Censorship's Paradox

Better Left Unsaid: Victorian Novels, Hays Code Films and the Benefits of Censorship bookcoverAssistant professor of English Nora Gilbert's dual interests in Victorian novels and early Hollywood films drew her to write the book Better Left Unsaid: Victorian Novels, Hays Code Films and the Benefits of Censorship (Stanford University Press).

The book argues that the novels written in 19th-century England and films produced under the Production Code of 1930 — which regulated that films could not show crimes, sex and explicit language — were stimulated by the very forces meant to restrain them.

"I wanted to explain what made these texts so enjoyable to me as a reader and viewer," she says, "and I came to realize that many of the prohibitions placed on the artists who created the texts actually caused them to be subtler, smarter and more subversive."