The Role of Sexual Repression in Anthony Comstock's Campaign to Censor Children's Dime Novels

Abstract

Censors tend to use political or religious arguments to justify their positions, but beneath the surface of their arguments often runs an unstated and personal subtext. Some censors play out their internal psychological conflicts on a very public stage. These censors attempt to renounce their repressed impulses and desires through censorship campaigns. An example of such a censor is Anthony Comstock. Recognized as the most famous censor in America during the second half of the nineteenth century, Comstock led a national crusade against vice. An examination of his personal life suggests that his censorship activities stemmed from the repugnance that he felt toward his own sexual impulses. This internal conflict not only led him to campaign against pornography, but it also entered into his efforts to ban other forms of popular culture that he found repugnant, such as children's dime novels. Comstock's crusading spirit surfaced well before he began his campaign against dime novels. During his teenage years in New Canaan, Connecticut, he developed a preoccupation with religion. Having regularly attended the community's congregational church throughout his childhood, he was very familiar with the Bible, and he tended to view it as a factual and incontrovertible document. Biblical teachings about sin were of particular interest to Comstock. He often worried about his own sinful inclinations, and he was not entirely certain his sins would be forgiven. These concerns led him to take an aggressive approach to resisting sin. For example, not long after he allowed himself to be talked into drinking a friend's homemade wine, he broke into the local saloon-keeper's storeroom and spilled all of the kegs of liquor on the floor. Before leaving he wrote a note to the saloon-keeper in which he told the man that unless the saloon was closed the building would be destroyed. In 1863, at the age of nineteen, Comstock enlisted in the Union army, where he continued his battle against drinking. Shocked that whiskey was included among the rations for each soldier, Comstock attempted to convince his companions not to drink it. After this approach failed, he regularly accepted his share of whiskey and then poured it on the ground in front of the other soldiers. Drinking, however, was not the only sin that concerned Comstock during the war years. Lust, masturbation, and the reading of pornography also worried the young soldier. In the diary that he kept during this period he often confessed to a nameless sin, which, in the opinion of his biographers, was probably masturbation (Broun and Leech 56; Andrist 6). The following entries were typical: Again tempted and found wanting. Sin, sin. Oh how much peace and happiness is sacrificed on thy altar. Seemed as though Devil had full sway over me today, went right into temptation, and then, Oh such love, Jesus snatched it away out of my reach. How good is he, how sinful am I. I am the chief of sinners, but I should be so miserable and wretched, were it not that God is merciful and may I be forgiven. Glory be to God in the highest. Oh I deplore my sinful weak nature so much. If I could but live without sin, I should be the happiest soul living: But Sin, that foe that is ever lurking, stealing happiness from me. What a day will it be when that roaring Lion shall be bound and his wanderings cease, then will we have rest, the glorious rest from sin. 0 hasten ever welcome day, dawn on our souls. This morning were severely tempted by Satan and after some time in my own weakness I failed. (Broun and Leech 55-56) Comstock was mustered out of the army in 1865, and a few years later he moved to New York City, where he found a job in a dry goods store. During this period he continued his obsession with pornography and other manifestations of sexuality which he considered to be sinful. A number of his acquaintances, he discovered, read erotic literature, and he concluded that this reading material was having a demoralizing effect upon them. …