Vice and Virtue as a Claim for Book Banning
By Sophia Chimbanda (2022)
This study is meant to explore the role that the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV) played regarding book bans and both the intended and actual implication that these bans were meant to have. I will argue that from 1928-1934 the NYSSV was more so worried about controlling young women and containing lesbianism than about upholding morality like they claimed. To examine this claim, I will be zooming in on two of the most popular books targeted heavily in this time period by the Vice Society, The Well of Loneliness (1928) by Radclyffe Hall and Sleeveless Errand (1929) by Norah James. Using the controversy surrounding these two novels as well as the scandalous and illegal tactics used by the NYSSV to control how obscene books were being circulated will help me to further understand the disconnect between the NYSSV’s publicly stated goals versus their actual intent of banning certain books.
To truly evaluate the interconnectedness of The Well of Loneliness, Sleeveless Errand, and the NYSSV, it is helpful to better understand obscenity laws and the history behind them. During this time, it was difficult for judges to balance the first amendment rights of free speech and press with the need to uphold a moral judgement and protect the sanctity of the nation. 1 Many judges in the early 1900s used the Hicklin doctrine to determine whether something was obscene or not. This doctrine was based off an 1868 British court case where “obscenity was defined through a ‘test’ rather than as a quality of the material.” 2 However, some people—such as members of the NYSSV and various politicians—felt as though the government was not doing enough and so they elected to form groups like the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice to serve as literary vigilantes. The actions utilized by the NYSSV and organizations like them were quite controversial, but some of their supporters thought that these societies were not going far enough. For example, one South Carolina senator who served in the early 1920s said that “’the democratic and republican form of government [could be] forever destroyed, if necessary to protect the virtue of the womanhood of America’”. 3 This vivid use of language shows how threatened these primarily wealthy established white men felt and the moral burden they perceived that they had to carry to protect young women.
The Well of Loneliness is an influential book not only within the context of the NYSSV court cases, but also because the plot centers almost entirely around lesbianism and homosexuality. The Well of Loneliness follows main character Stephen Gordon who grew up with a constant interest in women from a very young age—as she had a crush on one her parents’ maids—as well as in her adulthood where she partakes in a lesbian relationship and ends up living with her partner. The novel was first published on July 27, 1928, but that was only after 4 relatively popular publishing houses turned down Hall’s novel. 4 Interestingly, though, many of the reviews that critiqued Hall’s work were not only about the inclusion of a lesbian main character, but that Stephen’s life is “a melodramatic description of a subject that has nothing melodramatic about it”. Since Stephen does not have some sort of mundane life in which she settles down very young and becomes a traditional mother, the book was considered “propaganda” by those who opposed the book, and these opponents were worried for the young girls who may pick this book up. 5
Amidst the controversies, The Well of Loneliness stirred up trouble for Donald Friede, the president of the publishing company Covici-Friede Corporation, and Friede ended up in a New York court room in 1929. Friede knew that this book was controversial even prior to publishing Hall’s novel as he was receiving threats from Sumner that if The Well of Loneliness did end up getting published there would be legal consequences for him. Friede did publish the novel and even went on to sell Sumner a copy of the book in December of 1928. A month later, Sumner brought Friede to court claiming that Friede had violated “Article 106, Section 1141 of the penal code” which prohibits the sale of “’any obscene… filthy, indecent or disgusting book.’” 6 Ultimately, in a Special Session in New York, Justices Healy, Salomon, and McInerny ruled in favor of the book because they did not feel that The Well of Loneliness was “in violation of the law against objectionable literature.” The justices even went so far as to say that while this book does deal with “social problems” the entire book was read by members of the court and examined and it was not against the law as far as obscenity goes. 7 This ruling is significant because as mentioned earlier, this book was phrased as being propaganda for younger girls by these vice vigilantes and they claimed that it normalizes being a “mannish lesbian” like Stephen. However, with the ruling in favor of the book, it only strengthened the NYSSV’s resolve because they saw this as an example of the law not upholding morality in the same way that they could. 8
Conversely, Sleeveless Errand by Norah James had to deal with censorships for obscene materials before it was even published in the United States. Sleeveless Errand is a novel about a women named Paula Cranford who decides to die by suicide after dealing with a traumatic breakup with her boyfriend. During this time, Paula ends up meeting Bill who just found out that his wife is having an extramarital affair and as the two of them bond over their relationship struggles, Bill decides to join Paula in her pact to also die by suicide. While the book was banned in the UK before it could even make it to print, the American publisher William Morrow and Company chose to make some interesting changes from the original version when it was finally published in the US in 1929. For example, there is a brief suggestion that one of the side characters, Jane, may “’like men and women equally well’” which was both tagged by the Home Office in Britain and removed from the American edition. 9 The fact that Jane is merely a secondary character and it is just rumored that she may be bisexual was enough to get removed from the novel shows how much of a threat lesbianism was to some. Of course, it can never be said for sure what caused the publisher to remove this portion of the book specifically, but seeing what happened to The Well of Loneliness only a year prior may help to explain this form of pre-publishing censorship.
However, the removal of the more provocative and obscene materials from Sleeveless Errand in the American edition of the novel did not stop the NYSSV from still trying to go after it. In a 1929 edition of Variety the author of the “Literati” column mentioned that even before the book was published by William Morrow “[NYSSV secretary John S.] Sumner… is preparing to go to the mat” with the novel. 10 Similar to the justification for the censorship of The Well of Loneliness, many were pushing for the NYSSV and other vice vigilantes to target this book because of the potential affect that it could have on young girls. To these vigilantes, the danger of young girls stumbling upon a book where a bisexual woman could potentially find happiness in a lesbian relationship could somehow change these young girls’ perspectives of the world around them. In this case, the threat of danger to the NYSSV was greater than the impact that publishing this book could have and so censorship was the only option for Sleeveless Errand.
While the plots of both Hall’s and James’ novels seem to be different in the grand scheme, they both speak to a fear that some Americans had especially in the postwar period. In this case, both main characters were so called ‘surplus women’. The idea of a surplus woman stems from the ways that women had to take on additional roles in society during World War I while so many men were overseas fighting in Europe. Additionally, after the war ended even though some men returned because of the high death rates that came from the Great War, there was a fear that there would be a “surplus” of single women who would have to assume the role of these deceased men in American society. 11 In the case of the novels, Stephen is much more of an obvious surplus woman in that even in her childhood, she was not made to have extremely feminine qualities and so with the added factor that she was also attracted to women, she was too masculine for her own good. Similarly, Paula in Sleeveless Errand also had the surplus women qualities of using explicit language, drinking alcohol, and having multiple sexual partners. Since there was already this fear within American society of having to deal with the burden of all these surplus women, the idea that young girls could potentially read about Paula and Stephen and grow up to be like them, was so frightening to people like Sumner that the only solution was to ban these novels.12
As far as the structure of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, they utilized various methods to try to control and suppress the publication and dissemination of anything that they deemed obscene. This vigilant group in New York City prided itself on being an organization that upheld the morals of the nation and worked to create a society “’against the exploiters of indecency’” while also not being a “’snooping organization’”.13 Trying to control the narrative of what the NYSSV was or was not trying to do made it easier for Sumner to try to get the public on his side for when he did have to take measures to curb the circulation of obscene books. One method of censorship that got the NYSSV in trouble was the way in which they would target individuals and they were accused of participating in legally blackmailing small booksellers for distributing these “obscene works”.14 This is important to note because going after small retailers as opposed to larger publications demonstrates how the NYSSV and its members were focused on control and not the idea of immorality. The opposing attorney Morgan L. Ernst in the case against Sumner claimed that the NYSSV only went after the “’small newsdealer’” and that vice societies purposely “’do not battle with the large and reputable news dealers’” because they know it’s a harder battle to win.15 Especially because the NYSSV was being accused of a crime like blackmail and went beyond the general method of just suing a retailer, it illustrates the level of control and power that the Vice Society was trying to achieve in New York City.
Furthermore, to complicate the story surrounding the blackmail case even more, Ernst also chose to highlight that the namesake of the J. Piermont Morgan library was one of the incorporators for the Vice Society in finding out which bookstores and booksellers to target in their blackmail schemes. However, the library is particularly known for having “’the best collection of erotica in the United States”. 16 The idea that a vice society is choosing to collaborate with a wealthy man who owns an extensive semi-public library—meaning almost anyone can utilize it—while also choosing to target small and working-class booksellers is not only egregiously ironic, but also shows the lengths to which the NYSSV was concerned with working with other wealthy men in the US instead of actually sticking to a moral standard.
Knowing now that Sumner and other members of the NYSSV were working with J. Piermont Morgan, it only makes some of the public statements about what it means to write, produce, and distribute “obscene” books more ironic. For instance, in May of 1930—which is only three months after the aforementioned court case—Sumner participated in a panel on censorship for American Booksellers’ Association members. At the panel, Sumner made some remarks in which he described the type of people that he deems to be deviant in can freely publish their book including that he is worried that “’any tramp can find an outlet in print for his trampish writings’”.17 Attacking and demonizing the authors along with the small booksellers is, once again, an interesting tactic used by Sumner and the NYSSV to try to uphold their status as being the group to uphold the moral standard within New York City. Especially when it is common knowledge that Sumner engaged with J. Piermont Morgan privately while publicly targeting less wealthy individuals.
One common misconception about the NYSSV was that they only went after books that were deemed obscene because of the pornographic content of the novels. This is not true at all and if anything, it might seem as though the NYSSV was less worried about erotica and was more so worried about the portrayals of nontraditional forms of female sexuality. Especially because this is the beginning of the postwar era, and the death rates for American men in World War I was massive, the threat that young girls might not want to “marry and produce legitimate children” was a major fear for some. 18 Especially considering that Hall mentioned the impact of women’s war work in that allowed for more “inverts”—women that Stephen viewed to also be interested in lesbianism—to “’come into the daylight’” this threat of an increase in public lesbians combined with the amount of surplus women made people such as Sumner fearful of the future. 19
The implications for banning books on the grounds of protecting morality is interesting because it calls in a major question: who’s morality was the NYSSV trying to protect? In the censorship panel that Sumner was on, another panel member stated that “’various vice-hunting officials can read smut day in and day out…and not be hurt by it…They insist that it is others who are in danger.’” 20 This comment is significant because it not only demonstrates the hypocrisy of the NYSSV but also ties back to the previous point about Sumner privately partnering with people such as J. Piermont Morgan and then publicly claiming to uphold morality. It is once again indicating the ways in which these grown men were seeking to control young people and particularly young women. This quote about Sumner also ties in very closely with the statements mentioned earlier about how The Well of Loneliness was much more than a book but was instead a form of propaganda and that is why it was so dangerous. Furthermore, it demonstrates the idea that young girls reading about women being portrayed in nontraditional heteronormative relationships is threatening to the men within the vice-hunting community. That the NYSSV may be about ‘protecting’ young people, but it’s also about shielding them from a danger in which they can exist outside of a heteronormative, patriarchal society and still thrive.
1 Potter, Rachel. Obscene Modernism: Literary Censorship and Experiment 1900-1940. (Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2013), 18. https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199680986.001.0001/acprof-9780199680986-chapter-2.
2 Gilmore, Leigh. “Obscenity, Modernity, Identity: Legalizing ‘The Well of Loneliness’ and ‘Nightwood.’” Journal of the History of Sexuality 4, no. 4 (1994): 606. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617155.
3 Ibid, 19-20.
4 Forster, Chris. “Very Serious Books,” in Filthy Material: Modernism and the Media of Obscenity. (Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018), 110. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190840860.003.0005.
5 “’Well of Loneliness. The’. Hall (Book Review),” review of The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall. The Statesmen, August 25, 1928. https://www.proquest.com/docview/1306862052?accountid=10598&imgSeq=2.
6 Taylor, Leslie A. “‘I Made up My Mind to Get It’: The American Trial of ‘The Well of Loneliness’ New York City, 1928-1929.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 10, no. 2 (2001): 270. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3704816.
7 “’Well of Loneliness’ Cleared in Court Here: Friede, Publisher, Convicted in Boston Day Before Over Dreiser Book, Is Released.,” New York Times (New York, NY), April 20, 1929. https://www.proquest.com/docview/105008308/7A40216A7EE74FCDPQ/3?accountid=10598&parentSessionId=KPXNsSuUoT8KP1NdmNdTBvN7GQNpbtZg8ia5Gc03FP0%3D&parentSessionId=YNCgcUjGju7W3s70iXI2lNS6dwnkYA6Gfcqw5E7%2F2E8%3D.
8 Taylor, “‘I Made up My Mind to Get It’: The American Trial of ‘The Well of Loneliness’ New York City, 1928-1929,” 278.
9 Forster, “Very Serious Books,” 94-95.
10 “Legitimate: Literati – “’Sleeveless Errand’ Coming Out,” Variety (Los Angeles, CA), May 29, 1929. https://www.proquest.com/docview/1475917760?accountid=10598&pq-origsite=summon&parentSessionId=ibTj1iPnNaWAL7ywPhuDcH%2FFDr7ZoCE9TFbaADNFXqE%3D.
11 Forster, “Very Serious Books,” 97.
12 “Sumner Cautions on Obscene Books: Vice Crusader Tells Dealers It Is Too Easy for Depravity to Find Outlet in Print. Mrs. Dennett in Debate Says Education of Emotions, Not Censorship, Will Solve Problem– Ernst Decries Pre-Inspections. Condemns ‘Mongrel’ Bookseller. Scores ‘Pre-Censorship’” New York Times (New York, NY) May 21, 1930. https://www.proquest.com/docview/98943093?accountid=10598&pq-origsite=summon&parentSessionId=u1L%2Ba02jiSz%2FfYarhbLQbhf9D7ttwdjZa24RT1auY8M%3D.
13 “5 Tons of Books Seized in Vice War,” New York Times (New York, NY), May 6, 1937. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/05/06/94371031.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
14 “Says Vice Society Fears Publishers: Morris L. Ernst, at Book Bill Hearing, Charges Only Small Dealers Are Prosecuted. Elder Morgan Assailed Lawyer, at Albany, Says Financier Helped Found Society, but Collected Erotica. Says Only Small Fry Are Attacked. Charges ‘Legalized Blackmail.,’” New York Times (New York, NY) February 12, 1930. https://www.proquest.com/docview/98990649?accountid=10598&pq-origsite=summon&parentSessionId=7CZSvZk1e70jFtT6m3BaAfw8DhPop8NQy%2B6XqLhPz7Q%3D.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 “Sumner Cautions on Obscene Books.”
18 Marshik, Celia. “History’s ‘Abrupt Revenges’: Censoring War’s Perversions in ‘The Well of Loneliness’ and ‘Sleeveless Errand.’” Journal of Modern Literature 26, no. 2 (2003): 147. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3831900.
19 Ibid, 149.
20 Ibid.
Bibliography
“5 Tons of Books Seized in Vice War,” New York Times (New York, NY), May 6, 1937. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/05/06/94371031.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
Forster, Chris. “Very Serious Books,” in Filthy Material: Modernism and the Media of Obscenity. (Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018) https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190840860.003.0005.
Gilmore, Leigh. “Obscenity, Modernity, Identity: Legalizing ‘The Well of Loneliness’ and ‘Nightwood.’” Journal of the History of Sexuality 4, no. 4 (1994): 603–24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617155.
“Legitimate: Literati – “’Sleeveless Errand’ Coming Out,” Variety (Los Angeles, CA), May 29, 1929. https://www.proquest.com/docview/1475917760?accountid=10598&pq-origsite=summon&parentSessionId=ibTj1iPnNaWAL7ywPhuDcH%2FFDr7ZoCE9TFbaADNFXqE%3D.
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Potter, Rachel. Obscene Modernism: Literary Censorship and Experiment 1900-1940. (Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2013). https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199680986.001.0001/acprof-9780199680986-chapter-2.
“Says Vice Society Fears Publishers: Morris L. Ernst, at Book Bill Hearing, Charges Only Small Dealers Are Prosecuted. Elder Morgan Assailed Lawyer, at Albany, Says Financier Helped Found Society, but Collected Erotica. Says Only Small Fry Are Attacked. Charges ‘Legalized Blackmail.,’” New York Times (New York, NY) February 12, 1930. https://www.proquest.com/docview/98990649?accountid=10598&pq-origsite=summon&parentSessionId=7CZSvZk1e70jFtT6m3BaAfw8DhPop8NQy%2B6XqLhPz7Q%3D.
“Sumner Cautions on Obscene Books: Vice Crusader Tells Dealers It Is Too Easy for Depravity to Find Outlet in Print. Mrs. Dennett in Debate Says Education of Emotions, Not Censorship, Will Solve Problem– Ernst Decries Pre-Inspections. Condemns ‘Mongrel’ Bookseller. Scores ‘Pre-Censorship’” New York Times (New York, NY) May 21, 1930. https://www.proquest.com/docview/98943093?accountid=10598&pq-origsite=summon&parentSessionId=u1L%2Ba02jiSz%2FfYarhbLQbhf9D7ttwdjZa24RT1auY8M%3D.
Taylor, Leslie A. “‘I Made up My Mind to Get It’: The American Trial of ‘The Well of Loneliness’ New York City, 1928-1929.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 10, no. 2 (2001): 250–86. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3704816.
“’Well of Loneliness’ Cleared in Court Here: Friede, Publisher, Convicted in Boston Day Before Over Dreiser Book, Is Released.,” New York Times (New York, NY), April 20, 1929. https://www.proquest.com/docview/105008308/7A40216A7EE74FCDPQ/3?accountid=10598&parentSessionId=KPXNsSuUoT8KP1NdmNdTBvN7GQNpbtZg8ia5Gc03FP0%3D&parentSessionId=YNCgcUjGju7W3s70iXI2lNS6dwnkYA6Gfcqw5E7%2F2E8%3D.
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