A Woman of Many Pleasures: "Sapphic" Desire in 'Fanny Hill' Anonymous College

The rise of the novel in mainstream 18th century English society, and the potential for complex identity formation through its narrative structure, provided a new medium for pornographic writing and consumption. Intersecting this rise, the word “Sapphic” became a popular descriptor for the same-sex desire of women in the latter half of the century, one of the first identifiers to pre-date the early 19th century categorical term of “lesbian” (Akroyd 143). John Cleland’s 1748 erotic novel Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, follows Fanny through her scandalous adventures as an English prostitute. As the narrator, Fanny acts as mediator for a series of desiring gazes over multiple types of sexual encounters and pleasurable bodies. This multiplicity, including a graphic depiction of homosexual sex (which was illegal at the time), suggests, as Lisa Moore points out, that Cleland’s novel complicates “the notion of a single, properly English, properly heterosexual reader” (49). Despite the novel’s portrayal of many scandalous sexualities, same-sex female desire remains a site of uncertainty, not as easily categorized as sodomy, anal, or oral pleasure. Beyond the sexual veil, however, this ambiguous representation of Sapphic desire in ...