‘Chastity? Poppycock!’: Sexuality, Censorship and the Short Story in The Bell

Abstract

The middle decades of twentieth-century Irish cultural history have often been described in terms of strict social codes, religious obscurantism, sexual repression and excessive censorship that banned any representation of sexuality that threatened the stringent sexual mores in Ireland’s theocratic society. Vehement opposition to both censorship and sexual puritanism came from The Bell, Ireland’s most influential mid-century literary magazine, edited by Seán O’Faoláin and Peadar O’Donnell. Throughout its lifespan, The Bell campaigned for writing that confronted controversial subjects, and was able to regularly publish short stories that engaged with taboo topics such as same-sex desire, illegitimacy, abortion and extra-marital sex. This essay explores the various ways in which writers responded to The Bell’s calls for frank treatments of sexual matters in their short fiction, and suggests that the poetics of the modern short story – which allowed writers to camouflage their subversive content – combined with ineffective legislation for the banning of periodicals meant that short stories in Irish literary magazines were effectively the censors’ blind spot, and thus contributed to the freeing up of cultural attitudes around sexuality that gradually took place in the second half of the twentieth century. Keywords: The Bell; Irish Short Stories; Sexuality; Irish Periodicals; Censorship; Seán O’Faoláin; Peadar O’Donnell.