Taming The Text: Naughty Words And A Prudish Culture
TAMING THE TEXT: NAUGHTY WORDS AND A PRUDISH CULTURE
Yet sometimes the King James rendering of some biblical passages was just too explicit for some of its more tender readers. As English and American society became more polite and cultivated, it became increasingly unfashionable to speak directly and openly of certain parts of the human body, and their embarrassing anatomical functions. Both the King James Bible and the writings of William Shakespeare were singled out as being potentially seditious, in that they could lead sensitive young people—especially gentle young ladies—astray through their direct, coarse and offensive language. The solution to this dilemma was to sanitize both texts, and make them less scandalous to such sensitive persons.
The English word “bowdlerize” was originally coined around 1836 to mean “to edit heavily someone else's work, so that it conforms with your notions of propriety.” The word derives from Dr. Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825), who published in 1818 an edited version of Shakespeare's works entitled The Family Shakespeare. Its chief selling point was indicated on its title page, which informed its readers that “those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.” Although this edition met with an adverse critical reaction, the general public loved it.
Encouraged by the success of this venture, Bowdler went on to clean up Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Again, Bowdler drew attention to his work's “careful omission of all passages of an irreligious or immoral tendency.” Bowdler went on to say, in what seems to have been a singular lapse of modesty, that Gibbon himself would have approved of his deletions, and that his edition would henceforth be known as the definitive edition of this classic work.
What is not often appreciated is that polite Victorian society, both in England and the United States, had similar difficulties with the King James Bible, which was altogether too frank about certain matters for their comfort. The general issues were set out in Matthew Gregory Lewis's novel The Monk (1796), a work that was regarded itself with considerable distaste in the Victorian period. Lewis's novel tells of a worthy and responsible mother, sensitive to her social situation, who was quite convinced that allowing her daughter, Antonia, to read the Bible would lead to all kinds of sexual dysfunction:
That prudent Mother, while She admired the beauties of the sacred writings, was convinced that, unrestricted, no reading more improper could be permitted a young Woman. Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: Every thing is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a Brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions. Yet this is the Book which young Women are recommended to study; which is put into the hands of Children, able to comprehend little more than those passages of which they had better remain ignorant; and which but too frequently inculcates the first rudiments of vice, and gives the first alarm to the still sleeping passions.
Happily, this most worthy mother hit upon a brilliant way of allowing her daughter to benefit from what she regarded as the inspiring passages in the Bible, and avoid the somewhat explicit statements in others:
She had in consequence made two resolutions respecting the Bible. The first was that Antonia should not read it till She was of an age to feel its beauties, and profit by its morality: The second, that it should be copied out with her own hand, and all improper passages either altered or omitted.
What is being described is, of course, the “bowdlerization of the Bible,” if we might be allowed this anachronism.
Similar concerns were expressed by that great American man of letters, Noah Webster, responsible for an influential dictionary that helped establish the distinctive aspects of American spelling. Webster was alarmed by a series of biblical passages that he regarded as “offensive,” “unseemly,” and “distasteful.” Words to which he took particular exception include “piss,” “privy member,” “prostitute,” “teat,” “whore,” and “womb.”
This tendency to censor the language of both Shakespeare and the King James Bible can be seen as a monument to both their popularity and their acknowledged influence on the shaping of the English language. To change them would be to change the English language. Our genteel censors doubtless meant well, and do not deserve quite the full torrent of critical abuse that was heaped upon them. It is, however, a reminder that we shall always be plagued with censorious bores who demand we all use language that they find acceptable and are “adapted to modern views of propriety” (to use an 1828 phrase of William Alexander, who was critical of the crudeness of the language of the King James Bible).