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Tjader, Marguerite. Theodore Dreiser: A New Dimension. Norwalk, Conn.: Silvermine
Publishers, 1965.
THE GILDED HEARSE
Author: Charles O. Gorham
Original date and place of publication: 1948, United States
Original publisher: Creative Age Press
Literary form: Novel
SUMMARY
The Gilded Hearse takes place on a single day in September 1938 in the lives
of Richard Stiles Eliot and his wife Mary, who have reached a crisis in their
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THE GILDED HEARSE
marriage. Richard, the publicity director of a large New York publishing
firm, is insecure in both his professional and his personal life, partly because
Mary, a fabric designer for the firm of Golding and Jack, makes more money
than he does. During the course of the day, they quarrel, review the sexual
affairs that both have had, attempt to advance themselves economically and
socially, and decide to reconcile. As they consider newspaper accounts of the
Munich Conference and of Mr. Chamberlain s promise of peace with honor,
they recognize the truth of Mary s statement, most of us gave up our honor
a long time ago. We d settle for the peace without the honor.
Early in the novel, as Richard and Mary quarrel, the frustrated husband
lashes out, You dirty pig-Irish bitch. I suppose you re not screwing that Jew
bastard, Golding, huh? I suppose you re not getting your nuccy from him?
In another part of the novel, a neurotic young society widow in whom Rich-
ard is romantically interested tells her roommate, If I decide to copulate, I ll
copulate.
In the incident that aroused the censors to action, Mary recalls acciden-
tally meeting Monroe Golding on a train. The two retire to his train com-
partment and
she pulled her dress up over her head. . . . [T]here were Monroe s hands at
her underclothes, helping her to undress, and then they stood together in the
dark, without any clothes. . . . She felt panic and moaned and tried to turn
away, but then there was the fruity, sweet taste of the brandy mixed with the
taste of his kiss as he bent her backward across the berth, and a lifeless giv-
ing-in at first as he took her. . . . [S]he lost her grip on time and place and let
herself go coursing through to the end, through the waves and the breakers
and the blinding lights.
Worried because she has a physical response to a man to whom she has
no emotional attachment, Mary consults a doctor who reassures her with the
following observations:
An orgasm . . . is produced by suitable irritation of the clitoris, the walls of the
vagina, and other parts of the body. I guess love helps, but it ain t necessary.
Even women who have been mass raped have experienced automatic orgasm.
CENSORSHIP HISTORY
The Gilded Hearse was one of several novels published after World War II,
including memoirs of hecate county and END AS A MAN, that contained lan-
guage that would have gotten a book banned in the years preceding the war.
The language of the main couple s quarrels and the description of Mary s
intimacy with her employer s son, Monroe Golding, provided the basis for
complaints and resulted in legal difficulties for the publisher. The incident in
which the doctor explains in clearly clinical terms how an orgasm occurs drew
criticism, but the unemotional presentation and the absence of anatomical
detail deprived it of erotic content.
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THE GILDED HEARSE
In 1948, Harry Kahan, a special agent for the Society to maintain Public
Decency, complained to the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice that
the novel was obscene. Acting in Kahan s interests, John Sumner, secretary
of the society, brought an action against Creative Age Press, the publisher of
the novel. The complaint charged that the work was in violation of Section
1141 of the Penal Code, which provides for banning books that are obscene,
lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent and disgusting. Creative Age Press was repre-
sented in court by Harriet F. Pilpel, a member of the law firm of Greenbaum,
Wolff & Ernst. Kahan attempted to provide Magistrate Frederick L. Strong
with a copy of the book in which the passages that he considered objectionable
were bracketed and underscored. The attorney for the publisher insisted that
the book should be read as a whole, not by selection of paragraphs alone, and
offered Strong an unmarked copy of the book, which he accepted.
When the case went to court in People v. Creative Age Press, Inc., 192
Misc. 188, 79 N.Y.S.2d 198 (1948), the magistrate in the case agreed to read
favorable reviews of the book but not letters from prominent members of
the community to attest to the author s character and intent in writing the
book. Magistrate Strong stated the following regarding Gorham s purpose:
The author testified that his primary purpose in writing the book was to
express his conception that, at any given time, the condition of national
morality is reflected by the then current condition of individual morality and
that national policies of compromise at the expense of principle occur when
it has become common practice for individual moral standards to be disre-
garded for the sake of material advantage.
Strong dismissed the action against Creative Age Press, stating that the
two passages dealing with sexual relations contain little anatomical detail
and that neither husband nor wife derives any satisfaction from their infi-
delity. The magistrate asserted that The characters are coarse and vulgar.
The sex conversations are vulgar and nasty but they are aids to character-
ization. The sex passages are incidental, minor phrases and sentences. He
ruled that more space was devoted to the lack of other moral qualities than
to sex.
FURTHER READING
Court Clears Novel of Obscenity Charge. New York Times, May 20, 1948, p. 27.
Dale, Virginia. Literary Heel: The Gilded Hearse. New York Times Book Review, Feb-
ruary 1, 1948, p. 26.
De Grazia, Edward. Censorship Landmarks. New York: Bowker, 1969.
Hearing on Book Delayed. New York Times, March 30, 1948, p. 25.
Lewis, Felice Flanery. Literature, Obscenity & Law. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Uni-
versity Press, 1976.
Publisher to Defend Seized Book in Court. New York Times, March 17, 1948, p. 27.
Smith, Harrison. Practitioners of Culture. Saturday Review of Literature, February
28, 1948, p. 13.
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THE GINGER MAN
THE GINGER MAN
Author: J. P. Donleavy
Original dates and places of publication: 1955, France; 1956, England;
1965, United States
Original publishers: Olympia Press (France); Neville Spearman (Eng-
land); Seymour Lawrence (United States)
Literary form: Novel
SUMMARY
The Ginger Man is a comic study of life in Dublin as seen through the eyes of
Sebastian Dangerfield, an American. Married and with a child, Dangerfield
goes to Dublin to read law at Trinity College and to live out his particular
philosophy of life that is far different from his former expectations of bourgeois
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