SOURCE: "Clarissa and Fanny Hill: Sisters in Distress," in Studies in the Novel, Vol. IV, No. 3, Fall 1972, pp. 343-52.

In the following essay, Copeland identifies and discusses the similarities between the metaphors used for descriptions of vice in Fanny Hill and for virtue in Clarissa.

A comparison of John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748-1749)¹ and Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (17471748)² demonstrates that these two improbably paired works have surprisingly much in common. Both heroines, for example, have similar suitors, similar unpleasant experiences in London, shared interests in problems of "delicacy," outstanding beauty, not to mention noteworthy cleanliness and neatness, and, most of all, heightened capacities for "feeling" with the greatest intensity. Peter Quennell, the editor of the 1963 New York edition of the Memoirs, even suggests that "Clarissa must certainly have influenced Cleland, and its predecessor, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, published in 1740, may also have affected him."³ I...