“[T]hat Monstrous Machine of his”: The Machine Metaphor in John Cleland’s Memoir of a Woman of Pleasure

Choedphong Uttama

doi:10.1163/26659077-02401001

Abstract

Abstract John Cleland’s Memoir of a Woman of Pleasure (1748–49), commonly known as Fanny Hill, is regarded as the first pornographic novel in English literature. Its description of sexual activities is explicit but its language is not coarse. It employs a wide range of metaphors to refer to both sexual acts and genitalia and the metaphor used most frequently to refer to the penis is “the machine.” The machine metaphor will be the focus of this paper, which aims to argue that the machine metaphor carries two meanings. The first is the machine as one of military metaphors common in erotica since sexual acts have long been represented as battles. Female sexual pleasure, portrayed in this novel, depends on the state of being destroyed or conquered by a large machine. The second usage of the military metaphor suggests the strong affiliation between the penis and a hydraulic machine – the hydraulic penis—as this paper will call it. That is, female sexual pleasure is not only entwined with the state of being ruined but also with a fluid flow.

Highlights

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748/1749), popularly known as Fanny Hill, is regarded as the first pornographic novel in English literature
Moulton (2000, 3) suggests that “pornography may be said to refer to cultural productions that depict human sexual activity in a relatively explicit manner, and that are seen by some observers as being offensive or morally reprehensible”
Peakman (2012, 6) categorizes Fanny Hill as pornography rather than erotic writing. She argues that pornography “is material that contains graphic description of sexual organs and/or action written with the prime intention of sexually exciting the reader”

Summary

The Machine Metaphor

In The School of Venus, tells her pupil, Catherine, that “we do not Fuck brutally like Beasts, who are only prompted thereto for Generation’s sake by nature, but with knowledge and for Loves sake” (Millot 1680, 91). Sabor observes that Fanny (and her fellow whores) are different from other preceding whores such as Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flander because Fanny enjoys sex (Sabor 2008, xviii) Central to this pleasurable and fierce sex is vigor and the big penis. The ideal penis, as represented in the novel, must be similar to a machine, especially a hydraulic one, to be able to provide extreme sexual pleasure and gratify women. The ideal penis must be similar to the hydraulic machine That is, it must be strong and contain a large amount of liquid because largeness, strength and liquid are vital for sexual pleasure. It must be strong and contain a large amount of liquid because largeness, strength and liquid are vital for sexual pleasure If it is “broken”, an adjustment to the liquid, similar to the way the hydraulic machine is fixed, by means of flogging is required

The Machine as a Military Metaphor

Conclusion