The Erotica Review
A Review of Classic Erotic Literature
The Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill)
By John Cleland
Publication date: 1748
This novel has the distinction of being one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history and led to the arrest of the author in 1749 who was then forced to denounce the book in court. It is written in the form of two long letters chronicling the experiences of an English woman who begins her life in impoverished conditions only to obtain wealth and position as a prostitute and mistress.
When Francis (Fanny) Hill loses her parents at the age of 14, she moves to London where she is lured into working in a brothel. There, she has a bisexual encounter with another prostitute and eventually runs away with a customer before finding stability as the live-in mistress of a wealthy merchant named Mr. H. But when she discovers him having sex with her maid, she, in turn, seduces his footman, and upon being caught in the act by him, is abandoned. This forces her to take a position at the upscale pleasure-house of Mrs. Cole and the first letter comes to an end.
The second letter begins with her recounting the debauchery that occurs at this new establishment where orgies are commonplace and sado-masochism a mainstay in the form of birch-rod flagellation. The narratives of her fellow prostitutes enter the story at this point as well with one telling the story of her encounter with "good-natured Dick", a well-endowed mental defective. However, after several years of this, she retires on her earnings and goes to live with an older man described as a "rational pleasurist" and this begins her development into a cultured and educated lady.
To read this novel now with all its tame euphemisms, such as, "nethermouth", the public outcry against it seems laughable. But nevertheless, it was a marked departure from the morality tales of the time since vice was shown to bring happiness and reward in the end. This is no doubt why it was so heavily condemned and censored right up until the 1960's! Who wanted an enterprising, resourceful woman to win?
The Lustful Turk
By Anonymous
Publication Date: 1828
This is the story that supposedly put legal obscenity rulings on the map! Written in the form of letters to a friend, it follows the overseas adventures of Emily Barlow as she sails from England to India. Unfortunately her ship is attacked by Moorish pirates in the Mediterranean and she is taken prisoner by Ali, the Dey of Algiers, and forced into his harem. True to the standards of the genre, Emily is completely naive about the ways of sex but soon receives a crash course in copulation at the hands of Ali. All of the details of these encounters are communicated to Emily's friend, Sylvia, back in England and this is how we learn of them. But when Ali intercepts one of their missives, he devises a plot to trick Sylvia into traveling there. When she does, she is captured in a ruse and sent to join Emily in the harem where they both begin servicing him full-time.
This book plays on all the exotic themes associated with the Orient prevalent in the 18th Century and adds a good dose of sadism to the ever enticing theme of virgin womanhood. The language used is full of amusing as well as graphic euphemisms like: "...when he reduced my chastity to a bleeding ruin" and "until the complete junction of our bodies announced that the whole of his terrible shaft was buried within me." But one has to wonder whether it was the descriptions of anal sex that caused most of this book's notoriety. Sexism and racism also play a large part in this tale and it begs the question: Why are there no Arab women dominating men in this tawdry little tale?
Tropic of Cancer
By Henry Miller
Publication Date: 1934
As a transient in Paris during the early 1930's, Henry Miller met many interesting and depraved people and led a life of seedy sensory delight himself. This novel reports on his encounters with these friends and random women in a way that leaves the reader cold yet intrigued. It's told in the first person using a stream of consciousness narrative style that has no real timeline. This gives it a mood of anarchy as Miller stumbles from one improvised meal to the next and from one act of copulation to another. And as he does, we see that he is completely in on the joke. He is not there to make sense of it, only to live!
In one scene he is admiring a prostitute he has brought back to a room with him.
"As she stood up to dry herself, still talking to me pleasantly, suddenly she dropped the towel and, advancing toward me leisurely, she commenced rubbing her pussy affectionately, stroking it with her two hands, caressing it, patting it, patting it. There was something about her eloquence at that moment and the way she thrust that rosebush under my nose which remains unforgettable; she spoke of it as if it were some extraneous object which she had acquired at great cost, an object whose value had increased with time and which now she prized above everything in the world."
Yes, prostitution is a major theme in this work and so is survival. Miller moves like the libertine he is and lives for only physical gratification and what he perceives to be art. He reduces life to the hunger pang and therefore he belongs squarely to the literary tradition of the sensate adventurer.
This book, like the others in this review, was labeled obscene upon its release and treated like common contraband until the 1960's.
