By Nora Gilbert
Better Left Unsaid is
in the unseemly position of defending censorship from the central liberal
allegations that are traditionally leveled against it. Taking two genres
generally presumed to have been stymied by the censor's knife—the Victorian
novel and classical Hollywood film—this book reveals the varied ways in which
censorship, for all its blustery self-righteousness, can actually be
"good" for sex, politics, feminism, and art.
As much as Victorianism is
equated with such cultural impulses as repression and prudery, few scholars
have explored the Victorian novel as a specifically censored commodity—thanks,
in large part, to the indirectness and intangibility of England's literary
censorship process. This indirection stands in sharp contrast to the explicit,
detailed formality of Hollywood's infamous Production Code of 1930. In
comparing these two versions of censorship, Nora Gilbert explores the
paradoxical effects of prohibitive practices. Rather than being ruined by
censorship, she argues, Victorian novels and Hays Code films were stirred and
stimulated by the very forces meant to restrain them.
"Turning the tables on inherited notions of oppression
and freedom, Nora Gilbert shows how writers and filmmakers worked within frames
of control that in their collusion the market economy and public opinion had
drawn around them. Through her meticulous comparisons of Victorian novels and
Hays Code Hollywood, Gilbert studies visual and verbal slippage, inference,
irony and, no less, the pleasure of perversion. Informative and a delight to
read, Better Left Unsaid sparkles
with wit and invention."—Tom Conley, Harvard University
"An engaging, consistently shrewd, and bracingly
irreverent study of how the Victorian novel and classical Hollywood film
devised ingenious and morally productive strategies to evade the constraints
intended to control them."—Maria DiBattista, Princeton University
"Gilbert's book is a work of many charms and considerable significance, demonstrating a sure understanding of the productive side of censorship, and providing a persuasive demonstration that Victorian novels and Hollywood films belong in the same conversation."—Ned Schantz, McGill University
ISBN: 9780804784207
"Gilbert's book is a work of many charms and considerable significance, demonstrating a sure understanding of the productive side of censorship, and providing a persuasive demonstration that Victorian novels and Hollywood films belong in the same conversation."—Ned Schantz, McGill University
ISBN: 9780804784207
