Fanny's Fortunes: Sexuality and Commerce in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

While John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, also known as Fanny Hill, seems to be mostly obsessed with sexual activity, it is actually just as much about the burgeoning free-market capitalist economy of mideighteenth-century England. In the explicit references to precise amounts of money, focus on characters' financial situation in their introductions, and extensive economic metaphors, the novel drives home the point that capitalist economic structures determine all other social and affective structures, including sex.