THE RECEPTION OF THOMAS HARDY IN FRANCO'S SPAIN: THE CASES OF TESS AND JUDE THE OBSCURE

Abstract

[...]the censor wrote a very positive report: (File Z-519-41; the translation of all texts from the censorship files into English is mine.) It is interesting to note how the censor spotted critical comments on religion; however, they were not considered offensive, since the target was not the Catholic Church, but English Protestantism, which was deliberately marginalised and persecuted during Franco's dictatorship. [...]Hardy's religious position, according to Spanish censors, fell in line with the doctrines of the regime. [...]the moral issues raised in the story were not considered important enough to ban the novel. [...]Spanish readers could continue to enjoy the company of Tess in the 1940s. On the contrary, in the summary of the plot the censor considers that Jude and Sue's relationship was built upon "the most pure and sincere love" after failing in their respective marriages. [...]the censor showed an understanding attitude towards Hardy's critical views of the conventions of the time and even "the religious rules" that forceda married couple to live unhappily once their love had vanished.

Headnote

Abstract: Some of Thomas Hardy's novels are well known for the controversial reception they received from Victorian British publishers and readers. Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895) were both heavily bowdlerised and harshly attacked for being in conflict with Victorian morality. This paper will look at the reception of these two novels in Spain, which shows the contradictions as well as the changing social and moral climate during General Franco's regime (1939-1975).

Keywords: Thomas Hardy, censorship, General Franco, marriage, morality, reception

1. Introduction

Thomas Hardy, the famous late Victorian novelist, "the incomparable chronicler of his Wessex" as Raymond Williams observed (1970: 97), was very much concerned, one could say even anxious, about the reception of his novels. More perhaps than other writers, he wanted to elicit positive responses from critics and readers. Eve Sorum (2011: 179) refers to Hardy's "crankiness about being misread" and his constant revisions of his novels. However, he did not always succeed according to his wish. Some of Hardy's novels are well known for the controversial reception they received from Victorian British publishers and readers. When first published in serial form, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895) were both heavily bowdlerised and, when they were finally published as books, some critics harshly attacked them for being in conflict with Victorian morality.

Tess, the story of a country girl who is raped by a member of a wealthy branch of the family, has an illegitimate son and ends up by being executed by a narrow-minded society, was rejected by several magazines and, when published, some passages were omitted or modified. In the introduction to Thomas Hardy: The Critical Reception, R. G. Cox(1970: xxviii) describes how the newspaper syndicate of Tillotson and Son of Bolton, as well as Murray's Magazine and Macmillan's Magazine rejected the novel after they had read the seduction and the baptism scenes. When it was eventually accepted by Graphic, the seduction and the illegitimate child were completely removed. Then, when the full version appeared in volume form, it also received hostile attention from conservative reviewers, like Mowbray Morris (1892) of The Quarterly Review, who mainly dismissed Hardy's sympathetic portrayal of what, at that time, was considered to be a "fallen woman".

Jude the Obscure was also very controversial. Hardy had an agreement with Harper's New Monthly Magazine to publish the story of Jude Fawley, a workingclass young man, who dreams of becoming a scholar. As the story develops, Jude is manipulated into marrying a rather superficial local girl, Arabella Donn, who deserts him within two years; he then falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead, although she marries another man. The plot gets even more complicated when Sue finds that she is unhappy with her husband and falls in love with Jude. Then, they begin to live together, although unmarried, and have two children. At this point, when the manuscript was serialised from December 1894 to November 1895, the magazine's editor decides to heavily censor Jude's relationship with Sue and Arabella, as Patricia Ingham explains in her article "The Evolution of Jude the Obscure". When the full novel was published in 1895, it also received a harsh reception from several critics, who viewed it as indecent and degenerate. The novel's explicit references to sexuality and its negative comments on marriage, religion, and England's class system, offended many Victorian readers. One of them, Margaret Oliphant, believed that Hardy's novel was a clear assault on the institution of marriage and wrote the following in her review of the novel, entitled "The Anti-Marriage League", published in Blackwood's Magazine:

There may be books more disgusting, more impious as regards human nature, more foul in detail, in those dark corners where the amateurs of filth find garbage to their taste; but not, we repeat, from any Master's hand. (1896: 138)

Adverse reactions to the novel were widespread among different types of readers. An interesting anecdote has survived of how Hardy received a packet of ashes from Australia, which purportedly were from a burnt copy of Jude the Obscure (Cox 1970: xxxvi). Similarly, William Walsham How, Bishop of Wakefield, also claimed to have thrown the novel into the fire and, more importantly, he persuaded W. H. Smith's circulating library to ban it (Tomalin 2006: 260).

Surprisingly enough, when a translation of Tess was reprinted in Spain during General Franco's regime (1939-1975), despite its strict moral and religious censorship, Spanish censors did not find fault with Hardy's sympathetic portrayal of a "fallen woman". Nevertheless, the case of Jude was special. The novel was banned in Spain on moral and religious grounds during most of the regime. It was only in 1972 that censors did not disapprove of the book's critique of the institution of marriage and allowed a Spanish printing of 15,000 copies of Jude's story. It is interesting to note that laws regarding marriage were very strict under Franco's regime and divorce was not legalised until 1981. This paper will look at the reception of Tess and Jude the Obscure in Spain, which seem to show the contradictions as well as the changing social and moral climate during Franco's regime.

2. Historical context

In the 1930s, Spain went through political turmoil and a civil war that led up to a long dictatorship (1939-1975), a regime with a very strict censorship system that exercised tight control over the publishing and import of books, in order to determine what was morally or politically correct for the common good of the nation. It is interesting to note that it was a system of prior censorship; that is to say, since the establishment of the press laws in 1938, no book could be printed or sold without permission from the board of censorship.

For every book, the censorship office opened a file which generally contained the application form signed by the publisher or bookseller, a copy of the text (usually the galley proof of the book or the original version of the text that was to be translated) and one or several reports written by the censors, in which they justified their decision on whether the text should be banned, published or published with some "alterations". In a regime that supported the political right and the traditional values of the Catholic Church, these censors were the guardians of the morals of society and suppressed or changed any publication that was thought to be subversive and included "improper" comments about morality, the traditional values of the Catholic Church or the founding principles of the regime.

In 1966, a new press law was passed (commonly referred to as the Ley Fraga), which replaced prior censorship by the so-called "voluntary consultation". This meant that publishing houses or writers were made responsible for what they published, but they could ask the censorship office for approval (consultation) to avoid any confrontation with the censors, who, before the distribution of any printing matter, received a copy of the book. Although it was introduced as a liberal law by comparison with what the regime had before, it hardly encouraged the practice of freedom, since the state still retained the right to punish publishers for what might have been considered politically incorrect and a banned text could lead to heavy fines and even prison.

So, was Hardy's controversial fiction improper or immoral according to Spanish censors' standards? Were novels like Tess and Jude the Obscure banned in Spain? What, if any, was the target of this censorship? Was it similar to the British censorship during the Victorian period? Franco's censorship files, which can be found in the "Fondo de Cultura" at the General Administration Archive (Archivo General de la Administración) in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, provides a wealth of valuable data about the interest of publishers and booksellers, the editions printed or imported at that time and, most importantly, the censors' critical views of Hardy's novels. Data from the censorship files will contribute not only to a better understanding of the reception of Hardy in Spain, but also to a better understanding of the Spanish society during Franco's regime.

3. Tess and the censors' positive response

A quick look at the catalogue of the Spanish National Library shows that Hardy had already arrived in Spain during the second decade of the 20th century. The first novel by Hardy translated into Spanish was A Pair of Blue Eyes: A Novel (1873), an unobjectionable text, drawing on Hardy's courtship of his wife, which appeared in 1919, in Barcelona, with the title Unos ojos azules. Another novel, The Well-Beloved (1897), followed suit; this story of the sculptor Jocelyn Pierston searching for the ideal woman was published in Madrid as La bien amada in 1921. Then, three years later came Tess, whose Spanish version was published, also in Madrid, under the title Teresa la de Urbervilles (una mujer pura): novella, reproducing the original "a pure woman" given by Hardy. The translator, Manuel Ortega y Gasset, was a well-known Spanish humanist, brother of the famous Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, and had already translated novels by William Makepeace Thackeray, Jane Austen, James Cook and Charles Dickens. There was even a Catalan translation of Tess by César-August Jordanapublished in 1929, which also respects the original title: Teresa dels Urbervilles: una dona pura. There were no censorship problems with this novel in 1920s Spain.

What is indeed surprising is that the same translation of Tess by Ortega y Gasset was reprinted in Spain during the early years of Franco's regime, despite the fact that its strict moral and religious censorship had already been in place for three years. It seems that Spanish censors did not find fault with Hardy's sympathetic portrayal of a "fallen woman". In 1941, a Barcelona publisher, Ediciones Nausica, wanted to publish 2,000 copies of Tess and submitted the text for approval at the censorship office in Madrid. The application was accepted and Teresa la de Urbervilles (notice that the subtitle "una mujer pura" had been removed) was authorised without any restriction. In fact, the censor wrote a very positive report:

Novela, drama de amor, cuya trama muy bien desarrollada y escrita con gran pulcritud, se sigue con interés. La acción se desarrolla en Inglaterra y en la lucha de las pasiones que mueven a los personajes triunfa la moral, pero no la moral religiosa para la que hay ataques por parte de los protagonistas - aun cuando la religión que atacan es el protestantismo - sino una moral racionalista. A pesar de esto, creo puede ser publicada, pues el argumento en su trayectoria se aparta del problema religioso que solo accidentalmente toca en algunos párrafos.

('Novel, love drama, whose well-developed plot, written with great neatness, can be followed with interest. The action takes place in England and, in the struggle of the passions that move the characters, morality wins, but not religious morality, which is attacked by some protagonists- even though the attacked religion is Protestantism - but a rationalist morality. Despite this, I think it may be published, as the argument in its path deviates from the religious problem, which is only touched, accidentally, in some paragraphs.' (File Z-519-41; the translation of all texts from the censorship files into English is mine.)

It is interesting to note how the censor spotted critical comments on religion; however, they were not considered offensive, since the target was not the Catholic Church, but English Protestantism, which was deliberately marginalised and persecuted during Franco's dictatorship. Therefore, Hardy's religious position, according to Spanish censors, fell in line with the doctrines of the regime. Besides, the moral issues raised in the story were not considered important enough to ban the novel. What is more, "morality wins" in the end. Therefore, Spanish readers could continue to enjoy the company of Tess in the 1940s.

In the following decade, a somewhat contradictory situation arose. Spanish censors had to examine an application to import 300 copies of the French Tess, published by Le Livre de Poche and translated by Madeleine Rolland in 1956. At that time, French was the main foreign language in Spanish schools and universities, so it is logical that there was a demand for novels in French, rather than in the original English. After reading a copy of the novel that accompanied the application form, the censor stated in his report that there was nothing to object to the importation of this "famous novel, already a classic". However, he added that "the corrections that a Spanish version should require could be tolerated in this French interpretation" (File 5387-56. "Las rectificaciones que exigiría una versión española pueden tolerarse en esta interpretación francesa"). Ignoring the 1941 positive antecedent, this censor was insinuating that had he examined a version of Tess in Spanish, a few corrections or changes would probably have been made. No detail is given about the nature of those corrections; perhaps, they had to do with moral issues that the 1941 censor did not consider important. We shall never know. But his attitude towards the novel's content was certainly more strict and harsh. Authorisation was only granted because the novel was in French and, one could add, few copies were going to be sold anyway.

Tess's story continued to fare well among Spanish censors in the 1960s. In 1962, a large and well-distributed publishing house from Barcelona, Editorial Planeta, requested permission for the publication of 2,000 copies of Teresa de Urbervilles, as part of the series "Maestros Ingleses" (English Masters). It seemed that Hardy's reputation in Spain was already well established. This time, the censor checked the antecedents and simply renewed the authorisation that had been granted in 1941 (File 590-62). This Spanish edition of Hardy's novel included an introductory study on the author by a Catalan writer and journalist, Juan Sebastián Arbó, which clearly presents Tess as a controversial novel that had been involved in a scandal when published in England. No possible disturbing detail is hidden from the censor in this edition that was authorised without any restriction.

In his essay "Candour in English Fiction", written when he was having problems with the serialisation of Tess, Hardy lamented the power that both magazines and circulating libraries have over the shaping of novels. He believed that "acting under the censorship of prudery," both magazines and libraries "rigorously exclude from the pages they regulate subjects that have been made, by general approval of the best judges, the bases of the finest imaginative compositions since literature rose to the dignity of an art" (1890: 18). The author, Hardy argues, has very few options and inevitably ends up submitting to these powers. Fifty years later, Hardy's Tess found itself submitted to similar powers in a different country, the powers of Spanish censorship office; however, they were more benevolent then their Victorian counterparts.

4. The reception of Jude the Obscure

The favourable reception of Hardy's novels in twentieth-century Spain was possible thanks to the interest of the publishers and booksellers, as well as to the authorisations granted to a large number of his novels by the censors: a reprint of the Spanish version of A Pair of Blue Eyes appeared in 1942; The Well-Beloved was authorised in 1943 and 1965; the green light was also given to the short stories A group of Noble Dames and Life's Little Ironies in 1943; censors also granted permission for the publication of a first Spanish translation of Under the Greenwood Tree (Bajo el árbol de la selva verde) in 1945; similarly, Far from the Madding Crowd appeared in 1969 as Lejos del mundanal ruido. To these, one should add The Mayor of Casterbridge, which, though not published in Spain, large importations of a 1941 Spanish translation from Argentina were authorised in 1944 (1,000 copies) and in 1946 (3,000 copies). However, the case of Jude was very different. The novel was banned by Franco's censors on moral and religious grounds during most of his regime.

Jude the Obscure had been ignored in Spain for the first four decades of the twentieth century. However, an importer from Madrid wanted to place 300 copies of an Argentinean translation, Jud el oscuro, on the Spanish market in 1946. Franco's censors did not allow it (File 3540-46). No report is included in the censorship file, so we cannot know for certain the reasons for this ban, although we can guess them from the information found in a second file opened in 1958 (File 2056-58). This time it was an application to import 300 copies of a French version of Hardy's novel, published by Le Livre de Poche (the novel had been published in France as early as 1901). The censor's report was very clear:

Novela impía, en la que se atacan los fundamentos de la religión, la moral y las normas sociales más elementales. El adulterio, la bigamia y la protesta contra el sacramento del matrimonio resultan demoledores y llevan incluso al suicidio de tres niños. No hay posibilidad de encontrar en esta obra una sola parte digna de ser leída. El sufrimiento de los protagonistas no puede servir de pretexto para destruir los cimientos de la religión y la sociedad.

No debe autorizarse.

(Impious novel in which the fundamentals of religion, morality and the most basic social norms are attacked. Adultery, bigamy and protest against the sacrament of marriage are devastating and even lead to the suicide of three boys. There is no chance of finding in this work a single section that is worth reading. The suffering of the protagonists cannot be an excuse to destroy the foundations of religion and society.

It should not be authorised.)

In this censor's devastating analysis of the novel, we see a similar reaction to that of the Victorian critics nearly 60 years before. We should not forget that the book was in French and there were only 300 copies, so its readership could not have been very large. Nevertheless, the censorship office thought it was not appropriate to allow the book into the country, because it would upset the fundamentals of religious and social norms.

Hardy's anxiety about censorship and reception made him stop writing novels, after the public outrage about Jude the Obscure. As biographer Michael Millgate (1982: 374) put it, "he remained quite unprepared for the violence of the critical response, for the psychological stresses consequent upon so extensive and painful a public exposure [...]". Surely, Hardy's fans felt a huge sense of relief that he was no longer alive to see how his last novel also caused similar outrage and indignation in the readers of a different country.

We have to wait until 1972 to see a Spanish edition of Jude the Obscure in Spain. A well-established publishing house from Madrid, Alianza Editorial, submitted the text to the censorship office for "voluntary consultation". It was going to be a paperback edition of the novel, 15,000 copies. The censor's report is very interesting (File 12316-72). Jude the Obscure was rightly considered a thesis novel, whose main aim is to criticise the tyranny of marriage. As can be seen form his report, the censor had read the definitive 1912 edition of the novel and the Preface in which Hardy states: "A marriage should be dissolvable as soon as it becomes a cruelty to either of the parties - being then essentially and morally no marriage" (2002: xlv). So, the censor was aware of Hardy's emphasis on social reforms, particularly those related to marriage laws and sex relations, which, in his opinion, should be liberalised. This 1972 report does not refer to adultery, bigamy or irreverent treatment of conventional love and marriage. On the contrary, in the summary of the plot the censor considers that Jude and Sue's relationship was built upon "the most pure and sincere love" after failing in their respective marriages. Moreover, the censor showed an understanding attitude towards Hardy's critical views of the conventions of the time and even "the religious rules" that forceda married couple to live unhappily once their love had vanished. The explanation to the censor's position was also clear:

La divulgación que el tema [el divorcio] ha tenido en nuestra sociedad y la frecuente aparición del mismo en el cine, la televisión, la literatura y la prensa le privan hoy de carácter polémico, como lo fue en su tiempo, y, a juicio del lector que suscribe, se considera este libro como ADMISIBLE.

(The dissemination that the issue [divorce] has had in our society and its frequent presence in films, television, literature and the print media deprive it today of its controversial nature, as it was in its time, and, according to the reader who undersigns this report, the book is considered ACCEPTABLE.)

It is interesting to note that laws regarding marriage were very strict under Franco's regime and divorce was not legalised until 1981, six years after Franco's death. During the Franco years, marriages had to be sanctioned by the Catholic Church, which prohibited divorce. However, from this censorship report on Jude the Obscure, it seems that the Spanish society was already changing at the beginning of the 1970s and the issue of divorce and ending a canonical marriage was not seen any more as something shameful that harmed society.

5. Conclusion

In the Preface to the first edition of Tess as a book, Hardy draws his readers' attention to the restrictions imposed by the previous serial publication and puts forward an eloquent defence of freedom of speech, quoting a sentence of St Jerome's: "If an offence come out of the truth, better is it that the offence come than the truth be concealed" (1967: 26). Hardy's fiction was often subjected to the censor's scrutiny and his Spanish translations were not going to be different. However, it seems that the representation of truth was less concealed in Spain than in his own country. All his novels and short stories went through the filter of the strict moral censorship that was established during Franco's regime; only Jude the Obscure hada negative response from the Spanish censors, who did not allow the story to be imported or published until 1972.

As for Tess, despite the slight contradiction between the first censor in 1941 and the one who read the French version in 1956, the novel was always authorised in Spain. Nomoral or religious issues were really raised by the Spanish censors, as the Victorian publishers and critics had done before. The seduction scene, Tess's baptism of her dying child, or Hardy's disconcerting views on some beliefs of the church, which do not mesh with a modern society, did not pose a serious problem for Spanish readers. It is true that some decades had gone by since the negative English responses appeared, but the Spanish society had not evolved much, particularly since the establishment of Franco's regime. It seems that the Spanish censors did not attach much significance to Hardy's moral nihilism; perhaps, because the protagonists were English and Protestant, or maybe because what they had to authorise was just a few copies in French, although this last explanation was not valid for Jude.

Jude the Obscure went through a very different experience. The history of its reception in Spain shows the contradictions and the changing social and moral climate during the latter years of Franco's regime. The novel was first banned for a few years but, eventually, the censors authorised it in 1972, because, as the censor states in his report, divorce was already socially accepted. Although the regime supported the traditional values of the Catholic Church, which believes that marriage is a permanent union and does not accept a civil divorce, a representation of the regime, the censorship office, accepted Hardy's critical position against these religious rules and allowed the novel to be published. It seems that the official discourse on divorce, established by a law passed in September 1939, which made a civil marriage very difficult and divorce impossible, was still in force; however, the Spanish society of the 1970s was changing and more people believed that those old laws had to be updated. The publication of Jude the Obscure in Spain in 1972 signals the transition to a modern society, the coming out of a profoundly traditional religious society, in many ways similar to the Victorian society that rejected the novel, and the arrival of a new, more secular and modern society, that accords greater respect to individual liberties and civil rights.

References

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