Sex and the Short Story. Dr James Cumes
had changed. Indeed the tendency had been to confirm the sexual repression exemplified by the Angry Penguins trial. The continuing bans on such literature as Lady Chatterley’s Lover provided further examples of this sexual – and literary – repression.
When Lady Chatterly’s Lover was published in Britain in 1960, the trial of its publishers, Penguin Books, became a test of the Obscene Publications Act of the previous year. That act enabled publishers to escape conviction for obscenity if they could show that a work had literary merit.
One of the most violent objections to Lady Chatterley’s Lover was its frequent use of “fuck” and its derivatives and – especially - “cunt”:
"Arena Ah!" he said, leaning forward and softly stroking her face."Th'art good cunt, though, aren't ter? Best bit o' cunt left on earth. When ter likes! When tha'rt willin'!"
"What is cunt?" she said.
"An' doesn't ter know? Cunt! It's thee down theer; an' what I get when I'm i'side thee, and what tha gets when I'm i'side thee; it's a` as it is, all on't."
"All on't,'"she teased. "Cunt! It's like fuck then."
"Nay nay! Fuck's only what you do. Animals fuck. But cunt's a lot more than that. It's thee, dost see: an' tha'rt a lot besides an animal, aren't ter? --- even ter fuck? Cunt! Eh, that's the beauty o' thee, lass!"
She got up and kissed him between the eyes, that looked at her so dark and soft and unspeakably warm, so unbearably beautiful.
The undoubtedly extravagant use of the “c” word in this passage offered powerful cause for the righteous to ban the novel. By the same token, it made Lady Chatterly’s Lover one of the most widely sold books and one of the books most eagerly read – at least of its “dirty bits” – of the twentieth century.
Several eminent writers gave evidence at the Chatterley trial and on 2 November 1960 the jury found the defendant "not guilty."
The verdict opened up prospects for much greater freedom to publish explicit material in the United Kingdom.
Perhaps even more importantly, the prosecution was ridiculed for being out of touch with what were called “changing social norms.”
Chief prosecutor Griffith-Jones became something of a laughing stock for having asked whether it was the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read".
Australia banned not only the book itself, but also a book about the British trial. That was until a copy of The Trial of Lady Chatterley was smuggled into the country and published widely. Its publication helped to moderate literary censorship in Australia, although some deeper impulses towards repression remained.
As late as 1969, an actor in the Brisbane production of Alex Buzo’s play Norm and Ahmed was found guilty of obscenity because of the play’s final two words. Magistrate Barlow convicted actor Norman Aubrey Staines, who played Norm, on a charge of using obscene language in a public place: namely, uttering the words "f..kin' boong."
“Such language,” Barlow said, “goes beyond accepted standards of decency and is, in fact, obscene within the meaning of section 7(C) of the Vagrants, Gaming and Other Offences Acts 1931 to 1967.” It was the “f..kin” that was obscene, not the “boong.”
Australian actor and journalist Graeme Blundell says that, later in 1969, he “directed the play in Melbourne… and was hounded through the courts by Victoria's infamous vice squad and was eventually found guilty in the County Court of ‘aiding and abetting obscene language in a public place’."
The trials were not without some fringe benefits. Blundell concedes that “For a short period, Norm and Ahmed became names as well known in Australia as Zara and Twiggy, largely because of a vivid adjective, derived from a curt Anglo-Saxon four-letter noun and verb”.
The same could be said to have applied to LCL and even more so to Ern Malley’s poems published by Max Harris in Angry Penguins.
The publicity was a marketing manager’s dream. The entirely fanciful Ern Malley owed much of his initial vitality to it and he has lived on long and vigorously since because of it.
Forty years later, in October 2009, Australia Post stopped sale of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and Delta of Venus by Anais Nin from their stores and outlets claiming that books of this nature did not fit in with the “theme of their stores”.
Particular objection was taken to the “c” word appearing, as above, five times and more on a single page of Lady Chatterly’s Lover.
However, the Australia-Post action did not constitute nor, at least until we have a new cycle of real-life repression, is it likely to lead to a ban more generally on the printing, distribution and sale in Australia of the three books or other books containing similar words and descriptions.
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