Censorship of Adultery

Definition: Consensual sexual relationships between married persons and persons other than their marriage partners

Significance: Adultery is among the most commonly censored topics

Marriage is a social institution that enhances the stability of society. Adultery is forbidden by most religions, and depictions of adultery, especially those in which the adulterers do not suffer as a consequence of their actions, have long been controversial. Those opposed to censorship of adultery themes and depictions point out that although adultery may be bad, it is common, and that artistic representations of adult life that pretend that adultery does not exist do not make it go away.

The censorship of adultery serves as a barometer for changing definitions of public morality. While representations of sexuality have always been subject to censorship at particular historical moments, the representation of adultery, in particular, has been a focus for censors since the nineteenth century. Depicting adultery involves a representation of sexuality but also, because it contravenes the marriage vow, a challenge to public morality and the institution of the family.

Depictions of adultery, when censored, are typically cited as belonging to the category of obscene libel (as opposed to seditious libel or blasphemous libel). It is striking that three of the most notorious censorship trials in the West—the trial of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857) in France, the trial of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) in the United States, and the trials of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) in the United States and England—involve novels that address adultery as a literary theme.

The history of censorship indicates that subversive political and religious writings received the most prominent attention from censoring authorities, but with the rise of the bourgeois family, the stability of the marriage tie became increasingly important (much more important than it had been to, for example, the nobility, except regarding the legitimacy of the firstborn male). The stability of the family was linked to national stability, and any representation that challenged the integrity of the family was interpreted as a national threat. In terms of censorship, adultery became a potent focus of attention for three main reasons. First, on a political level, adultery posed a challenge to the family which could be translated as a challenge to the nation. Second, on a religious level, adultery contravened biblical tenets. Third, on the immediate level of the family and gender, a wife’s adultery threatened the father, and thus the institution of patriarchy, by throwing into question a child’s paternity. A wife’s adultery also disturbed established ideas of womanhood. The censorship of adultery almost always involved a woman’s, as opposed to a man’s, adulterous actions. The three novels referred to above, for example, each involve a woman who is unfaithful to her husband. There are many examples in literature and drama of men who are unfaithful to their wives, yet these works are rarely the target of censorship. Adultery, then, brings together a political threat and a religious threat.

Adultery in the Novel

In 1857 Madame Bovary, a novel by Gustave Flaubert, became the controversial subject of a censorship trial for its alleged “outrage to public morality and religion.” The prosecution isolated the novel’s representation of adultery as one of the key offenses. After a lengthy debate, the novel was acquitted. Upon completion of Ulysses, James Joyce recalled the trial of Flaubert’s novel and when his novel, too, was subject to a censorship trial, he hoped for equally sensational results. A trial in 1922 found the novel obscene, but after being banned for eleven years in the United States, the novel was pronounced legal (that is, not obscene) in 1933. While Ulysses also focuses on adultery, the trial took more issue with Joyce’s use of explicit language and his frank description of sexual scenes.

D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover also addresses adultery, and it was banned in England and the United States after its limited-edition publication in Italy in 1928. The novel was not acquitted until 1959 in the United States and 1960 in England. Adultery was a focus of discussions at the trial. In the case of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, however, the novel was easily acquitted, perhaps indicating the relative relaxation of strictures against literature and the change in public morality that had occurred by the late 1950s. It is likely, too, that the social antagonism to Lady Chatterley’s Lover was, at least in part, related to the class difference between Lady Chatterley and her lover. These trials, in fact, suggest that adultery alone was not enough to attract the attention of the censor. In the first case adultery and religion is the problem, in the second, adultery and explicit language, and in the third, adultery and class difference.

Itō Sei’s Japanese-language translation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published by Oyama Publishing in the spring of 1950. Itō was concerned that the nation might not be ready for the novel’s sexually explicit content, despite the fact that Japan's postwar constitution guaranteed freedom of expression. Months after publication, Itō’s concern turned out to be well founded, and the novel was indicted by the District Court in part because of scenes that depicted adulterous sexual intercourse. In January 1952, the District Court convicted the publisher, who was sentenced to pay the maximum fine, while Itō was acquitted. Itō’s acquittal was overturned by the High Court in December 1952, however, and he was sentenced to pay a fine. Though the reversal was appealed, the Supreme Court upheld it in March 1957.

Adultery in Drama

In Western Europe and North America drama has often been subject to a form of prior restraint. A powerful system of prior restraint was developed in Great Britain, for example. In 1737 the Lord Chamberlain was given authority over theatrical productions under the Stage Licensing Act. For the most part, this prior censorship was political in motivation, but in 1843 a new Stage Licensing Act was passed which introduced a focus on public morals—“the Preservation of good Manners, Decorum, or the public Peace”—and opened a space for the censorship of adultery in drama. This act and others like it not only prevented the production of certain plays but also worked to inhibit playwrights, who knew that if they took the trouble to write on certain controversial topics, they were likely to be censored. In Great Britain the Stage Licensing Act was not completely changed until 1968, and in many other European countries similar regulatory boards also continued into the late twentieth century.

In summary, adultery was perceived to be an offense to public morality and its censorship was advocated on these grounds. Public morality intersects with, but is not the same as, maintaining political stability and religious faith as a motivation for censoring questionable works.

Bibliography

Armstrong, Judith. The Novel of Adultery. New York: Barnes, 1976. Print.

Cather, Kirsten. “Lady Chatterly’s Censor (1951–1957).” The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: U of Hawai’i P, 2012. 19–66. Project MUSE. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.

De Grazia, Edward. Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius. New York: Random, 1992. Print.

Hynes, Samuel. The Edwardian Turn of Mind. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1968. Print.

Keating, Peter. The Haunted Study: A Social History of the English Novel, 1875–1914. London: Secker, 1989. Print.

La Capra, Dominick. Madame Bovary on Trial. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982. Print.

Tanner, Tony. Adultery in the Novel: Contract and Transgression. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979. Print.