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I am a maverick who tries to not fit the categories of “liberal” or “conservative”. I try to navigate through the seas of ideas without being upset by the high waves of “everybody knows” or hanging up on the shoals of ideology. One of these ideas is “politically correct” speech and writing. “Liberals” take the “conservative” position that “offensive” speech should be restricted. “Conservatives” take the “liberal” position that speech should not be restricted (unless they find it offensive). What I find offensive is that some of these “liberals” think they are better writers than the likes of Walt Whitman or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They change words of well-known authors to be “inclusive”. This practice is bowdlerization, named after Thomas Bowdler who heavily edited Shakespeare to not offend “delicacy.” In 1990 I spoke out by giving a talk at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Minnetonka and in 2000 to the Lake Superior Freethinkers. This week I give you an extract from that talk on Thomas Bowdler. This extract is based on Noel Perrin's Dr. Bowdler's Legacy, available at the Duluth and UMD libraries. Next week I’ll give you an extract on Anthony Comstock who also thought he knew best what people should read. Why should we care about Bowdler? Marilyn Jones writes,“Thomas Bowdler should be remembered by everyone who values free speech and understands that the constitutional guarantee of Freedom of Speech means we cheerfully give up any possible constitutional guarantee of Freedom from Being Offended.” (http://www.goatview.com/july11thomasbowdler.htm) Thomas Bowdler was born 1754 in England and died 1825 in Wales. His father Thomas, a country squire near Bath, regularly read Shakespeare to the family so well that the children didn't know he eliminated "words and expressions improper to be pronounced." His mother Elizabeth was a Biblical scholar. She published anonymously A Commentary on the Song of Solomon Paraphrased. The paraphrase done by a Bishop Percy didn't go far enough to suit her. She didn't rewrite Percy's rewrite of the Bible, but she annotated his text with her own comments. Like every time the Bride says bed, Mrs. Bowdler notes that she wishes Percy had replaced "bed" with something like "Bridal Chariot". Their son Thomas was a doctor of medicine, philanthropist, and man of letters. He didn't really like being near sick people, retired in his thirties on his inheritance, and spent some time in London working on prison reform and moving in literary circles. In 1807 The Family Shakespeare was published in Bath without a named editor. The unsigned preface stated that it was time to remove from Shakespeare "everything that can raise a blush on modesty". A few years later it was said that Dr. Thomas Bowdler was the editor. Although he is credited with being the editor, correspondence has shown that his sister Harriet was the real editor. Henrietta Maria Bowdler also wrote Sermons on the Doctrines and Duties of Christianity. It went through fifty printings in fifty-two years. Although she published it anonymously, it was widely known in evangelical circles that she was the author. Many of the leaders were in correspondence with her and visited her salon in Bath. Why was there a The Family Shakespeare and why did Harriet publish it anonymously? Noel Perrin suggests four reasons: the popularity of "delicacy", the rise of evangelical religion, the Industrial Revolution, and the increase of the general reading public. All of these had small beginnings in the eighteenth century and had considerable momentum in the nineteenth century. Most of these still have considerable force in the twenty-first century. Originally delicacy had meant a refinement of taste, a refinement that was almost inborn. The delicate person could look at dozens of paintings and find the really good one among the bad or mediocre paintings. In the middle of the eighteenth century it became a cult of feeling, the delicate person was sensitive and easily wounded. This moved on to become an instinctive recognition of good and evil. To be delicate, one had to be shocked by "evil". But it becomes difficult to be continually shocked by all the evil that surrounds us, in the eighteenth century as well as the twenty-first. The answer is to avoid any contact with evil. Evangelical Christianity was on the rise in the eighteenth century, particularly Methodism in England. Noel Perrin says that John Wesley was a pioneer expurgator. However, Christianity didn't always bowdlerize. Christian literature up to at least the fourteenth century abounds with things that even nineteenth century agnostics would think indecent. Consider Riddle 44 of the Exeter Book, riddles written for one monk to tell another: Splendidly it hangs by a man's
thigh,
under the master's cloak. In front is a hole. It is stiff and hard; it has a goodly place. When the man lifts his own garment up above the knee, he wishes to visit with the head of this hanging instrument the familiar hole he had often filled with its equal length. The listening monk was supposed to give an anatomical answer but the correct answer was key. With the growth of the Industrial Revolution the role of many women changed. Instead of working alongside their husbands on the farm or in the shop, women stayed at home while their husbands went off to the factories and offices. When the farmer butchers an animal, his wife is helping. When the shopkeeper puts his thumb on the scale, his wife knows. But the stay-at-home wife gets an edited account of what happened. She thus retains a certain innocence; according to John Ruskin, no cause of error or offense need enter the house. As paper got cheaper editions of books became larger. More and more people could afford to read books and did. Rewriting old books became "mandatory". One, to "protect" the inferiors from "bad" ideas. Two, to increase the "accessibility", the larger the audience, the blander the material. Three, to reduce offending more prejudices. All these combined provided an atmosphere for editors to "castrate" authors of old texts and for a large readership for emasculated books. Remember the "Golden Classics"? Homer in 32 illustrated pages! Back to Harriet. Why did she publish anonymously? There was the prejudice against women writers, even the Brontë sisters hid their names early in their careers. The practice of using the name of a male was so widespread that some male authors had to defend themselves against the charge that their work was not their own but that of a quite literate sister. The more important reason in Harriet's case was how can a "delicate" woman understand all the obscenity in Shakespeare well enough to remove it. Think of the embarrassment of having it known that an unmarried gentlewoman of fifty would know such things. Harriet Bowdler did such a good job of hiding behind her brother's name that, except within her own circles, it was assumed for nearly 160 years that Thomas did both editions. "The history of our language, and the true force of our words, can only be preserved by keeping the text of authors free from adulteration." - Dr. Ben Johnson, 1765, preface
to an edition of Shakespeare
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