ABSTRACT

The seemingly antagonistic genres of sentimental1 and pornographic fiction2 were both developed within the same period, somewhat misleadingly labelled as the Age of Reason, and in connection with some of its dominant cultural developments. Together they participated in the ‘rise of the novel’ and its conventions of ‘formal realism’ (cf. Watt). Thus they both profited from the broadening of the reading public as well as the increasing individualism and privacy of reading. Furthermore, they also converge in their joint connection to eighteenth-century discourses like

Moral Sense Theory and the Cult of Sensibility, but also French Materialism, Sensational Psychology, the ideal of politeness, and eighteenth-century economy. The influence of some of these phenomena has been found even in unlikely places,3 and in the light of these discoveries, obvious differences between the sentimental and the pornographic novel with respect to thematic interest (soul versus body, virtue versus pleasure) or stylistic forms of representation soon turn out to be similarities in disguise. The same is true for the seemingly oppositional gendering of the two genres, which will be the starting point of my argument here, and which is based on common developments in the eighteenth-century discourse of sexuality. This paper, however, will focus less on the two genres’ joint participation in general scientific and philosophical contexts,4 and more specifically on the question of how such novels as Pamela and Fanny Hill mediate prevailing gender boundaries and thus encourage their readers to mediate their own gender identities.