DH Lawrence was charged with obscenity- twice- but I think that underneath all that sex talk, there are some political ideas that would rile people. For example, in The Rainbow, there's a scene where Ursula denounces the notion of society and criticises the empire and the conditions of the miners. Not only is there a breakdown in society but a strain in the relationships between man and woman. Consistently in the novel, the male characters realise that the women can take on the identities of wife and mother as something separate from the man. So even without the sexual content, which is more candour rather than lurid content, the novel still would have been controversial as it was published during wartime, where the whole point was that the individual must be sacrificed for the greater society.
Is censorship ever simply for getting rid of obscene content or is it inherently political? Is there such a thing, outside pornographic literature, as 'obscene literature'? And how do we decide between what is candid and truthful and what is obscene?