"It Seems Queer": The Censorship of Her Wedding Night

Abstract

"[H]owever vile, however filthy however degrading .... vice so long as it is presented in terms of the strong man's over-sexuality and the frail woman's yielding to his dominance, is approved, unthinkingly accepted and consequently is not banned. When, however ... you have a plot which depends not on the over-sexuality, but on the under-sexuality of a man ... the play is considered improper and is banned!" So British sexologist, birth controller, social commentator and historian, translator, poet, novelist, and playwright Marie Cannichael Stopes assesses the Lord Chamberlain's refusal, in 1923 and 1924, to license for public performance her autobiographical play, Vectia. Ultimately attributing the censorship of her play to men's refusal even toconsider a woman's point of view, Stopes asks, "how many other serious plays by women have been destroyed before ever they came into being?" Her question is not merely rhetorical; it is literally unanswerable. Yet recent feminist excavations of the rich and vast body of work by women do confirm that women's writing has been subjected to various forms of censorship, Including, most insidiously, that of critical neglects. This paper will contribute to the project of recovering lost texts by women through a discussion of an unpublished one-act play, Her Wedding Night (1917), by a previously undiscovered woman playwright, Florence Bates. This account of the circumstances surrounding. and the justification for, the post-production censorship of this one act comedy in August 1917 not only supports Stopes's claim that the Lord Chamberlain's office banned representations of male sexual inadequacy as a matter of principle, but also deepens our understanding of the meaning of "sexual impropriety" as understood by the Lord Chamberlain and adds an important new dimension to studies in British stage censorship.