Fanny Hill - Chapter 11: Revenge and Ruin

This chapter marks Fanny's decisive transformation from passive victim to active agent in her own sexual life, as she methodically orchestrates revenge against Mr. H—.

I’d now lived nearly seven months with Mr. H— when one day, returning to my lodgings from a visit in the neighborhood where I’d stayed longer than usual, I found the street door open and the housemaid standing at it talking with some of her friends. I came in without knocking, and as I passed, she told me Mr. H— was upstairs.

I went up to my own bedroom, with no other thought than to remove my hat and then wait for him in the dining room, which my bedroom opened into, as is common enough. While I was untying my hat strings, I thought I heard my maid Hannah’s voice and a scuffle, which piqued my curiosity. I crept softly to the door where a knot in the wood had fallen out, affording a very commanding peephole to the scene then in progress. The participants had been too earnestly occupied to hear me opening my door from the landing of the stairs into my bedroom.

The first sight that struck me was Mr. H— pulling and hauling this coarse country wench toward a couch that stood in a corner of…