Fifty years ago today, Lady Chatterley’s Lover’s status as an obscene book came to an end in the UK, and D.H. Lawrence’s novel was published as a Penguin paperback in an unexpurgated edition. The Obscene Publications Act had been revised in 1959, adding a stipulation that any material under scrutiny must be considered in whole rather than in part: no longer could selected passages be taken out of context, and a legitimate defence of literary merit could finally be made.
In his opening address at the 1960 obscenity trial, prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones pointedly dismissed arcane Victorian pruderies, telling the jury: “do not approach this in any priggish, high-minded, super-correct, mid-Victorian manner”. But his legal objections to the novel were themselves somewhat priggish and Victorian: he disapproved of Lawrence’s putting “upon a pedestal promiscuous and adulterous intercourse”.
The defence called a great many witnesses — who each attested to the literary merits of Lawrence and, to a lesser extent, Lady Chatterley’s Lover itself — though they were rarely cross-examined. In his account of the proceedings, The Trial of Lady Chatterley, C.H. Rolph writes: “‘No questions’, said the surprising Mr Griffith-Jones... he was to say it many times”. The prosecution called no witnesses whatsoever, and Rolph notes that the consequent “gasp of surprise in Court was reprehensibly audible”.
Griffith-Jones took the trouble to keep a detailed tally of the novel’s profanities, informing the jury that the word ‘cunt’ occurs some fourteen times. What he did not mention, however, was that the word was used by Lawrence (albeit unrealistically) as a term of endearment: “Th’art good cunt, though, aren’t ter? Best bit o’ cunt left on earth!”
But the most notorious moment of the trial came at the beginning, when Griffith-Jones asked the jury: “would you approve of your young sons, young daughters — because girls can read as well as boys — reading this book?... Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” There were so many outdated assumptions in these questions — that girls’ reading abilities were in question, that husbands controlled what their wives could read, and that people still had servants — that Rolph called this moment “the first nail in the prosecution’s coffin”.
In his opening address at the 1960 obscenity trial, prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones pointedly dismissed arcane Victorian pruderies, telling the jury: “do not approach this in any priggish, high-minded, super-correct, mid-Victorian manner”. But his legal objections to the novel were themselves somewhat priggish and Victorian: he disapproved of Lawrence’s putting “upon a pedestal promiscuous and adulterous intercourse”.
The defence called a great many witnesses — who each attested to the literary merits of Lawrence and, to a lesser extent, Lady Chatterley’s Lover itself — though they were rarely cross-examined. In his account of the proceedings, The Trial of Lady Chatterley, C.H. Rolph writes: “‘No questions’, said the surprising Mr Griffith-Jones... he was to say it many times”. The prosecution called no witnesses whatsoever, and Rolph notes that the consequent “gasp of surprise in Court was reprehensibly audible”.
Griffith-Jones took the trouble to keep a detailed tally of the novel’s profanities, informing the jury that the word ‘cunt’ occurs some fourteen times. What he did not mention, however, was that the word was used by Lawrence (albeit unrealistically) as a term of endearment: “Th’art good cunt, though, aren’t ter? Best bit o’ cunt left on earth!”
But the most notorious moment of the trial came at the beginning, when Griffith-Jones asked the jury: “would you approve of your young sons, young daughters — because girls can read as well as boys — reading this book?... Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” There were so many outdated assumptions in these questions — that girls’ reading abilities were in question, that husbands controlled what their wives could read, and that people still had servants — that Rolph called this moment “the first nail in the prosecution’s coffin”.