This is by no means to be taken as a factual or documentary account of an actual country girl's exploits in 18th century London. In addition, this is not one man's perverted erotic tale meant to amuse himself in prison. If you should read this book, word for word, you will understand a few things, aside from the exploitation of young women into sexual slavery, of course, that is the main tragedy of the book, but I think Cleland wants us to somehow look past that and into this bizarre world, whether his vision is accurate or not, and to see the persistence and optimism of a young woman who has lost every shred of control a human could hope for over her life. Not only that, but through this scenario, Cleland permits himself to explore the delights of the body, the mind, and the heart. It is believed that, since one of his early dear friends wrote a document about homosexual male sex, that perhaps he and Cleland had been lovers. The chain of conclusions then leads to the proposition that Cleland himself was homosexual and that he adopted the voice of a young woman to explore the delights of the male gender. However, I propose that aside from heterosexuality or homosexuality, Cleland constructs a world in which the reader, if willing, is prompted to open up to ideas of the beautiful variations of the shape of the human body, its secret rewards, surprises, and pleasures. Cleland, if anything, is pansexual, as is Fanny Hill. Notably, the book's single homosexual scene, witnessed by Fanny, via the ever-present spy hole in the wall at the brothel, leaves her incensed! She runs away in revulsion, which, given her history, seems an unduly harsh reaction; her exclamation regarding the incident? "They had sex without a woman! There was no woman involved!" At the end of the day, Fanny Hill is a story of humanity, sexuality, gender roles, gender rights, exploration and liberation.
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