Age in Fanny Hill: An Analysis
You can read Memoirs of Fanny Hill here on Project Gutenberg. All quotations are from this edition.
Youth is beauty in Fanny Hill, and age is at best not to the protagonist's tastes, at worst revolting.
Fanny's first and truest love, Charles, is eighteen while Fanny is fifteen. He is described as "a giddy boy" and "glowing with all the opening bloom and verdant freshness of an age ... which the first down over his upper lip scarce began to distinguish [his sex]." When he returns at the end of the novel, though he's now twenty-two and has a beard, he is still called Fanny's "adored youth" and is, in fact, "idolized," Fanny's perfect love match. Her idolization is inseparable from his youth.
Fanny's second "love" (in truth, infatuation), Will, is also a boy and what's more, a virginal boy to whom Fanny can be the experienced guide. Still, she and Will are also of similar ages: he is nineteen and she at least sixteen, perhaps seventeen. Fascinatingly, though Fanny is undoubtedly the younger between the two, she is called a woman while Will is continually a boy. Here, age connotes power -- though this is not a theme which is constant through the novel, as whomever Fanny loves clearly has great power over her, enough for her to call him her "master." Attention is brought to Will's "beardless chin" and he is called such things as "a very handsome young lad" and "my young novice".
Even those brief flings which Fanny takes a liking to are, with a single exception (to whom I will return later), also young men. Her first "particular" at Mrs Cole's is a "young gentleman" with a "very pretty figure." She goes on to enjoy her experiences with other young men, and so do the other members of Mrs Cole's household. When Harriet, Emily, and Louisa share the stories of their losses of virginity, not one of them has that experience with someone who is anything but young, and not one of them is unsatisfied.
And those flings which Fanny does not enjoy? Mr Norbert stands out among the men in the second letter. He's only thirty but he's frail and looks to have lived "sixty winters." Mr Norbert is repeatedly disappointing to Fanny. He is the only character other that Mr Crofts, to whom Fanny had such an intense revulsion and who is actually over sixty, to prematurely ejaculate. While each man Fanny either enjoys having sex with or enjoys watching has an exaggeratedly large penis, Mr Norbert's is small and brings Fanny "little or [no]" pleasure. He, too, disappears from the novel by dying suddenly, just as other elderly men have done. Young men disappear from the novel by moving and/or marrying.
Characters of a greater age, both men and women, are repeatedly described in unflattering and grotesque ways, even when Fanny has no sexual relationship with them. Mrs Brown, for example, is not a young woman and her body, to Fanny's peeping eye, is in no uncertain terms, ugly. Her sagging breasts are snidely deemed not worthy of attention and her genitals are described unkindly as "a wide open mouthed gap, overshaded by a grizzly bush, seemed held out like a beggar's wallet for its provision." Mrs Brown's characterization is no doubt also colored by her being fat; though on numerous young men, their fatness is endearing or attractive to Fanny. However, comparing Mrs Brown to another old(er) woman, Phoebe, reveals that age plays not a small role in making Mrs Brown seem monstrous. Phoebe is only ten years older than Fanny but looks older still. Her breasts are "hung loosely down" and are of significant "size and volume." They are immediately compared to Fanny's own, which "just began to shew themselves." Older (ie ugly) women have breasts which hang, and young (ie desirable) women have "firm" breasts.
The pubic hair of all three characters plays a large part in distinguishing their ages, too. Mrs Brown's is "grizzly", Phoebe's is "a spreading thicket", and Fanny's is "soft silky down". Whereas pubic hair is eroticized throughout the novel and young Fanny's in particular (Phoebe, in the first sexual scene in the novel, actually tells Fanny that it's "delicious"), these two examples of Mrs Brown and Phoebe illustrate that it is also used to condemn an old(er) woman's body. Fanny makes no compliment towards Phoebe's more mature state of pubic hair but often has fond words for those of her young male lovers. And it isn't that Fanny is incapable of appreciating the look of another woman's pubic hair, for she around the same time compliments that of Polly ("the richest sable fur in the universe"), who is a young woman or girl. Later, praise is also given to that of Harriet ("downy spring moss") and Emily ("light-brown curls, in beauteous growth").
Old men receive a similar treatment from Fanny. Even men Fanny doesn't engage with whatsoever are, like Mrs Brown, not safe from criticism. An "old jolly stager" "leer[s] archly" at Fanny, while Charles, who also most recently looked upon Fanny with desire, was "far from rude." Mr H is the only solidly middle-aged man Fanny has a sexual relationship with (he is forty) and he "cannot raise [her] taste." He acts no differently than Charles towards Fanny in that he gives her a home, money, and presents, but he is hairy and "a system of manliness." He is compared directly to young men:
"... [Mr H] made me fully sensible of the virtues of his firm texture of limbs, his square shoulders, broad chest, compact hard muscles, in short a system of manliness, that might pass for no bad image of our ancient sturdy barons, whose race is now so thoroughly refined and frittered away into the more delicate and modern built frame of our pap-nerved softlings, who are as pale, as pretty, and almost as masculine as their sisters."
While seeming to denigrate youthfulness and young men in favor of Mr H's body type, this passage actually articulates a divide between the young desirable man who continually turns Fanny's head and the older undesirable man who makes Fanny unhappy. Pale, pretty, and un-masculine is precisely how Fanny's favorites are described. Her greatest love Charles' forehead and bosom are "perfectly white" and "whiter than a drift of snow" respectively. As for his masculinity or lack thereof, Charles has "the opening bloom and verdant freshness of an age, in which beauty is of either sex."
There is one exception to the rule that Fanny (and most other characters aside from Mrs Brown's lover) loves young people/men and is repulsed by old ones. That's the "old bachelor, turned of sixty." He receives no name, though a few other of Fanny's admirers and flings also remain unnamed (such as her "particular" at Mrs Cole's, the sailor, and the elderly man who paid her for allowing him to play with her hair). However, not only does he receive no name, he receives no sexual content whatsoever! Fanny favors him and truly mourns his passing but has only a few compliments to pay to his appearance. They are: he has a "fresh vigorous complexion" what makes him look "scarce marked five and forty", he does not suffer from erectile dysfunction ("age [has not] robbed him of the power of pleasing" -- remember how Mr Norbert, a man who looked older than his years, couldn't please Fanny?), and his kindness.
This youthful old man's only role in the novel is to die and leave Fanny a small fortune with which to build a virtuous married life with Charles. All others who contribute to Fanny's wealth have either sexual or erotic scenes attached to them: Charles, Mr H, Mr Norbert, Fanny's "particulars"... This unnamed, briefly appearing old man may be Fanny's exception to her usual taste but there's no proof of it upon the page.
Altogether, it seems almost sneering for the most loving description of Charles' genitals to end: "the only wrinkles that are known to please." That is, on a young man.