Dr Christina Lupton and Dr David Taylor

1309138

EN330 Eighteenth Century Literature

Discuss the uses and different forms of voyeurism within Cleland’s novel ‘Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’ and other works of Eighteenth Century literature.

Although voyeurism is commonly considered to be the act of secretly viewing another person and gaining a form of gratification, this is a simplified, paraphrased and misleading impression. Voyeurism is an “asymmetrical and intrusive” relationship which Joel Rudinow (177), describes as the seeking of “a spectacle, the revelation of the object of [his] interest” not requiring “reciprocal revelation or openness” (176). As an invisible presence, the voyeur gains information with no “reciprocal revelation” (177) which creates internal tension between the desire to be intimate with the “object of interest” and the need to maintain distance (176). Jonathan Metzl has remarked, “voyeurs peep[ed] through the privacy of others” (421) and William Glass applies this to the act of reading, stating, “As readers, that’s what we want: the penetration of privacy” (Rudinow 175), yet readers are not required to reveal anything of themselves. Rudinow titles this the “voyeuristic project” of fiction (176). The definition of an “asymmetrical and intrusive” relationship between object and voyeur is the key stone of this essay (177).

Voyeurism occurs in multiple facets in Cleland’s novel ‘Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’ as both a functional device within the fiction and a structural pillar of the narrative. Writing in the form of epistles to a female addressee identified as “Madam” (Cleland 1), the author creates an internal audience and private relationship into which the reader intrudes, so setting the outer framework for the connections between reader and plot. Interestingly, all the memoirs – those of Fanny and the three prostitutes at Mrs Cole’s - come from female voices, despite the male authorship of the novel. A complex web of gender relations and perspectives is constructed as a fictional - thus artificial – female is observed expounding male-constructed ideas of female sexuality to another female. Internal gender tensions arising in the representation of male and female –because they must pass through these various filters - cause contradictions between and within different episodic instances. These are evident in the two scenes in which there are attempts to take Fanny’s virginity, in the ways Cleland relates the events and in the confusion over the values of the male and female body. The author does not focus on the moral repugnance of the “unrighteous contract” (17) that attempted to sell Fanny’s maidenhead but on the physical deformities and limitations of Mr Croft (Simmons 63). His sexual inadequacy becomes the vehicle to discuss male anxiety of impotence and the fear that this is a physical indication of the “failure of his power” as a man (Cleland 16). The importance of male sexual dominance is implied through the language used to describe the terms of the contract and the difference in monetary value that distinguishes between “attempting” and sexual completion- the latter designated a “triumph” (17). Premature ejaculation in the attempted rape is regarded as loss of “power” (19), implying that sexual dominance is a solely male state and consequently the female body is only a reactive vessel of masculine might. With loss of sexual “power” (19), the female becomes a template for another masculine strength which is aggression. In contrast with this arbitrary value structure, the fake virginity scene with Mr Norbert illustrates that the female body can gain value by creating the “illusion” of masculine sexual success (136). Fanny’s behaviour - proactive physical movements to create “an artificial difficulty of entrance” (137) and the fake “bloody proofs” of lost virginity- all endeavour to provide Mr Norbert with a sexually gratifying “triumph”(136). Here the reader-voyeur is presented with a system of male sexual politics underpinned by female deception and overlaid by a female voice which revels in the deceit, all of which is the fictional construct of a male author. Rather than being placed in a single position, the voyeur is invited to view these various contradictions in sexual economy and social values through the different gender lenses of the male author, Cleland, his narrative female construct, Fanny, and the female addressee.

Sterne’s novel ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman’ creates a different voyeuristic frame by focusing on the relationship between voyeurism and exhibitionism and not on gender dimensions and value systems. The narrator of the novel, Tristam, interacts and engages with an immediate audience whom he addresses as “Sir” (Sterne 11) and “Madam” (10) and who respond within the outer-frame of the novel; “You told me no such thing, Sir. Madam, I beg leave to repeat it over again” (51). Yet his immediate audience is compromised by Tristam’s chastisement to “Madam” in being “so inattentive in reading” (51) and his command to “read the whole chapter over again” (52). The repeated references to studying the novel place readers in an uncomfortable position: they are unsure whether they are facing a reported reading of the main plot - which would mean the immediate audience was real within the fiction - or whether Tristam has created a fake internal audience to emphasise ideas to his intended onlookers. The voyeuristic reader is placed to view a self-consciously written account from a narrator who is aware of the different layers of audience and readers who will encounter his work. By assuming that the immediate audience is real within the fiction, the reader becomes a voyeur of the complicit relationship between Tristam and his spectators and is able to view how they react to and question the version of events being related. The second option forces the idea of exhibitionism and writing into the foreground. In the novel, Tristam relates different theories for determining a person: the “HOBBY –HORSE” - one theory that is most frequently referred to - has an action or interest that gives a “pretty exact notion of the genius and character” of the man (67). The rambling digressions and constant delays of the plot which stall the end of the narrative infer that Tristam Shandy’s “HOBBY-HORSE” is the act of writing (67), confirmed by the character’s acknowledgement that “as long as I live or write (which in my case is means the same thing)” (145). This link between self and writing - autobiography - results in Tristam deliberately putting himself in position to expose himself to his readership and thus makes him an exhibitionist. Edmund Bergler notes that “voyeuristic-exhibitionistic exchange” is that “through which voyeurism is warded off with exhibitionism” (Smith 597). This is exemplified when Shandy removes the invisibility of the voyeur, cuts down the required distance between object and observer and gains a form of gratification from the act of reading. Through this, voyeuristic readers are part of a larger system of directed readership, self-exploitation and character gratification which undermine the “revelation” gained (Rudinow 176).

In Cleland’s novel, readers become sexual voyeurs as the narrator describes her early life as a prostitute. The author uses language for Fanny’s encounters to justify two directly opposed and most common reactions to the sex scenes. Philip Simmons highlights the oxymoronic phrases used to describe sexual acts - such as “sweet violence” (Cleland 33) – labelling them, “the pleasures of sexual warfare” (Simmons 44). By combining violent and militaristic terms with those of affection and pleasure, Cleland allows the reader to indulge in the sexual pleasure of the scene and to reject it by moral judgement. Sex, described as both a negative and positive activity, is determined by the voyeuristic-reader. This duality is replicated in Fanny’s own voyeurism: the author uses her to present different reasons for and results of voyeurism. The incident with Polly and her Italian lover is a form of sexual education and awakening which moves Fanny from homosexual to heterosexual desire. This is notable in the sudden decrease of activity between Phoebe and Fanny and the brevity of their descriptions. Through this shift of focus, Cleland emphasises the abrupt change in Fanny’s desires and creates anticipation for her first completed heterosexual encounter. The second experience is questionably voyeuristic, for although Fanny observes that the other prostitutes of Mrs Cole’s establishment have sex, it is deliberately “open publick enjoyment”(112), yet until she agrees to participate in “favour of the first experiment” (Cleland 113), Fanny is a distanced voyeur, despite her visibility. By using long descriptive sentences the narrator emphasises the sexual anticipation that her previous spectatorship has created: “the impressions of burning desire, from the lively scenes I had been the spectatress of,...I perfectly fever’d and madden’d with excess” and highlights the enhancement of carnal pleasure (123). As with Cleland’s linguistic safety net, Fanny’s voyeurism is a means of setting moral boundaries and sexual limits: her reaction to viewing male homosexual sex is to label it a “criminal act” and to be filled “with rage and indignation” (159). In this small segment the voice of the author appears to break through Fanny’s narration and quietly mocks readers who justify their reading by claiming moral censure, as Fanny’s insistence that she remained to watch the act only to “gather more facts, and certainty against them in my full design to do their deserts instant justice” falls flat (159). Cleland’s in-built linguistic escape and Fanny’s explorations into the different reasons and uses of voyeurism create a novel built on the close link between voyeuristic pleasure and judgement.

The misleading definition of voyeurism as an act of secretly viewing an object or action is simplistic; in looking at an image, the spectator is not required to interact and thus allows the “antithetical goals” of the voyeur: to gain without giving(Rudinow 176), to be intimate and yet distanced. Vision and the eye have become the most notable instruments and metaphors for voyeurism and are seen in Cleland’s novel ‘Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’ for in the opening addresses of the letters Fanny repeatedly describes subsequent events as a series of “pictures I present before your eyes” (Cleland 91). The vocabulary used emphasises the interaction of the eye and the object suggesting that voyeurism in the eighteenth century is also described in this reductive terminology. Hogarth’s ‘A Harlot’s Progress’, is physical representation of this singular sensory voyeurism: this literature is a series of paintings depicting Moll Hackabout’s moral and physical decline into urban prostitution. Viewers are positioned as voyeurs because they are outside the fictional reality of the work, looking in on events. Hallet, however, notes that in many of the frames - (Hogarth, pl2, 3, 4) - Moll appears to be “looking out at the viewer which pulls the spectator of the painting into the space that constructs that look” (Hallet 101). The viewer becomes “defined as a potential client” (101) and is thus made an exploitive figure similar to the aristocratic man of the first frame (Hogarth, pl1). As with Cleland’s novel, the boundaries between complicity and voyeurism become blurred and whilst it may be argued that desire is the “reciprocal revelation” (Rudinow 176), Hogarth, like Cleland, creates a safety net for the external voyeur which allows pleasure as well as moral censure. Unlike ‘Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’, Hogarth’s pictures create a narrative about the descent of a prostitute and when viewed as a series, they provide a moral warning against prostitution by demonstrating the commoditisation and physical corruption of the body. If the first three frames are viewed individually they show sexually provocative images that lack the moral justification which is gained by viewing the series (Hogarth, pl1, 2, 3,): consequently the weight of social expectation and boundaries do not rest with the artist but with the audience -voyeur.

In contrast with other epistolary novels like Richardson’s ‘Pamela’, there is considerable temporal distance between the events experienced and the protagonist’s retelling which is in a different “stage[s] of my [Fanny’s] life”(Cleland 1). The distance of events and social positions - with Fanny now the respectable wife of a country gentleman - allows the narrator herself to become a voyeur and commentator of her own history. Her elevated social position implies that the retelling of her chronicle should be coloured with moralistic judgements and tones, yet there is minimal censure and this occurs primarily at the opening and closing to each of the letters to “Madam” (1). The “tail-piece of morality” at the end of the novel is exceedingly brief (187) - only a page in length - and does little to reprove Fanny’s previous lifestyle: in fact, she has gained financially and socially from being a harlot. In some descriptions of sexual activities the narrator seemingly becomes overwhelmed with emotion, repeatedly depicted through the exclamation, “Oh!”(44). This suggests a present reaction to remembered events, with pleasure gained from a distanced act. The sexual reunion between Fanny and Charles is the moment when the boundary between the past events and affected present – the voyeuristic distance – collapses as the tense slips into the present: Simmons notes “the move from “I see!” to “I feel!” [is the move] from voyeur to participant” (56). Autobiography is presented throughout the novel as a means of accessing voyeuristic desire yet the aposiopesis that halts Fanny’s ability to write - “my pen drops from me here in the extasy now present to my faithful memory!”(183) - implies her voyeuristic gratification also dissolves the act of voyeurism. By writing her desire, even in an implied manner, constitutes a “reciprocal revelation” (Rudinow 176) as Fanny illustrates her true regard for the “scandalous stages” of her past (Cleland 1). Similar movement between timeframes is also a characteristic of Sterne’s novel through Shandy’s interaction with his immediate audience. Shandy, unlike Fanny, does not allow histories to remain within the medium of being retold. Uncle Toby’s injury and the history of Dr. Slop are presented almost as separately observed events with little reference to the person that relayed this history, nor its validity or trustworthiness. Shandy tries to present himself as a source of information, concealing the obvious gap of his absence in his narration. In an attempt to mask this flaw and appear as a credible source, Shandy’s narration is heavily detailed, even down to the origins of his father’s “India handkerchief”(Sterne 142). Detail becomes so specific in some accounts that readers question whether they are actually intruding upon Shandy’s imagination rather than history: the exact angle Corporal Trim was positioned in while delivering his sermon - “an angle of 85 degrees and a half upon the plain of the horizontal”(105)- stretches their belief too far. This need to appear genuine may explain Tristam’s continuous commentary on past events and in using this technique he successfully positions himself as a voyeur of past interaction but simultaneously fails to hide his absence and lack of authority on events. Shandy’s voyeurism thus hinges on the question of whether the events he is telling occurred as he describes; if not, then Shandy does not take the position of voyeur but that of exhibitionist, displaying his own desire both for his “HOBBY-HORSE” and his version of his history (67).