© OpenEdition p, Journals Revue LISA/LISA e- journal Littératures, Histoire des 1dées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone — Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World Vol. XI - n°3 | 2013 Censorship and the creative process The Postics of Censorship Repression and Expression of S exuality in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles: the Paradox and Virtue of Censorship Répression et expression de la sexualité dans Tess of the ¢'Urbenvlles de Thomas Hardy : paradoxe et vertu de la censure THIERRY GOATER hiipsildol.org/10.4000Misa 5453 Résumés English Frangais ‘Throughout his novelistic career, Thomas Hardy had to face various forms of censorship, to such an extent that one ean wonder if they did not contribute to his giving up writing fiction, However, censorship is a complex and ambiguous phenomenon. If there was censorship in literature during the Victorian period, it was mainly more the effect of pervading Puritanism, voiced by leagues of virtue or carried out by editors and publishers, than the result of legal ‘machinery. Literature was only indirectly affected by censorship: editors ensured that ‘morality’ and the sensibility of ‘fragile’ readers were respected. Indeed in the 19th century many novels ‘were published serially in magazines aimed at families, women and children. On the other hand, the strategies devised by authors to circumvent censorship were often aesthetically fruitful. One could even wonder whether, paradoxically, Victorian censorship did not favour the expression of the ‘forbidden’ rather than its repression, whether it did not reveal more than it tried to conceal. This paper will analyse all these issues through the question of sexuality in ‘Tess of the 'Urbervilles, one of Hardy's last novels that was given a particularly rough ride by publishers. ‘Tout au long de sa carriére romanesque, Thomas Hardy fut confronté a diverses formes de censure, au point oi Yon peut se demander si elles ne contribuérent pas a lui faire renoneer & Yécriture fictionnelle. La censure est toutefois un phénoméne ambigu et complexe. Sill y eut censure dans la littérature a l'époque vietorienne, ee fut principalement davantage effet d'un puritanisme ambiant exprimé par les ligues de vertu ou exercées par les éditeurs que le résultatde mécanismes légaux. La littérature ne fut qu‘indirectement affectée par la censure ; les éditeurs sfassuraient que la « moralité » et la sensibilité des leeteurs « fragiles » étaient respectées. En effet, au xixe sidele, beaucoup de romans étaient publiés sous Ia forme de feuilletons dans des ‘magazines lus par les familles, les femmes et les enfants. D'un autre cété, les stratégies mises au point pour contourner la censure furent souvent esthétiquement fructueuses. On pourrait méme se demander si, paradoxalement, la période victorienne ne favorisa pas Texpression de ‘« Tinterdit » phutot que sa répression, si elle ne révéla pas plus qu'elle ne dissimula, Cet article analyse tous ces aspects & travers la question de la sexualité dans Tess of the d'Urbervilles, un des romans de Hardy qui fut particuliérement malmené par la plume éditoriale. Entrées d’index Index de mots-clés : roman victorien, censure, discours, expression, répression, sexualité, Hardy Thomas Index by keywords: Victorian novel, censorship, discourse, expression, Hardy Thomas, sexuality Texte intégral Life being a physiological fact, its honest portrayal must be largely concerned with, for one thing, the relation of the sexes”. This is how Thomas Hardy defines his task as a novelist in a contribution to the New Review in January 1890. One can easily imagine the severe reactions and forms of rejection his novels gave rise to in a Vietorian society that was more often than not hampered by rigid morality and excessive prudishness. In the same contribution, Hardy more explicitly attacks censorship, which in his view is detrimental to the art of the novel and the “honest portrayal” in which he believes. Truly enough, throughout his novelistic career, Hardy was a victim of various forms of repression especially because of his wish to represent sexuality. His first manuscript, “rhe Poor Man and the Lady”, was rejected on the grounds that it was socially dangerous. Desperate Remedies, his first published novel, was accepted only on condition that a rape scene was removed. All his following works were censored to a greater or a lesser degree, to a greater degree in the case of his last novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Censorship is a very complex and ambivalent phenomenon. Social and moral censorship can be more powerful than official, political censorship. It is also likely to produce its own circumvention, As for self-censorship, it may prove just as formidable as censorship itself, Hardy's bitter criticism of social and editorial censorshi understandable as it is, might well be explained by a form of naivety or insincerity concerning fictional candour and transparency, which could be considered as the aesthetic equivalents of moral purity. ‘The aim of this paper is to analyse the paradoxical forms and values of censorship as regards sexuality in Tess of the d’Urbervilles.? If there is indeed Victorian censorship concerning the fictional representation of sexuality, we may argue that it also gives rise to discourse on sex in a dialectical way through fruitful bypassing strategies? and, at least at a narrative level, ends up revealing more than it conceals. Suppressing “Impurity” First and foremost, it is essential to question a widespread view about Victorian society. Official censorship is still today thought to have led to the prohibition of literary works or the prosecution of printers during the Vietorian period. This conception partakes of a myth or a fantasy akin to what Michel Foucault called the “repressive hypothesis”. This is exactly what the 1857 Obscene Publications Act has often been accused of, while, as a matter of fact, the law was mainly aimed at pornographic publications whose number kept increasing and which were explicitly advertised on the streets.S In 1867 Charles Dickens himself defended the law, claiming that if he were the editor of a paper with a wide circulation, he would refuse to publish passages “impurelysuggestive to inferior minds”.* Censorship did take place but it very seldom took a legal form, at least as far as ‘serious’ literature was concerned. ‘And yet, one cannot but note an increasing number of instances of censorship aimed at literary works towards the end of the Victorian era, as discourse on sex was spreading, Such censorship must be put back in the context of the “purity movement” which became more and more vocal at various levels of society: in associations, organisations and circulating libraries, but also among editors of literary reviews publishing novels in serial form. The purpose of this movement was to protect a readership mainly made up of families, women and children — who were considered fragile — from “impure” works, from literature that was far too explicit on sexual matters. Hardy denounced the censorship carried out by editors that resulted in changing the essence of literature: What this practically amounts to is that the patrons of literature — no longer Peers with a taste — acting under the censorship of prudery, rigorously exclude from the pages they regulate subjects that have been made, by general approval of the best judges, the bases of the finest imaginative compositions since literature rose to the dignity of art.” Such Grundyism$ was indeed increasingly heavily felt in the last decades of the nineteenth century, especially after the setting up of the Society for the Suppression of Blasphemous Literature in 1883. ‘The publication of Tess of the d’'Urbervilles in 1891 was particularly affected by the increasing fear of “impurity”. Thus the treatment of sexuality in the novel was judged provocative and indecent. After several refusals to publish his novel, Hardy was compelled to make substantial revisions and expurgations, which led to what the writer called a “dismemberment” of the original text. For example, the Chaseborough jig, which is full of sensuality, the scene in which Tess is raped by Alec in the Chase forest and its consequences, along with the christening and the death of the child, were simply removed in the Graphic serial version.9 For propriety’s sake, censorship ended up taking a ridiculous but extremely revealing, turn in the episode during which Angel Clare has to carry the milkmaids across the flooded road on their way to church. In the manuscript, Angel suggests carrying each of them in his arms: “Ill carry you through the pool — every Jill of you”. (201) In the populist Graphic, however, he goes to fetch a wheelbarrow to carry them: “Il wheel you through the pool all of you — with pleasure, if you'll wait till I get a barrow”.° In the censored version, the young women pass from Angel's arms to those of the wheelbarrow, as it were. Perhaps the proximity of the church may account for this change. Properly speaking, Hardy's novel was not legally censored. On the other hand, it underwent less direct but just as formidable forms of censorship from leagues of virtue, circulating libraries and editors willing to comply with the latter's demands. Nevertheless, that censorship imposed on the novelist circumventing strategies that proved profitable as regards literary creation. The Will to Expression or the Productivity of Repression As is well shown by Foucault, the “repressive hypothesis” is far from exhausting discourse on sex. Far from being silenced, sex becomes the subject of an incitement to discourse." To the “will to knowledge” might well correspond an irrepressible will to expression. ‘The tropes of language turn into incredible masks to circumvent censorship. They allow an almost systematic figuration of desire or of the sexual act in Tess. Thus the colour red plays an important role in the representation of death and fate but also of desire and sexuality throughout Hardy's novel : the heroine wears a red ribbon in herPy “ hair at the May dance at Marlot; blood spurts and stains Tess from head to skirt when the pointed shaft of the cart enters Prince's breast; after her departure from Trantridge, Tess realises that a thorn of the roses Alec put into her blouse has pricked her and left a red stain; let alone the strawberries that the same Alec pushes into her mouth during, her first visit to Trantridge: ‘Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as possible; but the young man was pressing, and she consented to accompany him. He conducted her about the lawns, and flower-beds, and conservatories; and thence to the fruit-garden and green-houses, where he asked her if she liked strawberries. “Yes,’ said Tess, ‘when they come.” “They are already here’ D'Urberville began gathering specimens of the fruit for her, handling them back to her as he stooped; and presently, selecting a specially fine product of the ‘British Queen’ variety, he stood up and held it by the stem to her mouth. “No — no!’ she said quickly, putting her fingers between his hand and her lips. ‘I would rather take it in my own hand.” “Nonsense!” he insisted; and in a slight distress she parted her lips and took it in. (80-81, my italies) No doubt, Tess offers very little resistance but she is intimidated during this first visit made at her mother’s request to help her family ruined by Prince's death. Her host, on the other hand, shows himself very forward and takes advantage of the young woman's helplessness, Prince's death and the episode of the strawberries offer images of penetration, portending the rape that will take place in the Chase. They are doubly subversive insofar as they represent the sexual act and reverse the chronology of discourse. Since the sexual act will be forbidden, suppressed, it is expressed in a metaphoric and proleptic way. Likewise, in the definitive 1912 Wessex edition, the Chaseborough jig, preceding Tess's escape with Alec into the forest gives the narrator the opportunity to represent desire in an oblique way: ‘When she came close and looked in she beheld indistinct forms racing up and down to the figure of the dance, the silence of their footfalls arising from their overshoe being in ‘seroff — that is to say, the powdery residuum from the storage of peat and other products, the stirring of which by their turbulent feet created the nebulosity that involved the scene. Through this floating, fusty débris of peat and hay, mixed with the perspirations and warmth of the dancers, and forming together a sort of, vegeto-human pollen, the muted fiddles feebly pushed their notes, in marked contrast to the spirit with which the measure was trodden out. ‘They coughed as they laughed, and laughed as they coughed. Of the rushing couples there could barely be discerned more than the high lights — the indistinetness shaping them to satyrs clasping nymphs — a multiplicity of Pans whirling a multiplicity of Syrinxes; Lotis attempting to elude Priapus, and always failing. (107) At first, sexual desire is symbolised by the dance, which is one of its recurrent patterns in Hardy’s fiction. Desire is then marked by the dancers’ communion with their environment: their perspiration and warmth mingle with the peat and hay particles. This fertility can also be observed in the mythological figures of love and sexuality. The three long sentences of the extract, built with rhythmic amplification and parallelisms, convey the sensual movements of the dance and of the bodies. Those lines also foreshadow the rape that is to take place soon: like Lotis unable to run away from Priapus, Tess will not be able to run away from Alec and the “nebulosity” here anticipates the “nebulousness” of the Chase episode. The narrator inseribes desire in his, characters’ and in his reader's gazes before itis forbidden and repressed.6 A different kind of subversion prevails in the garden episode at Talbothays. The scene revisiting the Garden of Eden reverses Adam's and Eve's roles: Tess agrees to be seduced by an Angel heralding harmony and happiness. During a summer evening after the milking of the cows, ‘Tess goes for a walk on her own in a wild garden where she hears the notes of a harp. She has already heard these notes played by Angel in the attic, but they take on another dimension outside: “Dim, flattened, constrained by their confinement, they had never appealed to her as now, when they wandered in the still air with a stark quality like that of nudity”. (178) The musie played by the beloved person represents cosmic harmony: when played outside, it is no longer imprisoned and it freely fills space and expresses itself like a body untrammelled by clothes. The impact on the woman is instantaneous. Like a “fascinated bird” (178), she stealthily moves towards the player and walks deeper into the garden: The outskirt of the garden in which ‘Tess found herself had been uncultivated for some years, and was now damp and rank with juiey grass which sent up mists of pollen at a touch; and with tall blooming weeds emitting offensive smells — weeds whose red and yellow and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as that of cultivated flowers. She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo- spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off her naked arms sticky blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin; thus she drew quite near to Clare, still unobserved of him. (178-9) ‘The scene presents Tess's union with the environment, with the wild garden, as a metaphor of a union with Angel. The passage is fraught with eroticism. The rhythmic amplification of the sentences expresses the sound waves in space but also the movements of desire, an anarchic liberation of senses. Senses are strongly appealed to: sight through the colours that merge into dazzling polychromy; smell through the plants in full bloom that give off pungent and heady scents and pour milky substances hearing through the notes of the harp and the cracking of snails under foot; and finally touch through the plants that caress the woman's skirt and her hands and naked arms as well. Angel's music in this garden arouses Tess’s senses and gives rise in her to an experience close to ecstasy’ ‘Tess was conscious of neither time nor space. The exaltation which she had described as being producible at will by gazing at a star, came now without any determination of hers; she undulated upon the thin notes of the second-hand harp, and their harmonies passed like breezes through her, bringing tears into her eyes. The floating pollen seemed to be his notes made visible, and the dampness of the garden the weeping of the garden’s sensibility. Though near nightfall, the rank-smelling weed- flowers glowed as if they would not close for intentness, and the waves of colour mixed with the waves of sound. (179, my italics) ‘Tess is symbolically penetrated by music, which results in an ecstasy that takes on the form of “exaltation” at several levels. Btymologically, the term “exaltation” refers to elevation: the woman feels as if she no longer obeyed the laws of gravitation and as if she were outside time and space as under the effect of alcohol; exaltation is akin to drunkenness. Moreover, in an ancient meaning, exaltation defines the chemical activation and sublimation of a substance. Under the influence of music, which represents Angel metonymically speaking, Tess’s personality expresses itself inasmuch as all her senses are stimulated. In this respect, one can notice a sensual fever: the musical notes can be assimilated to air, to the pollen particles; the chromatic waves merge with the sound waves and the seents. Through an effect of synaesthesia, sight, hearing, smell and touch meet and merge. The woman herself, literally sublimated, is floating along with the music and pollen. This exaltation reaches total cosmic harmony, like the one produced by the spectacle of stars. Tess and the environment are united:her tears and the dampness of the garden are but one thing, Subversion is two-fold: it, represents the forbidden that will not take place, the sexual union Angel will deny Tess, but it expresses again what was previously repressed, namely the rape performed by Alec. Textual sublimation is then complete. Metaphors and prolepses might well be just as powerful as metonymies, which, according to Jacques Lacan, allow authors to “go round the obstacles of social censorship”.! Beyond their subversive power, they are actually responsible for the production of the text, in so far as, requiring more words than explicit expression, the figurative representation of desire results in a structural inflation of the text. Thus, one of the unexpected consequences of censorship is the “discursive explosion” on sex underlined by Foucault: censorship produces while prohibiting, The Revelations of Censorship: Narrative Laid Bare In the last analysis, censorship might reveal as much as it conceals, and especially concerning the writing process. Indeed, whether it is direct or indirect, censorship leaves discontinuities, ambiguities and even discrepancies in the final text. Even though whole passages that were bowdlerised by the editorial pen are reinserted in the 1912 Wessex edition, striking gaps or ellipses are left in the narrative. ‘Thus, the reader has very little access or no access at all to ‘Tess's conscience at key ‘moments such as the episode of the strawberries, her narration of her past to Angel, her return to Alec at the end of the novel or the moment when she kills him. The narrative treatment of the rape is quite emblematic in this respect: “Tess !’ said d’Urberville, There was no answer. The obscurity was now so great that he could see absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at her feet, which represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves. Everything else was blackness alike. D'Urberville stooped; and heard a gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears. Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the primaeval yews and oaks of the Chase, in which were poised gentle roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian angel? where wwas the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of ‘whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awaked. (118-9, my italies) In the censored version published by the Graphic, the scene of the Chase and all the preceding episodes were left out and replaced by a complete ellipsis. In the 1912 version in book form, the episodes are restored but a gap remains nonetheless. A hiatus can be noticed between, on the one hand, the last two sentences in which the narrator proves quite loquacious, steps into his narrative to express his opinion and, on the other hand, the previous lines in which the forbidden act is expressed in the unsaid as it were, in silence (‘no answer’, “silence”) and in enhanced blurredness (“obscurity”, “nebulousness”, “blackness”, “darkness”). Richard Kerridge points out that, in the final version of the novel, foreclosure occurs much closer to the decisive moment, when the narrator relinquishes his descriptive powers.5 While the author vocally calls for the right to be able to describe the “physiological facts of life” explicitly, his narrator contents himself with vagueness that erases the body. How can these ellipses and silences be interpreted? Although most of the withdrawn episodes find their place again in the final version, censorship must have played a deciding role, contributing to leaving traces in the narrative itself. This is suggested byHardy himself in his masked autobiography, in a passage which evokes his constant rewriting of Tess of the d'Urbervilles: In addition several passages were modified. Hardy carried out this unceremonious concession to conventionality with cynical amusement, knowing the novel was moral enough and to spare. But the work was sheer drudgery, the modified passages having to be written in coloured ink, that the originals might be easily restored, and he frequently asserted that it would have been almost easier for him to write a new story altogether. It sounds as if “cynical amusement” could hardly counterbalance the “sheer drudgery” involved in the endless rewriting process. Furthermore, these lines put the stress on an opposition between two forms of morality, that of a conventional society which the author must voice and that of a writer which he must hush to be published and read. Actually, the end of this extract shows there is no possible return to the original version. So, in its definitive version, in the one desired by the author, the novel ‘keeps traces of censorship that can be noticed between the lines of a text transformed into a palimpsest. However, one can also read in these traces signs of self-censorship that might only strengthen the problem created by social and editorial censorship.” Thus, the repeated metaphorical re-enactments of the original sexual act that was never represented convey at one and the same time narrative anxiety and repressed obsession. The gaps within the narrative and the bypassing strategies of censorship point to a certain ambivalence on the narrator's part as regards sexuality. This is striking in the garden episode, which is analysed above. There is a sharp contrast between the point of view of Tess who eventually finds herself in an unconscious state (“conscious of neither time nor space”) and the point of view of the narrator who seems to experience a kind of “fascinated disgust” in this highly eroticised space: profusion and dazzling sight are counterbalanced by potentially unpleasant and even aggressive sensations, as is suggested by terms like “damp and rank”, “offensive smells”, “staining”, “slime”, “sticky Dlights” or “madder stains”, A similar ambivalence ean be read in the way the heroine’s corporality is represented. On the one hand, in Hardy’s text there is a willingness to make visible and palpable women’s sensuality and ‘Tess’s in particular, through the depiction of the shape of her mouth and the texture of her skin. On the other, one can feel embarrassment conveyed by a tendency to spiritualise her character. Towards the end of the novel, Tess seems dispossessed of her body. This is the case when Angel finds her again kept by Alec in Sandbourne: But he had a vague consciousness of one thing, though it was not clear to him till later; that his original Tess had spiritually ceased to recognize the body before him as hers — allowing it to drift, like a corpse upon the current, in a direction dissociated from its living will. (467) ‘The point of view is indeed Angel's, but his point of view and the narrator's seem to merge more and more. Tess's last words to Alec before she kills him are only heard by Mrs Brooks through the door and so are disconnected from the heroine's body. Tess turns into pure spirit, pure voice and her body becomes invisible before her execution.2° According to Mary Jacobus, the novelist might have enhanced ‘Tess's “purity” when deciding to subtitle his novel “A Pure Woman” in answer to the numerous objections raised even before its publication. The revisions aiming to “purify” the character result in “[emphasising] chastity and reticence at the expense of passion and spontaneity”. For instance, in the first manuscript, Tess and Alec were meant to have a relationship of equals and a passage in which Tess was to agree to live a relation out of wedlock with Angel was removed. It sounds as if Hardy had actively taken part in the “dismemberment” or purification of his text and heroine. Like other novels by Hardy, Tess did suffer from social and editorial forms of censorship as regards sexuality but censorship had paradoxical consequences. On the20 20 one hand, not only did it produce a discourse resulting from the desire to represent the forbidden but also a form of writing enriched by the figures of cireumvention, On the other hand, censorship contributed to revealing the narrative ambivalences of the text, the narrator and author's embarrassment concerning sexuality and women's desire in particular. Hardy wished censorship had not prevented him from representing the “physiological facts” of life more explicitly. Quite unexpectedly, censorship lays bare representation itself, reveals the disguises, ambiguities and gaps of the text. The writer unwillingly unveils his own contradictions, his fantasy about two forms of purity: the illusion of a totally explicit, objective and transparent representation and the unconscious desire for a virgin text. In this respect, it may be worth drawing a parallel between the violence of writing and the rape episode in the Chase, between the writer's, page and ‘Tess's body in the paragraph following the non-tepresentation of the rape: Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive. (119) Could this not be seen as an unconscious and metaphorical way for the author to express his inability to write the coarseness of the rape on the blank page? But it is precisely in the elision of the forbidden that words are to be written. As Derrida puts it, “traces thus produce the space of their inscription only by acceding to the period of their erasure” *9 For there is no writing without a minimum of censorship: Writing is unthinkable without repression. ‘The condition for writing is, that there be neither a permanent contact nor an absolute break between strata: the vigilance and failure of censorship. It is no accident that the ‘metaphor of censorship should come from the area of polities concerned with the deletions, blanks, and disguises of writing, even if, at the beginning of the Traumdeutung, Freud seems to make only a conventional, didactic reference to it. The apparent exteriority of political censorship refers to an essential censorship which binds the writer to his own writing.*4 Because it is repressed the rape keeps haunting the text and leaving traces on its surface. In its way, Hardy's writing expresses the fruitful and irreducible nature of censorship, Bibliographic BOUMELHA Penny, Thomas Hardy and Women: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form, Brighton: The Harvester Press Limited, 1982. DERRIDA Jacques, Writing and Difference (1967), trans,, intro. and additional notes Alan Bass, London: Routledge, 1978. FOUCAULT Michel, Histoire de la sexualité, Tome 1, Paris: Gallimard (tel), 1994 [19761 GARSON Marjorie, Hardy's Fables of Integrity: Woman, Body, Text, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991 DOI: 10.1093/acprofioso/9780198122234.001.0001, HARDY Florence, “The Early Life of Thomas Hardy (1840-1891)", in The Life of Thomas Hardy (4930), London: Studio Editions, 1994, DOI: 10.1017/CB09781139060776 HARDY Thomas, Tess of the dUrbervilles (1892), intro. A. Alvarez, ed. David Skilton, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-14426-6 “Candour in English Fietion” (1890), in Thomas Hardy's Personal Writings, ‘ed, Harold Orel, London: Macmillan, 1990 [1966]. JACOBUS Mary, “Tess: The Making of a Pure Woman’, in Susan LIPSHITYZ (ed), Tearing the Veil: Essays on Femininity, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. KERRIDGE Richard, “The Physiological Facts’ : Thomas Hardy, Censorship and Narrative Breakdown’, in Paul HYLAND & Neil SAMMELLS (eds.), Writing & Censorship in Britain,London: Routledge, 1992, 171-81. LACAN Jacques, “Llinstance de la lettre dans V'inconseient’, in Kerits 1 (1966), Paris : Seuil Points essais), 1994 MARSHIK Celia, British Modernism and Censorship, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. MORGAN Rosemarie, Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy, London: Routledge, 199. DOI: 10.4324/9780203193365 SAMMELLS Neil, “Writing and Censorship: An Introduction’, in Paul HYLAND & Neil SAMMELLS (eds.}, Writing & Censorship in Britain, London: Routledge, 1992. SAUNDERS David, "Vietorian Obscenity Law: Negative Censorship or Positive Administration”, in Paul Hyland & Neil Sammells (eds.) Writing & Censorship in Britain, London: Routledge, 199: 0. Notes 1 *Candour in English Fiction” (1890), in Thomas Hardy’s Personal Writings, ed. Harold Orel, London: Macmillan, 1990 [1966], 127. 2 Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), intro. A. Alvarez, ed. David Skilton, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985. References to this work will appear in the text in parentheses, 3 Celia Marshik, British Modernism and Censorship, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008, 3. The “censorship dialectic” suggested by Marshik as regards British modernist literature could easily apply to other periods. 4 Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité , Tome I, Paris: Gallimard (tel), 1994 [1976], 18. 5 David Saunders, “Victorian Obscenity Law: Negative Censorship or Positive Administration”, in Paul Hyland & Neil Sammells (eds.), Writing & Censorship in Britain, London: Routledge, 1992, 154-70. 6 Ibidem, 162 7 °Candour in English Fiction”, art. eit, 128-9, 8 Mrs Grundy is a character who never really appears in Thomas Morton's play, Speed the Plough (1798), but who is always in the background. She is a reference in matters of propriety. Her tutelary shadow kept haunting the following generations and she became the figure of censorship for Hardy and other writers 19 See introduction to the textual notes in the Penguin edition, 499-500. 10 Notes 201a, b, Penguin edition, 501 11M, Foucault, op. cit, 20-1, 12 “The Will to Knowledge” is the title Foucault gave to the first volume of his History of Sexuality. 13 Jacques Lacan, “Liinstance de la lettre dans V'inconseient", in Eerits T (1966), Paris: Seuil (Points essais), 1994, 266. 14 M. Foucault, op. cit, 25. Very interestingly, Neil Sammells points out that, for all the divergences between Foucault and psychoanalysis, there is some convergence on the ereative role played by censorship. For psychoanalysis, censorship reveals real linguistic creativity; repression does not lead to silence but to figurative language. For Foucault, censorship leads to the proliferation of discourse on sex: Neil Sammells, “Writing and Censorship: An Introduction’, in P. Hyland & N, Sammells (eds. op. cit, 10. 15 Richard Kerridge, “"The Physiological Facts’: Thomas Hardy, Censorship and Narrative Breakdown”, in P, Hyland and N. Sammells (eds.), Writing & Censorship in Britain, op. cit, 1 2 16 Flo fe of Thomas Hardy (1840-1891)", in The Life of Thomas Hardy (1930), London: Studio Editions, 1994, 291 17 R. Kerridge, op. cit, 178. 18 Marjorie Garson, Hardy's Fables of Integrity: Woman, Body, Text, Oxford: Clarendon. Press, 1991, 146. Garson points out that this element was strengthened in the successive 19 Rosemarie Morgan, Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy, London: Routledge, 1991 20M. Garson, op. cit, 143. 21 Mary Jacobus, “Tess: The Making of a Pure Woman’, in Susan Lipshitz (ed.), Tearing the Veil: Essays on Femininity, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978, 81-2,22 Penny Boumelha, Thomas Hardy and Women: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form, Brighton: The Harvester Press Limited, 1982, 129. 23 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (1967), trans., intro, and additional notes Alan Bass, London: Routledge, 2978, 284. 124 Ibidem, 285, Pour citer cet article Réforence électronique ‘Thierry Goater, « Repression and Expression of $ exualily in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the Ureervilles: the Paradox and Virlue of Censorship », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [En ligne), Vel X1-n°3 | 2073, mis en ligne le 22 novembre 2013, consulté le 22 avril 2021. URL http:/journals.openedition orgllisa/S453 ; DOI : hips /idoi.org/10.4000ifisa 5453 Auteur Thierry Goater Thierry Goater is Senior Lecturer in the department of English at Rennes 2 University. He has \itten his doctoral dissertation (PhD thesis) on Thomas Hardy's "Novels of Character and environment’. He has published articles on Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence and Jane Austen, a ‘monograph (Thomas Hardy - Figures de Faliénation, PU de Rennes, 2010) and co-edited a collection of articles (Liengagement dans les romans féminins de la Grande-Bretagne des xviie ct xixe sldcles, PU de Rennes, 2012). Droits d'auteur Les contenus de la Revue LISA /LISA e-journal sont mis & disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utiisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International