Sexual Underworlds Of The Enlightenment by G.S. Rousseau

This novel is considered the first English prose pornography. Finally, I will examine these aspects and apply my findings to one of the most important novels of the time Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure or Fanny Hill, as it is more commonly known, by John Cleland. Above all, lesbian desire and sexuality were never described unambiguously. As Lillian Faderman has argued, lesbian desire was generally ‘treated more tolerantly than male homosexuality’ (Faderman 1981, 29), still lesbianism remained largely invisible in society. Subsequently, I will look at how lesbianism was treated in the prose fiction of the day.

Any woman who did involve in sexual interaction was regarded immoral and licentious, associated with vice and promiscuous behaviour and hence condemned to the realm of whoredom. At the opposite side of the continuum, female desire was condemned by placing it within the context of prostitution. This resulted in the figure of ‘the passionless woman’ (O'Driscoll 2003, 103). Attempts were made to solve this by arguing that female pleasure simply did not exist. In this era, there was a strong anxiety about women and sexuality. First, I will take a look at the historical context of female sexuality in the eighteenth century. I investigate the contradictory fact that lesbian sexuality was at the same time very popular and yet treated with so much caution and anxiety. In this paper, I deal with the representation of female same-sex desire in eighteenth century erotic fiction.

Sexual Underworlds Of The Enlightenment by G.S. Rousseau