Fanny Hill

Charles is Fanny’s love interest in the novel, though he only appears at the beginning and end of the novel. Charles fulfills some important tropes and expectations of 18th-century literature, and he reveals the major differences between the lived experiences of men and women during this time. Charles is wealthy by birth, though he is not a noble, and his father resents the fact that Charles’s maternal grandmother prefers Charles to his father. Charles is absent from most of the novel because his father sends him to the South Seas in an attempt to secure his grandmother’s money. However, when Charles returns to England, he loses his money in an accident, leaving him in the same position as Fanny at the beginning of the novel. Meeting Fanny by accident, she becomes his savior by marrying him and bringing to the marriage the fortune she inherited from her final client.

Charles’s character is based on the 18th-century figure of the “rake” or libertine, a young man with money who engages in the vices of sexuality, drugs, and alcohol. The libertine trope, exemplified in Restoration and 18th-century literature by characters like Wilmore in Aphra Behn’s play The Rover or Lovelace in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, was celebrated in the Restoration but was usually deployed to show the pitfalls of immorality in the 18th-century. Charles undergoes a transformation befitting this shift. Rather than continuing a life of debauchery in London, he seems dedicated to Fanny in the early portion of their relationship, and he quickly marries her upon his return. Though it can be argued that he married Fanny for money, the novel frames their marriage as a return to virtue for both characters, resolving in Fanny’s comments regarding the superiority of pleasure through virtue, rather than through vice.

Charles shows how destitution is a fundamentally different experience for men and women in 18th-century literature. Unlike Fanny, who, without parents or wealth, is forced into sex work, Charles, returning to England without any money, plans to start over in London. Neither Charles’s vices nor poverty follow him in his life, as he can still get married, get a job, or return to a life of debauchery without harsh criticisms from society as a whole. This opportunity to start over contrasts with Fanny, who can only overcome her history in sex work by marrying the first man she slept with, and who can only accumulate wealth through men.

Though there are many property owners and managers in the text, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Cole exemplify different subversions of the archetype of older women as compassionate caregivers. Mrs. Brown is the first figure to subvert this archetype, as she appears to save Fanny from the employment office by offering her a role as an assistant, which Fanny later discovers requires her to do sex work at Mrs. Brown’s brothel. Mrs. Brown is the only older woman in such a position who seems to acknowledge any wrongdoing, as shown by her nervous reaction to Charles’s friend, the lawyer. Mrs. Brown’s interests, like those of Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Cole, are primarily tied to money, and Mrs. Brown, rather than seeking to support and help Fanny, is instead trying to indoctrinate her into sex work for her own financial gain.

Mrs. Jones, unlike Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Cole, does not specifically operate in sex work, instead functioning as a tertiary contact in the transfer from Fanny being “kept” by Charles to being “kept” by Mr. H. However, Mrs. Jones is likely the greediest of the three women in this section, as she has only the slightest pretense of helping Fanny, whereas Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Cole invite Fanny into their homes without payment. When Charles leaves, Mrs. Jones extorts Fanny for as much money as possible before allowing her to leave, effectively selling Fanny to Mr. H. During the time that Charles and Fanny spend together, Mrs. Jones extorts them as well, but the subversion of the caregiver archetype comes in Mrs. Jones’s specific targeting of Fanny as an easy source of income.

Mrs. Cole is the closest character to a true caregiver in the text, as she supports Fanny, Louisa, Harriet, and Emily both financially and emotionally. The key difference between Mrs. Cole and her predecessors is that she allows Fanny and the other women to keep the gifts and payments they earn through their sex work. She also teaches the women about frugality, helping Fanny accumulate 800 pounds by the time Mrs. Cole retires. From an 18th-century perspective, Mrs. Cole is still a subversion of the caregiver stereotype because she is organizing and profiting from women’s sexual exploitation. From a modern perspective, though, Mrs. Cole can be interpreted as a more genuinely compassionate and generous character.