiences — and as the novel, in contrast to most canonical

texts, for most of its history was condemned rather than openly hailed or forced

on helpless and innocent minds as required reading in high school, its success

obviously indicates a willingness to overcome various obstacles that prevented easy

access to the object of desire. Moreover, the specific depiction of sexual acts in the

novel seems to fulfil a widespread demand, and a comparison with other successful

pornographic texts and movies will show that some patterns are obviously preferred

and selected by the respective audiences and thus may be counted as evidence for

an underlying interest. One of the implicit theses of this paper is that in order to

investigate the significance of human evolution for literary theory and for a better

understanding of our fascination in storytelling and the narrative patterns and motifs

that most readily capture the readers’ interest and delight, it may be more useful to

turn to popular and even disavowed literature than to the acclaimed canonical texts.

Shackleford et al. point out that “[s]exual fantasy may provide a window

through which to view the evolved psychological mechanisms that motivate sexual

behaviour” (Shackleford et al, 376), and the lasting success of specific erotic

products may be seen as indicative of a strong overlap with existing fantasies and

desires. In contrast, canonical texts of “high” literature, in compliance with the

old dictum that literature should teach and delight, quite frequently offer didactic

messages that suggest a difference from, rather than an agreement with, existing

desires — and the Petrarchan sonnets or Jane Austen’s novels quite clearly told

Fanny Hill, or: What’s so Exciting About Mossy Mounts? 441

their respective audiences what the authors thought love should be in contrast to

prevalent practices and conventions. Of course, literary representations of gender

relations can hardly be neutral and need also to be seen as constructions, but then

the long-term success of a literature that caters to human desires and fantasies

which are commonly regarded as unsavoury or embarrassing may well indicate

a compliance with these desires and thus with elements in human nature that are

not fully governed by cultural restrictions. Catherine Salmon thus argues that an

“evolutionary perspective suggests that what makes [male-oriented pornography

and female-oriented romance] successful or appealing to their audiences is how

well they tap into basic male and female sexual psychologies” (245) (I will return

to the topic of romance at the end of this article).

Artistic representations of sexuality can be found all over the world and have

a pedigree reaching far into human prehistory. Among the earliest artifacts from

the period roughly between 35,000–20,000 years ago are the so called Venus

figurines, images of the female body with exaggerated genitalia and a distinct

lack of individual facial features. In 2003 a clay figurine, estimated to be around

7,000 years old and dubbed the Adonis of Zschernitz, was found near Leipzig. It

depicts a male torso with rather pronounced genitals. Some time later a fragment

from a possibly matching female figurine was found, raising the question whether

they originally belonged together and could have been the very first depiction of a

copulating couple in human history yet discovered. In 2003 and 2004 an exhibition

titled “100,000 Years of Sex” toured Europe showing artifacts from prehistory to

modern times. A persistent human interest in the representation of sexuality can

hardly be denied.

The discovery of prehistoric artifacts with sexual content invariably leads

to discussions whether such objects are elements of fertility cults, artistic

representations of humans or rather examples of prehistoric pornography. Quite

obviously the differentiation between high and low forms of cultural expression

lurks in the background of palaeontological evaluation, even though this distinction

may well be a rather late cultural development, and it would be quite conceivable

that the celebration of sexuality did not clash with religious practices in prehistory.

Erotic imagery can be found in various religious contexts from Indian temples to the

Song of Songs, and while the discussion whether sacred prostitution actually took

place in antiquity is as of now undecided, hierogamy certainly existed as well as

ritualistic sexuality. With respect to the field of literature, David Loth suggests that

For as long as man has had literature he has had pornography but most of the time did not know it. Among the ancients sex was unashamedly joyous, in reading as in practice.

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The subject carried no more taboos than food or sports, family quarrels or international wars. (47)

Similarly, Peter Wagner writes that “Pornography and licentious literature have

a literary dimension, reaching back to Sappho’s songs and poems” (Wagner 6),

dismissing the distinction between good literature and unsavoury sexual explicitness

in books. We may thus suspect that the denigrating perspective on sexuality and its

representation is a recent phenomenon within the development of human culture

rather than a received part of human nature.

Pornography, and in particular literary pornography, however, also raises another

problem, as its consumption is more often than not a solitary endeavour rather than

a social event. The stimulation then is aimed at autoerotic sexual gratification,

which indeed poses some questions touching on evolutionary theory. At first sight,

there is a paradox, as masturbation seems to be an activity that has no evolutionary

advantage as it is not reproductive; nevertheless it is an almost ubiquitous human

behaviour, in particular among males. According to a study by Baker and Bellis

involving male postgraduate and undergraduate students, “there was rarely a gap of

more than 72 hours (3 days) between in-pair copulation and the last masturbation”

(“Human sperm” 871). The conclusion reached by this study ties in with previous

research suggesting that human sperm has a short “best before” date and thus

suboptimal sperm needs to be ejected regularly. This, of course, would indicate

that during the prehistoric period relevant for the evolvement of human sexual

behaviour the time span between in-pair copulation tended to exceed the shelf life

of sperm and thus the self-induced shedding of old sperm became an advantageous

behaviour.2 This may throw a light on the sexual life and regularity of copulation

of our evolutionary predecessors. C. Owen Lovejoy in his essay on “The Origin

of Man” argues for stable pair-bonding in humanoid behaviour as early as the

middle to late Miocene (12–6 million years ago), suggesting that “[c]onditions

were prime for the establishment of male parental investment and a monogamous

mating strategy” (346), and that the nuclear family may be “viewed as a prodigious

adaptation central to the success of early hominids” (348). He also addresses the

consequences of this model on the frequency of copulation:

The progressive elimination of external manifestations of ovulation and the establishment of continual receptivity would require copulatory vigilance in both sexes in order to ensure fertilization. Moreover, copulation would increase pair-bond adhesion and serve as a social display asserting that bond. Indeed, any sequestration of ovulation would seem to directly imply both regular copulatory behaviour and monogamous mating structure. (346)3


If, however, our early predecessors, indeed, had formed stable long-term

relationships as also suggested frequently in research on sexual selection and its

benevolent influence on human domestication (cf. Miller passim, Dutton 135–163),

why should the usual intervals between sexual acts have been long enough to turn

masturbation from an unproductive into an advantageous behaviour? If, on the

other hand, early humans experienced a social life favouring either short-term

mating strategies, polygyny, or irregular sexual encounters between various sexual

partners, keeping a permanently refreshed store of sperm would prove to be useful

for all those males who had infrequent rather than regular sexual intercourse. Buss

and Schmitt point out:

[L]ifetime marital monogamy is not characteristic of most people in most societies. Ap-proximately 80 % of all human cultures practice polygyny, permitting men to take multiple wives or mistresses . . . . In these societies, only a small percentage of men actually acquire multiple mates, but those that do render other men mateless. (204)

Mateless, here, indicates “without a steady mate,” but then short-term mating is also

a ubiquitous part of human behaviour. Linda Mealey suggests that “primates are a

diverse lot . . . some are monogamous, some are polygynous, and some promiscuous.

At least one — the human primate — is all of these” (262). Similarly, David

Schmitt in his article on “Fundamentals of Human Mating Strategies” concludes

that “Humans possess a pluralistic mating repertoire, organized in terms of basic

long-term and short-term mating psychologies” (280). This would ultimately suggest

a social and sexual environment in which masturbation would be a suitable way

of ensuring that, should the occasion offer itself, prime quality sperm would be

readily available; this would then also be an environment in which stimulation by

erotica would serve an inherent feature of human psychology.

Of course, this could lead to the suggestion that masturbation, and in

consequence also pornography, offer an outlet for unsuccessful males. Quite

probably, masturbation as a temporary substitute may well have helped to reduce

the tension in groups with unequal access to sexual intercourse, but without some

reproductive success of the males that take recourse to self-stimulation, the behaviour

would quickly have disappeared from the gene pool. In consequence, pornography

cannot be seen as a literature for the losers in the competition for sexual partners,

because such losers would not have had descendants to whom they could pass on

the behavioral trait.

The wide spread consumption of pornography, however, not only suggests that

masturbation is an adapted element of human, and in particular male behaviour, it

also shows what it is that acts as a stimulant. This then poses another paradox, and

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while it is not really surprising that images of nude persons of the desired sex will

arouse sexual interest, it is quite striking that the sexual act performed by others

should be especially exciting. This stimulation by observation of intercourse is also

thematized in the erotic texts themselves, and in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

as well as in other pornographic literature, e.g. Mirabeau’s The Lifted Curtain, the

secret spying on sexual acts first arouses the physical desire and thus precedes the

actual sexual initiation. But as any ongoing copulation would seem more or less

automatically to exclude the viewer, the strong response to this activity requires

some explanation. In fact, a recent study has shown that both men and women

respond to videotaped stimuli, albeit differently:

The genital responses of both sexes were weakest to nude exercise and strongest to inter-course. As predicted, however, actor gender was more important for men than for women, and the level of sexual activity was more important for women than for men. (Chivers, Seto and Blanchard 1108)

The strong response to the observation of intercourse ties in with some primate

research; in an article on “Masturbation Observations in Temminck’s Red Colobus,”

E.D. Starin writes that masturbation is very rare among those monkeys and only

occurred “when nearby sexually receptive females were exhibiting loud courtship

displays and copulations with other males” (Bering, n.p.).

Moreover, pornographic literature as well as pictures and movies tend to

emphasize the enormity and efficiency of the male participant’s genitals, which, one

might imagine, could lead to some embarrassment or frustration in the perceiver.

Fanny Hill is no exception in this respect, and the unusual sizes of her lovers’

“engines” (MWP 40) are regularly stressed unless the person in question is also

ridiculed. The strength, sexual virility and power of the male partner should mark

him as the alpha male who accordingly has access to the females, but the obvious

success of this imagery with a male audience suggests that this male is regarded

not primarily as competition but as a figure of identification.

In pornographic literature as well as in blue movies, group scenes are quite

common and frequently appear as the climax of the action. The widespread selection

of such scenes by viewers indicates that arousal by watching multi mating scenes

must be advantageous to some extent, one of the possible reasons being that

interested observers may at some point have anticipated possible participation in

the action and so also a chance of reproductive success. This aspect is emphasized

by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá in their provocative book Sex at Dawn, in

which they dismiss the common narrative of early pair-bonding in our evolutionary

past as a “Flintstonization of Prehistory” (31) and argue in favour of a multi-mate


model including multiple mating sessions similar to the behaviour of bonobos

(Ryan and Jethá 69–78). Among the many arguments offered there is the success of

pornography showing groups of men with only one woman (231), the comparatively

slow arousal curve of women combined with the capability of multiple orgasms

“while men all too often reach orgasm frustratingly quick and then lose interest”

(10), and the rather loud female copulatory vocalization which must have inevitably

attracted other males to the place of action (255–59).

One might also argue in this respect that the strong tribalism, described by

Edward O. Wilson as a “fundamental human trait” (57) and the “biological product

of group selection” (ibid.), would possibly profit from a sexual behaviour based

on egalitarian principles and inclusion rather than on competition and exclusion.

Wilson very much favours pair-bonding as the standard model for our evolutionary

predecessors, and he states that “[b]oth men and women, when bonded, invite

continuous and frequent intercourse” (253). With all due respect I would like

to suggest that the sentence would remain perfectly acceptable if the two words

between the commas were deleted.

Within the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure an open display of sexuality

among four couples forms a kind of culmination before the focus shifts to some

sexual acts that are not quite acceptable to Fanny Hill, i.e. the seduction of an idiot,

flagellation and male homosexuality. This scene of communal sex is no longer an

instance of an invaded privacy; instead the public presentation, and thus the visual

stimulation of the other participants, becomes one of the objectives of the act. It

is part of the pleasure that it takes place without inhibition and also without too

much discrimination.

One of the problems involved here is, that while the shift in the conceptualization

of early human mating from pair-bonding to a multi-mate model perfectly explains

specific aspects of our interest in pornography, it fails to comply with the previous

suggestion that masturbation is a necessity to provide fresh sperm for men with a

low frequency of intercourse. Frans de Wall, however, points out that masturbation

is also common among bonobos, who are famously egalitarian in their mating

and, very much like humans, practise all different forms of sexuality, including

oral sex, autoerotic stimulation, social masturbation etc, none of which have a

reproductive function (99–105). Arguably, in human evolution a previously social

behaviour that tightened the group cohesion may have proved to be adaptable to

new circumstances, i.e. when with the rise of pair-bonding or polygyny in many

cultures a more competitive sexual behaviour deprived some men from frequent sex,

and thus the shedding of old sperm became a necessity for reproductive success.

446 Dirk Vanderbeke

Be that as it may, the frequency of group sex, public sex and orgies in

pornographic material suggests a desire that contradicts concepts of privacy and

secluded intimacy as the common form of sexuality among our evolutionary

ancestors. It does, however, agree not only with probable living conditions in

the prehistoric savannah but also with the existence of orgiastic cults in many

ancient societies. The Roman bacchanalia can be taken as a useful example, and

the ethnologist Hans Peter Dürr offers a host of similar festivities in cultures all

over the world which mark special times in which licentiousness and promiscuity

reign supreme (Dürr 30–55 and passim). In quite a few of these rituals, women

take active and occasionally violent roles in their sexual pursuits (Dürr 47–49).

Orgiastic behaviour with its visually stimulating impact and a possible plurality

of partners may, however, serve some reproductive purpose, and this again can be

linked to the human response to erotic material:

In all of the non-human species studied . . . males gain most by mating with the female as quickly as possible after the previous male . . . . For this to occur, perception of the copulating couple needs to generate sexual arousal in males and rapid preparation of copulation . . . . Male humans seem to show just such a response, the reaction being the basis of voyeurism and the appeal of hard core pornography. (Baker and Bellis, Human Sperm 145)

The imagery of loving couples in the Pleistocene, as frequently suggested in studies

on the role of sexual selection for human culture and art (e.g. Miller and Dutton

passim), clashes with ethnological findings and with the forms of sexuality that are

displayed for autoerotic stimulation. The women in these texts are promiscuous

rather than faithful, even though they may in the end — the part that was probably

of least interest to the actual audience — repent their wicked and immoral ways

and turn into virtuous wives. In the preface to Moll Flanders, a book that at times

bears some similarity with Fanny Hill’s account even though the “erotic” passages

are far less explicit, Daniel Defoe deems it necessary to point out that “an author

must be hard put to wrap it up so clean as not to give room, especially for vicious

readers, to turn it to his disadvantage,” and he recommends the book “to those who

know how to read it, and how to make good use of it . . . so it is to be hoped that

such readers will be more pleased with the moral than with the fable . . .” (1–2).

The author seems to have been quite aware that the audience not always cherishes

the didactic message and rather relishes the more juicy elements of the text.4 In the

case of Fanny Hill, the women of interest are promiscuous rather than faithful, and,

of course, for a male who is not in some way permanently attached to a female,

women who stray from a single partner in a monogamous or polygynous relationship

would offer the highest chance for reproductive success.


Fanny Hill passes through several different forms of relationship, and they may

possibly bear some relevance for the topic at hand. She is introduced to sexuality

first by a woman and then by the observation of heterosexual intercourse. Before

her virginity can be sold to some elderly and unpleasant customer, she falls in love

and elopes with Charles who remains to be the love of her life. He is also the only

man by whom she becomes pregnant, but she miscarries when he is kidnapped by

his father and disappears. Charles will return rather artificially on the final pages

of the novel, and when they have renewed their relationship and he has accepted

that she had to live the life she lived after their unexpected separation they are

happily married and also have some “fine children” (MWP 187). Between the first

elopement and the reconciliation there is a succession of long-term and short-term

relationships, but even the long-term attachments last no longer than a few months.

Fanny at various times becomes a mistress to men who provide for her in exchange

for her unrestricted sexual favours. At those times, Fanny inhabits apartments and

chiefly waits for the man who may or may not turn up in the evening. In such

situations she is “far from happy” and she wants “more society, more dissipation”

(MWP 66). In the first of these relationships, the man, Mr. H., “cheats” on her with

her maid, which evokes Fanny’s jealousy and revenge and she in turn seduces one

of his servants. At a later time, she is “restored again to [her] former state of kept

woman, and us’d to punctually wait on Mr. Norbert at his chambers, whenever

he sent a messenger” (MWP 138). Once more the relationship is not marked by

togetherness but chiefly by waiting, followed by brief times devoted to sexual

activity of one kind or another, for Mr. Norbert is almost completely impotent and

thus finds pleasure in ways that are not fully satisfying for Fanny.

Between these long-term relationships which are marked by utilitarian

considerations, but certainly not by excessive love or passion, there are short-term

encounters with various men who are mostly young and strong and also regularly

endowed with large genitals. These encounters are described in detail (if in a highly

metaphorical language to which I will return later), and they are rather more delightful

than the acts with the long-term “masters.” The pattern is quite obvious: on the

one hand there is the desire for provision and economic security, on the other hand

the sexual interest in the strong and virile male with presumably the very genetic

material that would turn out to be advantageous in a prehistoric environment. The

two aspects seem to come together again when, for a rather short time, she lives

with a “noble and agreeable youth . . . in perfect joy and constancy,” before he has

to leave for Ireland where he finds an “agreeable and advantageous match” — and

the relationship ends with Fanny receiving a “magnificent present” (MWP 126) as

448 Dirk Vanderbeke

some kind of compensation. The long-term relationships are marked by privacy

and a demand for fidelity, the brief sexual encounters by the public setting of the

brothel or, in a different instance, at a pool where she and a friend entertain two

young gentlemen. The partners are here almost interchangeable as they all share

similar qualities. The pattern indicates that the providers, who are in fact less

attractive, have regular access to obliging females while the more desirable partners

experience short but rather intense sexual encounters.

In Fanny Hill we find the whole set of sexual relationships and mating

behaviours that have already been described above. At times the various characters

are temporarily monogamous or superficially monogamous, but then there is also

polygyny as well as polyandry and, of course, promiscuity in men as well as women.

The mating behaviour in the text fits an environment, in which visual stimulation

plays a significant role and masturbation may favour the reproductive success of

the males with irregular access to sexual encounters.

In addition, except for the early pregnancy in the relationship with Charles and

the fine children that they will later have in their married life, reproduction plays

no role whatsoever, and thus the situation almost resembles that of a prehistoric

past when the connection between sex and pregnancy had not yet been recognized.

In his argument for an early establishment of monogamous pair-bonding Lovejoy

suggests that “in primates as intelligent as extant hominoids, it would establish

paternity and thus lead to a gradual replacement of the matrifocal group by a

“bifocal” one — the primitive nuclear family” (347–48). One would assume that

a powerful interest in parental certainty ever since the early Pleistocene or even the

Miocene would have left some mark on the expression of sexual desire or sexual

fantasies, but reproductive wishes or paternal concerns are certainly absent from

erotic or pornographic material — and probably also from most sex acts, in spite

of thousands of years in which various religions unsuccessfully tried to restrict

sexuality to reproductive intentions.

Of course, the question when exactly humanoids or humans realized the

causal connection between sex and reproduction is of supreme importance for the

development of gender relations and possibly also for the strict rules of partner

selection that can be found in tribal societies. Scholars who speculated on a possible

matriarchy in prehistoric times also argued that the mystery of female fertility was

a powerful element in early religions and fertility cults which disappeared when

the male contribution to reproduction was realized and exaggerated, leading to a

displacement of the female goddesses by male gods and ultimately to the concept

of the woman as an empty vessel. The idea of a prehistoric matriarchy is no longer


supported by most scholars, but the fact remains that at some time in our past the

role of sexual intercourse for reproduction must have been noticed, changing the

perspective on sexuality as such, but also on male and female interaction and joint

parenthood.

It is hard to imagine how this realization could have taken place before the

development of a complex symbolic language; thus early humanoids can surely

be ruled out and chances are that such a discovery could have only been possible

for Homo Sapiens and maybe Neanderthalians. Ryan and Jethá, in fact, offer some

examples of existing ethnic groups for which the conception of fatherhood is still

distinctly different from ours – admitting, for example, the possibility of several

fathers (90–91). This can hardly be reconciled with the idea that a full understanding

of paternity was already present in the early Pleistocene, and I want to suggest

that the ubiquity of the female figurines in the late Pleistocene mentioned at the

beginning of this article may serve as evidence that fertility was still regarded a

predominantly female feature and that the consequences of the realization of male

parenthood were then cultural changes rather than biological adaptations. Similarly,

Ryan and Jethà argue that paternity certainty “was likely a nonissue to men who

lived before agriculture and resulting concerns with passing property through lines

of paternal descent” (104).

As a possible pregnancy does not play any role in the adventures of Fanny,

considerations about children and their upbringing are also absent from this novel

— as they usually are in pornographic literature.5 The sexual encounters take

place without any necessity for individual or shared responsibility or plans for a

possible parenthood. And except for the “moral” ending of the text, it does not

seem as if men and women actually live together. Some of the prostitutes eventually

marry, but the objective is not really a happy married life but the chance to regain

respectability and social status. Men and women meet to have sex, but otherwise

they lead separate lives in respectively male and female environments. In this

respect, Fanny Hill can be seen as the direct opposite to the ideological or didactic

celebrations of matrimonial bliss we so often find in the literature and conduct

books of the times and which rather show us an idealized image than a glimpse of

real life. Of course, it would be absurd now to draw any safe conclusions about the

factual reality of men and women in the 18th century from a pornographic novel,

even if it is acknowledged as a work of literary merits, but I would like to use this

aspect of the text to raise the question whether the happy life within a nuclear

family is really the most probable model for evolved human behaviour in historic

as well as prehistoric times. In most societies and cultures, men and women do not

450 Dirk Vanderbeke

spend very much of their waking time together but rather live in male or female

spheres. Tribal societies frequently have men’s houses from which women are

rigidly excluded and where male ceremonies and rituals are practised. In more

modern cultures this function can be attributed to clubs, fraternities, lodges, inns

and bars from which respectable women were, and sometimes are, also banned.

It does not really seem as if men usually hurried home to their loving wives after

work; they rather extended the time spent in male company as long as possible.

And while in literature didactic messages on acceptable behaviour towards women

are not uncommon — indicating that the actual treatment did not meet the desired

standards — we regularly find the celebration of male bonding and friendship as

far superior to any possible relationship with the “lesser sex” (cf. Fox passim).

Of course, the upbringing of children requires a lot of attention and care, and

the family as a form of long-term attachment is a possible social environment that

can offer the necessary support for the mother and the infants; this point is usually

emphasized in the discussion of the nuclear family as the “normal” social unit.

Edward O. Wilson, for example, argues that:

Human infants, to acquire large organized brains and high intelligence, must go through an unusually long period of helplessness during their development. The mother cannot count on the same level of support from the community, even in tightly knit hunter-gatherer societies, that she obtains from a sexually and emotionally bonded mate. (253)

But is it really inconceivable that beyond the basic provision with food and

protection, men in the prehistoric period relevant for our evolution predominantly

spent their time in male company and took over the education of male children once

a certain age had been reached, while women interacted in their own sphere and

supported each other in the care for small children and the education of girls? The

interaction between men and women would have been rather limited, with sexual

intercourse being one of the main aspects if not the most important one. Such a

social behaviour in which male and female spheres exist fairly independent of each

other and same-sex interaction takes up more time than male-female contact would

be consistent with behavioural patterns that can still be observed in our world even

though the nuclear family, including superficial monogamy, is now the dominant

form of cohabitation. Be that as it may, Fanny Hill suggests a world in which men

and women meet for two interconnected reasons: financial support and sex.

Of course, this does in no way diminish the possibility that “romantic” love

could be a human universal. Jankowiak and Fischer argue this point; they suggest

that the concept of romantic love as chiefly a European cultural phenomenon cannot

be maintained in the face of ethnographic evidence from 166 societies. Their model,


however, does not necessarily link this emotion with long-term attachment, as they

see it as “a sudden, unrestrained passion often resulting in the individual entering

into an immediate, if short term, commitment” (Jankowiak and Fischer, 150). The

brief examples they offer (152–153) show a clear difference between romantic

passionate love and a rather less exciting relationship with a long term partner,

and the element of illicit love plays a role in two of three tales. This would very

much tie in with literary representations, in which, more often than not, the text

about romantic love either ends with the moment of first fulfilment, i.e. marriage

(predominantly in the novel of the 18th century), or else offers the powerful emotions

as a cause for infidelity or, morally more correct, as a second chance after a first

failed marriage (chiefly from the 19th century to the present). Maybe it is not quite

by accident that Fanny’s account of her happy marriage at the end of the novel

(MWP 186–188) is just a bit shorter than the detailed description of her sexual act

with a previously unknown man in the course of the “orgy” in Mrs. Cole’s house

(MWP 120–124).

Elements of romance, however, can also be found in other elements of the

text, in particular in the language employed by Fanny in the narration of her sexual

adventures. It is surprisingly tame and devoid of all rude or obscene vocabulary. She

remarks on the problem of writing erotic literature at the beginning of the second

letter, pointing out that her reader could easily be

cloyed and tired with the uniformity of adventures and expressions, inseparable from a subject of this sort, whose bottom, or groundwork being, in the nature of things, eternally one and the same, whatever variety of forms and modes, the situations are susceptible of, there is no escaping a repetition of near the same images, the same figures, the same expressions, with this further inconvenience added to the disgust it creates, that the words joys, ardours, transports, extasies and the rest of those pathetic terms so congenial to, so received in the practice of pleasure, flatten, and lose much of their due spirit and energy, by the frequency they indispensably recur with, in a narrative of which that practice pro-fessedly composes the whole basis. (MWP 91, italics in the original)

She then admits to the “extreme difficulty of continuing so long in one strain,

in a mean tempered with taste, between the revoltingness of gross, rank and vulgar

expressions, and the ridicule of mincing metaphors and affected circumlocution”

(ibid.). Near the end of her narration she once more returns to this topic and addresses

her reader with an apology for the chosen style:

At the same time, allow me to place you here an excuse I am conscious of owing you, for having, perhaps, too much affected the figurative style; though surely, it can pass no where more allowably than in a subject which is so properly the province of poetry, nay! is poetry itself, pregnant with every flower of imagination, and loving metaphors, even were not the natural expressions, for respects of fashion and sound necessarily forbid it.

452 Dirk Vanderbeke

(MWP 171)

This, of course, has not escaped the notice of other readers and pornographers who

occasionally criticized the book for its coy style and lack of graphic language. The

anonymous author of My Secret Life by Walter directly addresses Fanny Hill in

his preface and writes:

That book has no baudy word in it; but baudy acts need the baudy ejaculations; the erotic, full flavored expressions, which even the chastest indulge in, when lust, or love, is in its full tide of performance. So I determined to write my private life freely as to fact, and in the spirit of the lustful acts done by me, or witnessed; it is written therefore with absolute truth, and without any regard whatever for what the world calls decency. Decency and voluptuousness in its fullest acceptance, cannot exist together, one would kill the other; the poetry of copulation I have only experienced with a few women, which however neither prevented them, nor me from calling a spade, a spade. (21)

The critique touches upon the role of imagination and the question whether

excitement and stimulation result from narrative precision or artistic vagueness. In

the Marquis de Sade’s The One Hundred & Twenty Days of Sodom, the villainous

president at one point interrupts Madame Duclos’s story of her sexual initiation

and reminds her that her “narrations must be decorated with the most numerous

and searching details,” and once she has provided exact descriptions in graphic

language (it will be permitted that I do not quote this passage) one of the other

attendants admits that “I could not visualize a thing on the basis of your first telling,

but now I have your man full in view” (de Sade 271–272). In contrast, Fanny Hill’s

descriptions remain vague, offering the reader almost generic images of beauty.

Louise has “the finest turn’d legs and thighs that could be imagin’d” (MWP 113),

Harriet’s “thighs were so exquisitely fashion’d, that either more in, or more out of

flesh than they were, they would have declin’d from that point of perfection they

presented” (MWP 115), but the rest of the description is chiefly metaphorical,

employing an abundance of landscape metaphors.

But what infinitely enrich’d and adorn’d them, was the sweet intersection, form’d, where they met, at the bottom of the smoothest, roundest, whitest belly, by that central furrow which nature had sunk there, between the soft relievo of two pouting ridges, and which, in this girl, was in perfect simmetry of delicacy and mignature with the rest of her frame: no! nothing in nature could be of a beautifuller cut: then the dark umbrage of the downy sprig-moss that over-arch’d it, bestow’d on the luxury of the landscape, a touching warmth, a tender finishing, beyond the expression of words, or even the paint of thought. (MWP 115)

Quite obviously, the rather elaborate imagery is easily decoded and presents no

obstacle to the reader’s response to the erotic material. Goulemot suggests that “the

erotic novel succeed[s] rather better than its more mainstream and more respectable


brother narratives, in having the reader take illusion for reality and the word for

the object” (xi). This applies even to a language that is so highly metaphorical as

to exclude any direct or vulgar reference to the specific objects or actions, and

“in salacious texts . . . any word can be charged with erotic significance. Nothing

can remain innocent or neutral” (1). The postmodern doctrine that all language

necessarily fails to represent may require some qualification when we encounter a

language that represents without fail.

It may also be noted that the landscape imagery employed for the metaphorization

of the desirable female body exactly mirrors the environments that would have

triggered positive responses from our prehistoric ancestors and are still significant

for our concepts of beauty. “Beauty is hypothesized to be the perception of ancestral

cues to productive and safe habitats in the environments of human evolutionary

history” (Thornhill 262, cf. also Dutton 13–28). Chiefly among the images that we

appreciate in beautiful landscapes are “water sources, oasis, flowers, ripe fruits,

savanna (open forests that give easy visual access), growth and leaf patterns of

healthy savanna trees, closed forest canopy (shelter), caves (with easy access to

outside landscape), and mountains” (Thornhill 262), some of which we can find

on the pages of Fanny Hill while the rest we can easily imagine there.6 Edward O.

Wilson suggests that the human mind has “the capacity – and with it the irresistible

inborn drive — to build scenarios” (215), and the scenarios in Fanny’s narration

address simultaneously several inborn desires.

While the imagery of the female body is chiefly pastoral, e.g. “a most inviting

entrance between two close ledges” (MWP 113), “mossy mounts” (MWP 116), or

“white cliffs by their narrow vale” (MWP 119), the male body is described in terms

of power, tools and occasionally military equipment, e.g. “forces at high plight,

bandied and ready for action” (MWP 113), a “weapon” (MWP 113), “a mighty

machine” (MWP 116), a “wedge” (MWP 116), an “instrument” (MWP 123) or

even an “enemy [Fanny] had to engage with” (MWP 123; for a more extended

catalogue, see Slepian and Morrissey 72–73). When Leo Marx suggested the The

Machine in the Garden to be a paradigmatic American motif, he may have failed

to look too deeply into earlier texts from a pre-industrial era and thus missed a

more universal appeal of this particular image. In the depiction of the respective

bodies we may recognize – even though this is extremely speculative and I have

to admit that I am not really very happy with this conclusion – the reminiscence of

a hypothetical labour division in our evolutionary past with the male as the tool-

maker, hunter and fighter, and the female as the gatherer.

454 Dirk Vanderbeke

This may allow for a further speculation. Research that suggests early

monogamous pair bonding in the human evolutionary past often emphasizes the

lack of strongly developed dimorphism, arguing that in mammal species with males

keeping several females in a “harem” (e.g. the sea elephant) the males usually show a

marked difference in size and power (e.g. Dutton 139–41). Of course, in those species

the strongest male will win access to the females and thus sexual reproduction, but

would this also apply to humans, in which the ability to handle tools and weapons

may well have supplanted sheer body power as the decisive feature for victory in

a fight and thus reproductive success? If, however, reproduction was not strictly

the prerogative of some alpha male but also the result of a more egalitarian mating

behaviour including multi-mating sessions as suggested by Ryan and Jethá (see

above), strong dimorphism would not have served any significant purpose anyway.

To return to my main point, the depiction of the female body as a locus amoenus

would, in the face of all the excitement and heat of passion, also suggest another

function for the sexual act, the feeling of comfort and tranquillity found in a safe

location. This adds another important aspect to Fanny’s narrative, as it introduces

a different form of desire and behaviour. Fanny Hill can be regarded as a novel that

“attempts to combine the sensual with the sentimental” (Wagner 2207), pornography

with romance. Of course, there is a conceptual problem involved when I employ

this term, for while the celebration of the nude female body can be traced as far

back into history as there are elements of representation, the idea of romance is

a rather recent one. Ellis and Symons address exactly this point in their paper on

“Sex Difference in Sexual Fantasy”:

[T]he phrase “romance novel” obviously cannot be used properly in the description of any human adaptation – psychological or otherwise – since romance novels have existed for an evolutionarily insignificant time. The kinds of data that can be used to evaluate evolution-ary psychological hypotheses, however, are potentially limitless, and evolutionarily-recent phenomena (such as romance novels) can be just as informative as phenomena that existed in the Pleistocene, or more so. (531)

Discussing the expression and consummation of male and female erotic fantasies, the

authors then distinguish between pornography and romance and suggest that there

“is little overlap in the readership (or viewership) of these two genres, presumably

because male-oriented pornography combines all elements that appeal to men, while

erotic romances combine all the elements that appeal particularly to women” (544).

Thus pornography is dominated by visual images of the desired sex’s bodies with

special attention to the genitals and little relevance of personality, psychology or

additional content. Romance on the other hand, in accordance with female erotic

fantasies, is marked by a less direct approach to sexual action, the location and


circumstances play a larger role, touch and foreplay are more important, and so

are the emotions of the heroine.

In Fanny Hill, style and language cross the boundary between pornography

and romance, and while some of the instances could be regarded as parodies of

domestic romance and novels of manners, the effect tempers the pornographic

content and offers a mixture of rough action and attention to manners and personality.

The lovers are not only endowed with powerful genitals, but are also charming;

Harriet’s beau “doated on her to distraction and had, by dint of love and sentiments,

touched her heart” (MWP 114) while she follows her profession with “a peculiar

grace of sweetness, modesty, and yielding coyness” (ibid.). Fanny tells about her

“particular-elect” in the sexual tableau that

he came to me, and saluting me very tenderly, with a flattering eagerness, put me in mind of the compliances my presence there authoriz’d the hopes of, and at the same time repeated to me, that if all his force of example had not surmounted any repugnance I might have to concur with the humours and desires of the company, that though the play was bespoke for my benefit, and great as his own private disappointment might be, he would suffer any thing sooner that be the instrument of imposing a disagreeable task on me. (MWP 120)

Such politeness and considerations are not usually emphasized in pornographic

texts, but they are an inherent element in Fanny Hill’s account, suggesting that, as

has been noted before, the novel comments on and parodies sentimental romances

of the time, in particular Richardson’s Pamela (cf. Wagner 244). In addition, the

intended and/or actual audiences may come into focus, as the text seems to address

both male and female readers, indicating that in earlier times there might have been

an overlap between the readers of romances and pornographic literature.8 Perhaps

the frequent warnings that women should not read such works because they might

incite their minds were more than just a means to denigrate and ultimately ban the

book, but rather the expression of a serious concern of moral educators and Puritan

preachers, as women indeed read erotic literature and, quite possibly, their minds

and also their bodies were incited. This would tie in with the general thesis of this

paper, that in the research on the evolutionary basis of storytelling and reading

our present conditions and mating behaviours are frequently, but also erroneously,

projected back into prehistoric times, leading to the questionable conclusion that

our modern way of life also complies with natural ways of behaviour. I assume that

while literature is indeed a huge repository of data that can be explored in research

into evolutionary psychology, close attention to the distinction between didactic

literature and those works that really cater to our deeper desires may bring rather

different and possibly surprising results.

Notes

456 Dirk Vanderbeke

1 In this article I will use the term “pornography” without any moral reservation. The discussion of what exactly indicates pornography, or which features may save a literary work from the stigma of being pornographic, are not relevant here, even though, of course, they are highly important issues in literary history. Moreover, the term “natural” in this paper does not carry any positive or negative connotations but is used to describe aspects of behavior that derive from our evolutionary past rather than from culture — of course under the assumption that those elements are not strictly determining human behaviour but strongly interacting with the respective cultures.

2 Another possibility to achieve the same result could be nocturnal emissions, but according to the Kinsey report they are less frequent than masturbation, occurring in no age group at an average of more than once in three weeks (Kinsey et al., 274–276). Possibly, nocturnal emissions have a similar function as masturbation, but rather complement more frequent autoerotic activities.

3 With reference to Lovejoy, Baker and Bellis (Human Sperm) suggest that the “early humanoids were probably mainly superficially monogamous“ (140), but that “the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry (c. 15.000 years ago) seemed to herald a universal swing in the human population towards polygyny and extreme reproductive inequality between males” (ibid.). Similarly, Dutton suggests that the idea of one man keeping a harem of several women “is a reminder of how far some religious and political structures of the last ten thousand years have drawn us away from the prehistoric scene in which hunter-gatherer sexual preferences evolved” (141). This would indicate that monogamy, i.e. “our” present Western cultural standard, was the norm for humanoids and early humans until for some interval polygyny, an unnatural mating behaviour usually regarded as more primitive and non-Western, took over, only to be replaced again in historically recent times with the most natural mating system we are used to. I consider this to be rather improbable and highly Eurocentric.

4 Stevenson argues that the lack of a traditional ending and Fanny’s happily married life with a wealth acquired in immoral ways were two of the reasons why the book was persecuted. “The heroines of the titillating genre of the whore story were supposed to die in squalor for their sins, thus demonstrating that the tales of their lives conveyed a sound moral warning” (Stevenson 39). One may also argue that this could have contributed to the “unspoilt fun” of the audience and thus to the persistent success of the novel.

5 Occasionally contraceptive methods are briefly mentioned (e.g. in Mirabeau’s The Lifted Curtain), and the topic can then be dismissed.


6 Marvin D. L. Lansverk argues that with his metaphors “Cleland linguistically invokes the visual arts, most notably, images associated with the emerging English interest in landscape” (105, italics in the original), but later suggests that nature is still high in Cleland’s hierarchy: “The farther removed from nature, the worse the art” (110–11), and thus, “while using painterly terms, his descriptions seem to exist as a blend of painting and scenery” (111). The nature evoked in the metaphors is quite clearly a pastoral nature and thus a constructed view of nature often represented in landscape painting. But, following the assumption that a human sense of beauty was acquired through evolutionary processes and that landscape paintings are also a result of these processes, this of course contributes to the argument presented here.

7 Franz Meier convincingly argues that in the 18th century the “emerging two-sex model implied a gendering of sensibility and sex, and thus of sentimentalism as feminine and pornography as masculine” (55). This could also indicate that the division is the result of a historical process and need not have existed in earlier times. Meier also detects “quite a number of parallels and connections between at least the chosen English prototypes, if not the two newly established genres in general” (ibid.).

8 In literature, a good example would be Molly Bloom who relishes books of highly sexual content, but the texts actually mentioned (e.g. The Sweets of Sin) would probably be classified as erotic romances rather than pornography.

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dirk vanderbeke - fanny hill, or: what's so exciting about mossy mounts

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