244
Coincidentally Fox, although married and a father, was the lover
Harriet's best friend, Eliza Flower. Later Mrs. Fox, finding her
tion difficult, made a formal complaint to Fox's congregation,
Fox had to defend himself in "open church." Mill and Harriet T
"Vhose father was a prominent Unitarian and whose influence
used, rushed to his defense-Mill believing
him
"innocent"-and
was vindicated. One wonders how successfully a minister in our
lightened and psychological age would weather a similar situation
if the elders of his church would rush to his defense if he were
accused.
Yet it is true that the middle class exercised a far-reaching
vigorous moral censorship upon its chief entertainment, fiction,
though even in this area some qualifications and provisos must
made. First there were differing degrees of censorship in differing
cades of the century. In the forties, for example, there was much
squeamishness than in the sixties, by which time the habit of
f
reading had become firmly established, and by the eighties and
ties Hardy, Moore, and others had broken the familial tyranny.
it was only for a relatively brief period, after mid-century, that
censorship was in full operation.
s
In the earlier decades
Wuthering Heights
nor
Jane Eyre,
filled as they are with an
sexuality, roused any general furor on this score. Furthermore,
within the conventions and in any decade, the Victorian
usually managed to convey the intended effect. No one was
in
as to what Becky Sharp was up to in her days on the Continent,
her fall. There is, too, in many of Dickens's novels a kind of
bawdiness-a jeering crowd of urchins or elders, with smirks on
faces and, one may well imagine, profanity in their mouths.
Pickwick, for example, in the company of a young lady, is called
someone in the crowd an "old ram." Even in later decades,
the censorship was real and rigorous, implication could serve
great effectiveness to circumvent the code. Dorothea Brooke's
riage to Casaubon is both a spiritual and a physical tragedy.
spiritual tragedy is fully and explicitly analyzed, but the
tragedy, while never directly commented upon by the authore!l,
concretely underlined by the characters in the novel, particularly
the remarks of Celia and Mrs. Cadwallader. By them we are
minded, again and again, that the magnificent Dorothea, with
great brown eyes and her powerful maternal hands and her .
