Delicious Stretchers

(Note: I intended this to be a short, sweet, dirty post about ha ha how lecherous the 18th century is. It got a little longer than that because I got distracted by Interesting. Just remember: the fact that I'm a ridiculous dork is part of my charm.)

The title of this post is my new favorite 18th century euphemism for Really Big Penis.

Well, I promised something uplifting (snrk) and hilarious to wash away the depressing of the previous post. And what, I ask you, could be better than a quick discussion of 18th century porn literature?

I mentioned earlier that I'd tried and failed to read Moll Flanders (oh, Defoe, I know you tried) and succeeded in devouring the Marquis de Sade (Crimes of Love. Misfortunes of Virtue is, incidentally, on my bookshelf. Waiting.) You may know, too, that my favorite book in the entire world is Les Liaisons Dangereuses (in English translation, due to I do not know French, but still it is fantastic.) I am, in other words, the biggest dork for 18th century sex in the entire world. But really, I finally got to the one I've been looking forward to since I bought it over spring break: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Or, Fanny Hill, if we're feeling lazy.

My goodness, ladies and gentlemen. There are just delicious stretchers all over the damn place. Even Sade did not reach this level of "oh my!" and he was writing 50 years later. (tsk tsk, Marquis.)

What is actually kind of legitimately interesting about sex in 18th century literature is the author's silly ways of getting around it. Fanny Hill is arranged as confession, and all her sex scenes are justified by "I just want to tell you the whole story, honest!" Furthermore, she's writing to a woman, not a man, which is probably really significant. Defoe and de Sade are funnier because they blame the reader. They basically say, "My book, even though it is full of sex, is also full of VERY IMPORTANT LIFE LESSONS. And if you find yourself getting turned on by the delicious stretchers that are just hangin' out all over the place then you, fair reader, are a PERVERT and it is so out of my hands. Go see a priest or something." And of course, Pamela and Les Liaisons and many, many other seduction narratives (though Les Liaisons does this fantastic thing with the parallel narratives and there's the tradition seduction of Madame de Tourvel but then the Marquise de Merteuil is like really fucking badass and goes outside the whole seduction trope and...oh, wait, no one really cares.) I say, many other seduction narratives are in the epistolary form (letters!) so the authors are like "ohhh, seeeeee, I just found these letters lying around. I guess I'll publish them! I didn't write them, so it's not my fault if they are a little tiny bit, you know, foul."

Back to Fanny Hill - while it lacks some of the genius that Les Liaisons displays, let us not be unfair: this book is steamy. Steamy as all hell. And yet, you get past the hot lesbian sex* on page 10 (no kidding.) and you're like "holy shit why did Oxford World's Classics publish this? This is clearly just straight up porn" and then you get to the (equally-if-not-more graphic) fat people sex and you are like "um. On the other hand, my sex drive just fled to Siberia." And then at some point after four really graphic steamy scenes you suddenly hit Plot. And you stick with Plot for an awfully long time.

Now, let's talk about how difficult the thing is to read. I actually came across an older edition that I was really tempted to buy because the cover did not have a naked lady and it had the Fanny Hill title a lot bigger. It's very difficult to read your naked lady edition because people give you funny looks and you have to be like no I swear this is a very historically significant, um, gender studies, um, it's the 18th century and it's just that....okay I'm sorry I'm sorry, yes, I'm reading porn in public! So, reading's been pretty slow considering it's like 120 pages long.

Secondly, Oxford World's Classics (my favorite of the publishers of the old things) has had a lot of fun with their explanatory notes. My favorite? "Natural philosophy is the 18th century term for the natural sciences, which Fanny explores with her vagina rather than her other five senses." For real, if I could just sit around and write snarky explanatory notes like that all day, I would hunker down and get a PhD in 18th century porn VERY IMPORTANT LITERATURE.

So I am really one of Not That Many People who is interested in the 18^th century. It seems like when we read old stuff (for class or for fun) we usually read the middle ages or the 19th century (ugh. 19th century. Do not even get me started.) and thus completely miss this little gem of debauchery apart from Swift and Voltaire.

Next time (next time I wander into this whack job of a century): I will rant my ass off about the modern adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, Cruel Intentions. You will hear about what HORRIBLE THINGS they did to my favorite literary character in the world.

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*Another interesting 18th century trope: in these seduction narratives (seduction narrative begins [I think] with Richardson's Clarissa**) there's a fantastic habit of having the old bawdy lady teach the young about-to-be-whore about sex/pleasure. In Pamela you saw the hint of that when she gets locked up in that house with Mrs. Whatsherface which was really the only decent part of the novel because at least Mrs. Whatsherface made funny dirty jokes. In Les Liaisons the Marquise de Merteuil hints at wanting to do that with Cecile, but then gets bored of her because she's stupid. In Fanny Hill...whoaaaa dude. Page ten. Everyone's naked and Fanny's learning...a lot...from an older no-longer-pretty-enough-to-be-a-whore woman.

** yes I just footnoted a footnote....so basically, Richardson got a lot of shit for having Pamela marry her seducer (it was a reformation of the rake narrative...okay, I'm not going to footnote that, but you know, rakes = creepy men). So in his next novel, he kills Clarissa after she is seduced. And so it begins. (Pamela, of course, was never seduced pre-marriage because Mr. B just keeps touching her bosom and then she faints. And then she wakes up "with [her] virtue intact." Right, honey.)

Once upon a time...

...I read de Sade's The Crimes of Love over 4th of July weekend. Let me tell you, people, I am so glad to have wandered back into the 18th century.

I had a terrible moment of panic when I tried to read Defoe's Moll Flanders, and I'll tell you why (because I'm sure, as with every time I go off into the 18th century, you are all FASCINATED). I read Robinson Crusoe for class last year and it was right after we read Les Liaisons Dangereuses which is just SO FUCKING FANTASTIC. Robinson Crusoe, on the other hand...borrrrringggg. It's just...I understand the vague interest of it, conceptually. And I think I decided it was historically significant at the time that I was reading about it. But Robinson Crusoe was stuck on that island for, what, twenty years? Was there any reason we had to live through that in REAL TIME? Especially when you get to page 60 and you're torn between "YES I made it 60 pages in" and "holy shit I have that long to go?"...and that is the time Defoe chooses to say "Hey remember the last 60 pages? I just found my DIARY. It describes everything that happened in the last 60 pages. I think I will put it in now, so you can re-read every event you just read about, only this time with MORE LISTS of MUNDANE THINGS." ...then you get all excited because Crusoe's all building a ship out of a tree and you spend eight years of your life reading about this ship made out of a tree and Crusoe's like "holy shit guys, this is fantastic. It's a boat, but it's made out of a TREE." and then...he can't drag it to the water. So you're like, okay. SOMETHING has to happen soon, right? Oh, look, a FOOTPRINT! There are CANNIBALS! THIS is going to be exciting. And then the cannibals come all the way ONTO THE ISLAND. And...nothing happens.

Moving on. I then discovered, while spending far too much money at Bargain Books, where I do my retail therapy (this being a trip where I was particularly in need of it, too), that Defoe wrote two other novels, Roxana and Moll Flanders, which are about whores and sex and stuff and I was like, okay, it's going to be didactic and probably more than a little obnoxious, but at least it's WHORES and do you know how much I love whores in the 18th century? I told myself that it's just because of the particular content that Robinson Crusoe didn't float my boat (or his, for that matter. Pause for groan.) Even Defoe can't make whores TOO boring.

Yes, he can.

I got ~150 pages in, but it was so boring that I was moving slowly and painfully and taking lots of breaks to watch lots of West Wing...and I thought to myself, "have I stopped loving the 18th century? Am I losing that bizarre love that makes me me?" Insert further life-crisis-y remarks.

I took a step back, read Eula Biss, and started anew, with de Sade. Oh, lovely readers, I do still love the 18th century. (I also sort of consider 18th century literature to go until aboutttt 1820s, maybe a little later. Though I am seriously not an expert on the subject, my general understanding, not gleaned from a reliable source but merely the tiny spark of a theory from my own mis-matched head, is that 18th century literature ends with industrialization, ish.) I could sit down and write a paper on The Crimes of Love and I would be wrong seven times over because it was so complex while managing to be totally readable and fun!

And who doesn't love a story that is thus:
Man wants to marry. Man asks for wife 30-35 ish years old. His friend says, "I got one! This one. She is 34 and she has a fantastic character. Problems: No one knows about her birth, because she was set on this guy's doorstep as a baby. However, guy will vouch for her character. Also, she had this little thing with a guy when she was 16, had a baby, baby and dad are both gone. Other than that, she's perfect."
Man: "Lovely! Will you marry me?"
Lady: "Okay, but, see, I don't deserve to marry."
Man: "Awha? I know about your little indiscretion as a teenager. If I'm asking for a 30-year-old wife, it'd be totally unreasonable for me to demand that she also be a virgin. No worries."
Lady: "Wait, wait, wait. But there's more. Let me tell you my story. Then you'll never want to marry me."
Begin Lady's story:
"So, I went to stay with Depraved Guardian, who encouraged my inappropriate liaison with this guy who got my preggers and then left me. Lots of sad. When he left me, I went back to Paris and stayed with Moral Guardian, who got me back on the right path. Then we took this trip. A 17-year-old fell in love with me. He told me he loved me. I told him to GTFO and that I was too old for him. So then he tried to rape me. I grabbed scissors to try and stab his arm, but accidentally I killed him. I'm a murderess!"
Guy: Um, okay, I get why you are feeling bad, but that was totes self defense. Still want to marry you!
Lady: No, no. So I went back to Depraved Guardian for a change of scene. Only she died. Also, she was unsaved so I tried to convert her on her death bed because I am Moral. [insert only touching scene in pretty much entire collection of stories, of "Depraved" lady dying.] So since she was all dead, I went to this inn. And I saw a woman kill another woman. Then they made me be a witness and it was on my testimony that they sent her to death. I hate myself, because I also killed, but I got away with it.
Guy: I am sorry. Let us to wed!
[wedding.]
3 months later:
Knock, knock.
Man: Who is this guy?
Plot Twist: I am your son, remember me? I ran off with your Depraved Wife, who was a whore and took me with her. I was a Problematic Youth, but I must tell you something important, the tragedy of our family, which can no longer be hidden from you. Hi, New Mommy - I'm sorry the first time I meet you is at a time of crisis
Lady: Oh, that's fine, proceed.
Plot Twist: Okay, so, you remember that I left with your Depraved Wife? Well, I was also depraved. And when I was seventeen, I had this affair with a 16-year-old who had a baby. I took the baby and left her. I then left my son with a guardian and went to war. When I got back, I found out my son was dead. He tried to rape this older lady he was besotted with, and she accidentally stabbed him with scissors. So I went to see my mother, to seek her advice, and I found she was imprisoned and sentenced to death. Apparently, she stabbed a rival, but she would never have been caught if the testimony of some woman had not been procured. Anyway, I was talking to her the day before her death and she told me I had to come tell you that she gave birth to a daughter! She left the daughter on a doorstep of this guy [insert Lady's first guardian's name].
Lady: Shit son. So you are telling me that I have slept with my brother, my son, and my father? And also have sent my mother to her death? Methinks 'tis time to shoot myself in the head.
Men: Yes, and we will go live piously in a cave.
End scene.

Well, I enjoyed it. I'm not sure my little summary really captures the sentiments so well. However, in addition to that gem there is a fantastic trip into hell, a really gross incest story with the censored bits put back in, de Sade's attempt to convince us that he knows a lot about Sweden, and lots of very strange philosophies that are hard to decode. Like, it's really REALLY hard to tell where de Sade stands on anything. For me. And I know nothing about him or his work except for this one book. I need to sit down with my adviser (who is the one who got me into this whack-job of a century) and make her explain.

For palate cleanser before moving on to Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (come now, THAT is going to be fantastic) I am reading Philip Lopate's collection of personal essays called Getting Personal. Thus far, quite good! (Thus far = page 8).



Back to work tomorrow. Perhaps I will have fun anecdotes, because Monday is MAIL DAY and since I haven't done mail since last Wednesday it might be a pretty hefty bunch.