The Well of Loneliness
Author | Radclyffe Hall |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Novel |
Published | 1928 |
Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
The Well of Loneliness is a lesbian novel by British author Radclyffe Hall that was first published in 1928 by Jonathan Cape.[a] It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" (homosexuality) is apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn, whom she meets while serving as an ambulance driver during the First World War, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as the typical sufferings of "inverts", with predictably debilitating effects. The novel portrays "inversion" as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence".[2]
Shortly after the book's publication, it became the target of a campaign by
Publicity over The Well of Loneliness's legal battles increased the visibility of lesbians in British and American culture.[8] For decades it was the best-known lesbian novel in English, and often the first source of information about lesbianism that young people could find.[9] Some readers have valued it, while others have criticised it for Stephen's expressions of self-hatred, and viewed it as inspiring shame.[10] The novel was subject to great criticism in its time (some of which may have been motivated by prejudice) but has come to be recognised as a classic of queer literature.[11]
The book entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.[12]
Background
In 1926, Radclyffe Hall was at the height of her career. Her novel Adam's Breed, about the spiritual awakening of an Italian headwaiter, had become a best-seller; it would soon win the
In April 1928, she told her editor that her new book would require complete commitment from its publisher and that she would not allow even one word to be altered. "I have put my pen at the service of some of the most persecuted and misunderstood people in the world...So far as I know nothing of the kind has ever been attempted before in fiction."[16] One of the reasons Hall cited for making the book, was that she wanted to be the first person to "smash the conspiracy of silence" about sexual inversion.[17]
Social and cultural context
Paris lesbian and gay subculture
In Hall's time, Paris was known for having a relatively large and visible gay and lesbian community – in part because France, unlike England, had no laws against male homosexuality.
Brockett next introduces Stephen to Valérie Seymour, who – like her prototype, Natalie Clifford Barney[19] – is the hostess of a literary salon, many of whose guests are lesbians and gay men. Immediately after this meeting Stephen announces she has decided to settle in Paris at 35 Rue Jacob (purchased at Seymour's recommendation), with its temple in a corner of an overgrown garden. Barney lived and held her salon at 20 Rue Jacob.[21] Stephen is wary of Valérie, and does not visit her salon until after the war, when Brockett persuades her that Mary is becoming too isolated. She finds Valérie to be an "indestructible creature" capable of bestowing a sense of self-respect on others, at least temporarily: "everyone felt very normal and brave when they gathered together at Valérie Seymour's".[22] With Stephen's misgivings "drugged", she and Mary are drawn further into the "desolate country" of Paris gay life. At Alec's Bar – the worst in a series of depressing nightspots – they encounter "the battered remnants of men who...despised of the world, must despise themselves beyond all hope, it seemed, of salvation".[23]
Many of those familiar with the subculture she described, including her own friends, disagreed with her portrayal of it; Romaine Brooks called her "a digger-up of worms with the pretension of a distinguished archaeologist".[24] Hall's correspondence shows that the negative view of bars like Alec's that she expressed in The Well was sincerely meant,[25] but she also knew that such bars did not represent the only homosexual communities in Paris.[26] It is a commonplace of criticism that her own experience of lesbian life was not as miserable as Stephen's.[27] By focusing on misery and describing its cause as "ceaseless persecution" by "the so-called just and righteous", she intensified the urgency of her plea for change.[28]
World War I
Although Hall's author's note disclaims any real-world basis for the ambulance unit that Stephen joins, she drew heavily on the wartime experiences of her friend Toupie Lowther, co-commander of the only women's unit to serve on the front in France. Lowther, like Stephen, came from an aristocratic family, adopted a masculine style of dress, and was an accomplished fencer, tennis player, motorist and jujitsu enthusiast.[29] In later years she said the character of Stephen was based on her, which may have been partly true.[30]
In The Well of Loneliness, war work provides a publicly acceptable role for inverted women. The narrative voice asks that their contributions not be forgotten and predicts that they will not go back into hiding: "a battalion was formed in those terrible years that would never again be completely disbanded".[31] This military metaphor continues later in the novel when inverts in postwar Paris are repeatedly referred to as a "miserable army".[32] Hall invokes the image of the shell-shocked soldier to depict inverts as psychologically damaged by their outcast status: "for bombs do not trouble the nerves of the invert, but rather that terrible silent bombardment from the batteries of God's good people".[33]
Christianity and spiritualism
Hall, who had converted to the
Stephen, born on Christmas Eve and named after the
After Stephen reads Krafft-Ebing in her father's library, she opens the Bible at random, seeking a sign, and reads
Plot summary
The book's protagonist, Stephen Gordon, is born in the late Victorian era[48] to upper-class parents in Worcestershire who are expecting a boy and who christen her with the name they had already chosen. Even at birth she is physically unusual, a "narrow-hipped, wide-shouldered little tadpole of a baby".[49] She hates dresses, wants to cut her hair short and longs to be a boy. At seven she develops a crush on a housemaid named Collins and is devastated when she sees Collins kissing a footman.
Stephen's father, Sir Phillip, dotes on her; he seeks to understand her through the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first modern writer to propose a theory of homosexuality,[50] but does not share his findings with Stephen. Her mother, Lady Anna, is distant, seeing Stephen as a "blemished, unworthy, maimed reproduction" of Sir Phillip.[51] At eighteen Stephen forms a close friendship with a Canadian man, Martin Hallam, but is horrified when he declares his love for her. The following winter Sir Phillip is crushed by a falling tree; at the last moment he tries to explain to Lady Anna that Stephen is an invert but dies without managing to do so.
Stephen begins to dress in masculine clothes made by a tailor rather than a dressmaker. At twenty-one she falls in love with Angela Crossby, the American wife of a new neighbour. Angela uses Stephen as an "
Stephen moves to London and writes a well-received first novel. Her second novel is less successful, and her friend, the playwright Jonathan Brockett, himself an invert, urges her to travel to Paris to improve her writing through a fuller experience of life. There she makes her first, brief contact with urban invert culture, meeting the lesbian salon hostess Valérie Seymour. During World War I she joins an ambulance unit, eventually serving at the front and earning the Croix de Guerre. She falls in love with a younger fellow driver, Mary Llewellyn, who comes to live with her after the war ends. They are happy at first, but Mary becomes lonely when Stephen returns to writing. Rejected by polite society, Mary throws herself into Parisian nightlife. Stephen believes Mary is becoming hardened and embittered and feels powerless to provide her with "a more normal and complete existence".[55]
Martin Hallam, now living in Paris, rekindles his old friendship with Stephen. In time, he falls in love with Mary. Persuaded that she cannot give Mary happiness, Stephen pretends to have an affair with Valérie Seymour to drive her into Martin's arms. The novel ends with Stephen's plea to God: "Give us also the right to our existence!"[56]
Sexology
Hall describes The Well of Loneliness as "The first long and very serious novel entirely upon the subject of sexual inversion".[57] She wrote The Well of Loneliness in part to popularise the ideas of sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis, who regarded homosexuality as an inborn and unalterable trait: congenital sexual inversion.[58]
In Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), the first book Stephen finds in her father's study, inversion is described as a degenerative disorder common in families with histories of mental illness.[59] Exposure to these ideas leads Stephen to describe herself and other inverts as "hideously maimed and ugly".[60] Later texts such as Sexual Inversion (1896) by Havelock Ellis – who contributed a foreword to The Well – described inversion simply as a difference, not as a defect. By 1901 Krafft-Ebing had adopted a similar view.[61] Hall championed their ideas over those of the psychoanalysts, who saw homosexuality as a form of arrested psychological development, and some of whom believed it could be changed.[62] Indeed, Havelock Ellis' commentary for the novel, which, although edited and censored to some extent, aligns the novel directly with theories of sexual inversion: "I have read The Well of Loneliness with great interest because—apart from its fine qualities as a novel by a writer of accomplished art—it possesses a notable psychological and sociological significance. So far as I know, it is the first English novel which presents, in a completely faithful and uncompromising form, one particular aspect of sexual life as it exists among us today. The relation of certain people, who, while different from their fellow human beings, are sometimes of the highest character and the finest aptitudes—to the often hostile society in which they move, presents difficult and still unresolved problems".[63]
The term sexual inversion implied gender role reversal. Female inverts were, to a greater or lesser degree, inclined to traditionally male pursuits and dress;[64] according to Krafft-Ebing, they had a "masculine soul". Krafft-Ebing believed that the most extreme inverts also exhibited reversal of secondary sex characteristics; Ellis's research had not demonstrated any such physical differences, but he devoted a great deal of study to the search for them.[65] The idea appears in The Well in Stephen's unusual proportions at birth and in the scene set at Valerie Seymour's salon, where "the timbre of a voice, the build of an ankle, the texture of a hand" reveals the inversion of the guests.[66][67]
Social impact and legacy
Awareness of homosexuality in society
In 1921, Lord Birkenhead, the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, had opposed a bill that would have criminalised lesbianism on the grounds that "of every thousand women ... 999 have never even heard a whisper of these practices".[68] In reality, awareness of lesbianism had been gradually increasing since World War I, but it was still a subject most people had never heard of, or perhaps just preferred to ignore.[69] The Well of Loneliness made sexual inversion a subject of household conversation for the first time.[70] The banning of the book drew so much attention to the very subject it was intended to suppress that it left British authorities wary of further attempts to censor books for lesbian content. In 1935, after a complaint about a health book entitled The Single Woman and Her Emotional Problems, a Home Office memo noted: "It is notorious that the prosecution of the Well of Loneliness resulted in infinitely greater publicity about lesbianism than if there had been no prosecution."[71]
In a study of a working-class lesbian community in
Clothing and sexuality
James Douglas illustrated his denunciation of The Well with a photograph of Radclyffe Hall in a silk smoking jacket and bow tie, holding a cigarette and monocle. She was also wearing a straight knee-length skirt, but later Sunday Express articles cropped the photo so tightly that it became difficult to tell she was not wearing trousers.[79] Hall's style of dress was not scandalous in the 1920s; short hairstyles were common, and the combination of tailored jackets and short skirts was a recognised fashion, discussed in magazines as the "severely masculine" look.[80] Some lesbians, like Hall, adopted variations of the style as a way of signalling their sexuality, but it was a code that only a few knew how to read.[81] With the controversy over The Well of Loneliness, Hall became the public face of sexual inversion, and all women who favoured masculine fashions came under new scrutiny.[82] Lesbian journalist Evelyn Irons – who considered Hall's style of dress "rather effeminate" compared to her own – said that after the publication of The Well, truck drivers would call out on the street to any woman who wore a collar and tie: "Oh, you're Miss Radclyffe Hall".[83] Some welcomed their newfound visibility: when Hall spoke at a luncheon in 1932, the audience was full of women who had imitated her look.[84] But in a study of lesbian women in Salt Lake City in the 1920s and '30s, nearly all regretted the publication of The Well because it had drawn unwanted attention to them.[85]
Negative portrayal of the feminine lesbian
In the 1970s and early '80s, when
Furthermore, The Well arguably embodies what modern readers may regard as misogynistic and biphobic ideas in its presentation of the femme women who experience attraction towards Stephen but eventually end up in heterosexual relationships. Mary's femininity, in particular, is belittled by Hall's presentation of her: She is not Stephen's equal in age, education, family, or wealth, and so is constantly infantilised by her lover. This, coupled with Mary's dependence on Stephen, seems to emphasise the supposed inferiority of the feminine to the masculine. As Clare Hemmings argues, Mary is merely used as "a means for Stephen to reach her own understanding of the true nature of the deviant's plight".[87]
Moreover, Hemmings continues that both Mary and Angela represent the "'traitorous femme' who remains untrustworthy as she may leave you [her female lover] for a man".[88]
Bisexuality
The understanding of sexuality represented in the novel is considered strictly in binary terms and exists within misogynistic stereotypes that were prevalent when the novel was published. This contributes to the undertones of biphobia that are present in the treatment of the femme characters that exhibit female-female sexual attraction, especially so in the treatment of Mary. These choices could be partly explained by the understanding of the term bisexuality at the time. During the interwar period the definition was most often understood as a scientific term describing a psychological gender duality, rather than referencing a sexual preference. In other words, the term was used as a scientific neologism for androgyny, and related to understandings of gender and sex, but not to sexual preferences.[89] Some women in this period ascribed to the theory of Otto Weininger, who suggested that those attracted to others of their own sex were born neither male nor female, but both: they were "sexually intermediate types" This theory posited that "the woman who attracts and is attracted by other women is herself half male" and that "homo-sexuality in a woman is the outcome of her masculinity and presupposes a higher degree of development".[89]
Conflations between sexuality and gender
Other criticism focuses on the potential confusion of sexuality with gender in the novel. Jay Prosser argues that in "rightly tracing Hall's debt to nineteenth-century sexologists, critics have wrongly reduced sexual inversion to homosexuality."[90] What many refer to as Stephen's 'butch lesbianism', Prosser suggests, is actually a transgender identity. As a child, Stephen insists that she is male – "Yes, of course I'm a boy … I must be a boy 'cause I feel exactly like one", – and, when talking to their mother, Stephen says that "All my life I've never felt like a woman, and you know it." Through Stephen's final rejection of Mary, ostensibly so that Mary can participate in a heterosexual relationship with Martin and therefore have a more secure life, Prosser surmises that "Stephen affirms her identification with the heterosexual man".[91]
Esther Newton, writing in 1989, provides a different perspective of Hall's seemingly confusing depiction of Stephen's lesbianism and its conflation with her gender, hinging her discussion on understanding The Well in its historical and social context. Newton argues that "Hall and many other feminists like her embraced [...] the image of the mannish lesbian [...] primarily because they desperately wanted to break out of the asexual model of romantic friendship"[92] prevalent in the nineteenth century. Sex was seen as something that "could only occur in the presence of an imperial and imperious penis",[92] such that sex between women was simply not recognised to exist. Newton shows how sexologists of the time, like Ellis, echoes this sentiment, where his "antifeminism and reluctance to see active lust in women committed him to fusing inversion and masculinity".[92] In a society "very conscious of sex and its vast importance",[93] Stephen feels excluded from the rigid, feminine role imposed on her as a biological female. Hence, for Stephen's lesbianism to be recognised by the readers in that time, Hall had to deliberately show Stephen "enter(ing) the male world, [...] as a lesbian in male body drag",[92] which simultaneously enabled the feminine women in the novel to demonstrate their lesbianism through "association with their masculine partners".[92]
The novel has had its defenders among feminists in the academy, such as Alison Hennegan, pointing out that the novel did raise awareness of homosexuality among the British public and cleared the way for later work that tackled gay and lesbian issues.[94]
In more recent criticism, critics have tended to focus on the novel's historical context,[95] but The Well's reputation as "the most depressing lesbian novel ever written"[96] persists and is still controversial. Some critics see the book as reinforcing homophobic beliefs, while others argue that the book's tragedy and its depiction of shame are its most compelling aspects.[97]
The Well's ideas and attitudes now strike many readers as dated, and few critics praise its literary quality.[98] Nevertheless, it continues to compel critical attention, to provoke strong identification and intense emotional reactions in some readers, and to elicit a high level of personal engagement from its critics.[99]
Publication and contemporary response
Three publishers praised The Well but turned it down. Hall's agent then sent the manuscript to
Early reviews were mixed. Some critics found the novel too preachy;[103] others, including Leonard Woolf, thought it was poorly structured, or complained of sloppiness in style. There was praise for its sincerity and artistry, and some expressed sympathy with Hall's moral argument.[104] In the three weeks after the book appeared in bookstores, no reviewer called for its suppression or suggested that it should not have been published.[105] A review in T.P.'s & Cassell's Weekly foresaw no difficulties for The Well: "One cannot say what effect this book will have on the public attitude of silence or derision, but every reader will agree with Mr. Havelock Ellis in the preface, that 'the poignant situations are set forth with a complete absence of offence.'"[106]
Papers from the author's archive, which are set to be digitised by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas alongside those of her partner, the artist Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge, show that the novel was supported by thousands of readers, who wrote to Hall in outrage at the ban.[107]
Possible autobiography
Although Hall's childhood bore little resemblance to Stephen's life,[108] in the 1970s and 1980s, some writers such as Hall's early biographers Lovat Dickson and Richard Ormrod had treated The Well of Loneliness as a thinly veiled autobiography.[109][b] Angela Crossby may be a composite of various women with whom Hall had affairs in her youth, but Mary, whose lack of outside interests leaves her idle when Stephen is working,[111] does not resemble Hall's partner Una Troubridge, an accomplished sculptor who translated Colette's novels into English.[112] Hall said she drew on herself only for the "fundamental emotions that are characteristic of the inverted".[113]
Sunday Express campaign
James Douglas, editor of the
[T]he adroitness and cleverness of the book intensifies its moral danger. It is a seductive and insidious piece of special pleading designed to display perverted decadence as a martyrdom inflicted upon these outcasts by a cruel society. It flings a veil of sentiment over their depravity. It even suggests that their self-made debasement is unavoidable, because they cannot save themselves.
Douglas, James (19 August 1928). "A Book That Must Be Suppressed".
Douglas's campaign against The Well of Loneliness began on 18 August, with poster and billboard advertising and a teaser in the Daily Express promising to expose "A Book That Should Be Suppressed".
In what Hall described as an act of "imbecility coupled with momentary panic",
Cape announced that he had stopped publication, but he secretly leased the rights to Pegasus Press, an English-language publisher in France. His partner Wren Howard took papier-mâché moulds of the type to Paris, and by 28 September, Pegasus Press was shipping its edition to the London bookseller Leopold Hill, who acted as distributor. With publicity increasing demand, sales were brisk, but the reappearance of The Well on bookshop shelves soon came to the attention of the Home Office. On 3 October Joynson-Hicks issued a warrant for shipments of the book to be seized.[118]
One consignment of 250 copies was stopped at
Response
From its beginning, the Sunday Express's campaign drew the attention of other papers. Some backed Douglas, including the
A novelist may not wish to treat any of the subjects mentioned above but the sense that they are prohibited or prohibitable, that there is a taboo-list, will work on him and will make him alert and cautious instead of surrendering himself to his creative impulses. And he will tend to cling to subjects that are officially acceptable, such as murder and adultery, and to shun anything original lest it bring him into forbidden areas.
E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, letter to The Nation and Athenaeum[126]
UK trial
The obscenity trial began on 9 November 1928.
Birkett arrived in court two hours late.
[Stephen] writes to her mother in these terms: "You insulted what to me is natural and sacred." "What to me is sacred"? Natural and sacred! Then I am asked to say that this book is in no sense a defence of unnatural practices between women, or a glorification, or a praise of them, to put it perhaps not quite so strongly. "Natural" and "Sacred"! "Good" repeated three times.
Sir Chartres Biron's judgment[137]
In his judgement, issued on 16 November,[138] Biron applied the Hicklin test of obscenity: a work was obscene if it tended to "deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences". He held that the book's literary merit was irrelevant because a well-written obscene book was even more harmful than a poorly written one. The topic in itself was not necessarily unacceptable; a book that depicted the "moral and physical degradation which indulgence in those vices must necessary involve" might be allowed, but no reasonable person could say that a plea for the recognition and toleration of inverts was not obscene. He ordered the book destroyed, with the defendants to pay court costs.[139]
Appeal
Hill and Cape appealed to the London
The Sink of Solitude
The Sink of Solitude, an anonymous lampoon in verse by "several hands", appeared in late 1928. It satirised both sides of the controversy over The Well of Loneliness, but its primary targets were Douglas and Joynson-Hicks, "Two Good Men – never mind their intellect".[142] Though the introduction, by journalist P. R. Stephensen, described The Well's moral argument as "feeble" and dismissed Havelock Ellis as a "psychopath", The Sink itself endorsed the view that lesbianism was innate.[143] It portrayed Hall as a humourless moralist who had a great deal in common with the opponents of her novel.[142] One illustration, picking up on the theme of religious martyrdom in The Well, showed Hall nailed to a cross. The image horrified Hall; her guilt at being depicted in a drawing that she saw as blasphemous led to her choice of a religious subject for her next novel, The Master of the House.[144]
Subsequent publication and availability
The Pegasus Press edition of the book remained available in France, and some copies made their way into the UK. In a "Letter from Paris" in The New Yorker, Janet Flanner reported that it sold most heavily at the news vendor's cart that served passengers travelling to London on La Fleche D'Or.[145]
In 1946, three years after Hall's death, Troubridge wanted to include The Well in a Collected Memorial Edition of Hall's works. Peter Davies of the Windmill Press wrote to the Home Office's legal adviser to ask whether the post-war Labour administration would allow the book to be republished. Unknown to Troubridge, he added a postscript saying "I am not really anxious to do The Well of Loneliness and am rather relieved than otherwise by any lack of enthusiasm I may encounter in official circles." Home Secretary James Chuter Ede told Troubridge that any publisher reprinting the book would risk prosecution.[146] In 1949, Falcon Press brought out an edition with no legal challenge.[4][5] The Well has been in print continuously ever since and has been translated into at least fourteen languages.[140] In the 1960s it was still selling 100,000 copies a year in the United States alone.[147] Looking back on the controversy in 1972, Flanner remarked on how unlikely it seemed that a "rather innocent" book like The Well could have created such a scandal.[145] In 1974, it was read to the British public on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime.[148] In May 1999, a dramatized version was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and has since been repeated on Radio 4 Extra.
US publication and trial
Cape sold the US rights to the recently formed publishing house of Pascal Covici and Donald Friede. Friede had heard gossip about The Well at a party at Theodore Dreiser's house and immediately decided to acquire it. He had previously sold a copy of Dreiser's An American Tragedy to a Boston police officer to create a censorship test case, which he had lost; he was awaiting an appeal, which he would also lose. He took out a $10,000 bank loan to outbid another publisher which had offered a $7,500 advance, and enlisted Morris Ernst, co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, to defend the book against legal challenges. Friede invited John Saxton Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice to buy a copy directly from him, to ensure that he, not a bookseller, would be the one prosecuted. He also travelled to Boston to give a copy to the Watch and Ward Society, hoping both to further challenge censorship of literature and to generate more publicity; he was disappointed when they told him they saw nothing wrong with the book.[149]
In New York, Sumner and several police detectives seized 865 copies of The Well from the publisher's offices, and Friede was charged with selling an obscene publication. But Covici and Friede had already moved the printing plates out of New York in order to continue publishing the book. By the time the case came to trial, it had already been reprinted six times. Despite its price of $5 – twice the cost of an average novel – it sold more than 100,000 copies in its first year.[149]
In the US, as in the UK, the Hicklin test of obscenity applied, but New York case law had established that books should be judged by their effects on adults rather than on children and that literary merit was relevant.[149] When defending The Well, Ernst argued that because lesbianism itself was not an obscene subject, the book did not have any sexual explicitness.[17] Ernst obtained statements from authors including Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, H. L. Mencken, Upton Sinclair, Ellen Glasgow and John Dos Passos.[150] Besides, freedom of expression was protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. To make sure these supporters did not go unheard, he incorporated their opinions into his brief. His argument relied on a comparison with Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier, which had been cleared of obscenity in the 1922 case Halsey v. New York. Mademoiselle de Maupin described a lesbian relationship in more explicit terms than The Well did. According to Ernst, The Well had greater social value because it was more serious in tone and made a case against misunderstanding and intolerance.[149]
In an opinion issued on 19 February 1929, Magistrate Hyman Bushel declined to take the book's literary qualities into account and said The Well was "calculated to deprave and corrupt minds open to its immoral influences". Under New York law, Bushel was not a trier of fact; he could only remand the case to the New York Court of Special Sessions for judgement. On 19 April, that court issued a three-paragraph decision stating that The Well's theme – a "delicate social problem" – did not violate the law unless written in such a way as to make it obscene. After "a careful reading of the entire book", they cleared it of all charges.[149]
Covici-Friede then imported a copy of the Pegasus Press edition from France as a further test case and to solidify the book's US copyright.
Other 1928 lesbian novels
Three other novels with lesbian themes were published in England in 1928: Elizabeth Bowen's The Hotel, Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Compton Mackenzie's satirical novel Extraordinary Women. None were banned.[155] The Hotel, like earlier English novels in which critics have identified lesbian themes, is marked by complete reticence,[155] while Orlando may have been protected by its Modernist playfulness.[156] The Home Office considered prosecuting Extraordinary Women, but concluded that it lacked the "earnestness" of The Well and would not inspire readers to adopt "the practices referred to".[157] Mackenzie was disappointed; he had hoped a censorship case would increase his book's sales.[158] Despite advertising that tried to cash in on the controversy over The Well by announcing that Radclyffe Hall was the model for one of the characters,[159] it sold only 2,000 copies.[158]
A fourth 1928 novel,
Adaptations and derivative works
Willette Kershaw, an American actress who was staging banned plays in Paris, proposed a dramatisation of The Well of Loneliness. Hall accepted a £100 advance, but when she and Troubridge saw Kershaw act, they found her too feminine for the role of Stephen. Hall tried to void the contract on a technicality, but Kershaw refused to change her plans. The play opened on 2 September 1930. No playwright was credited, implying that Hall had written the adaptation herself; it was actually written by one of Kershaw's ex-husbands, who reworked the story to make it more upbeat.[164] According to Janet Flanner, who reported on the opening night for The New Yorker, Kershaw "made up in costume what she lacked in psychology", with designer boots, breeches and riding crop. Then she changed into a white dress for a final speech in which she "begged humanity, 'already used to earthquakes and murderers', to try to put up with a minor calamity like the play's and the book's Lesbian protagonist, Stephen Gordon".[165] Hall threatened a lawsuit to stop the production, but the issue soon became moot, since the play closed after only a few nights. The public skirmish between Hall and Kershaw increased sales of the novel.[166]
A 1951 French film set in a girls' boarding school was released in the United States as The Pit of Loneliness to capitalise on the notoriety of The Well,
In 1985, the Mexican writer and social activist Nancy Cárdenas produced a play based on the novel. The play was staged in Mexico City's Fru Fru Theatre and was performed by Irma Serrano and Sonia Infante.[171]
References
Notes
Citations
- ^ Gilmore 1994, p. 603.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 437; Doan & Prosser 2001, p. 213.
- ^ Quotation from Hall 1981, p. 313. For accounts of the British trial and the events leading up to it, see Souhami 1999, pp. 192–241, and Cline 1998, pp. 225–267. For a detailed examination of controversies over The Well of Loneliness in the 1920s, see chapter 1 of Doan 2001, Fashioning Sapphism. An overview can be found in the introduction to Doan & Prosser 2001, Palatable Poison, which also reprints the full text of several contemporary reviews and reactions, including the Sunday Express editorial and Chief Magistrate Sir Chartres Biron's legal judgement.
- ^ a b Baker 1985, p. 353.
- ^ a b Hall 1949.
- ^ Gilmore 1994, p. 603, writes that "in 1928, Radclyffe Hall's lesbian bildungsroman The Well of Loneliness was banned in England and not published there again until 1959", but the latter date is incorrect.
- ^ A detailed discussion of the US trials can be found in Taylor 2001, "I Made Up My Mind".
- ^ See Doan 2001, Fashioning Sapphism, chapter 5.
- ^ Cook 1979, pp. 718–719, 731.
- ^ O'Rourke's Reflections on the Well of Loneliness (O'Rourke 1989) contains a reader response survey. See also Love 2000, "Hard Times and Heartaches".
- ^ For an overview of critical responses and controversies, see the introduction to Doan & Prosser 2001, Palatable Poison.
- ^ "Public Domain Day 2024 | Duke University School of Law". web.law.duke.edu.
- ^ Souhami 1999, pp. 159, 172.
- ^ Baker 1985, p. 188, Our Three Selves.
- ^ Souhami 1999, pp. 164, 171.
- ^ Quoted in Souhami 1999, p. 181.
- ^ a b Taylor 2001, p. 251.
- ^ Rosner 2001, pp. 323–324.
- ^ a b Souhami 1999, p. 173.
- ^ Rosner 2001, p. 323; Castle 1993.
- ^ Rosner 2001, p. 324.
- ^ Quotation from Hall 1981, p. 352; interpretation from Rodriguez 2002, p. 275.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 356, 387.
- ^ Cline 1998, pp. 273–274.
- ^ Baker 1985, pp. 253–254.
- ^ Cline 1998, pp. 227, 273.
- ^ Diana Souhami's comments on the subject are particularly sharp; she says Hall "might have acknowledged the privilege, seductions, freedom, and fun that graced her daily life" (Love 2000, p. 173) and, in response to Hall's claim to be writing on behalf of some of the most persecuted and misunderstood people in the world, remarks "It is doubtful whether Radclyffe Hall and Una, Natalie Barney...and the rest, with their fine houses, stylish lovers, inherited incomes, sparkling careers and villas in the sun, were among the most persecuted and misunderstood people in the world." (Love 2000, pp. 181–82)
- ^ Quotation from Hall 1981, pp. 388–389. Interpretation from Cline 1998, p. 227.
- ^ Rosner 2001, pp. 327–330.
- ^ Baker 1985, pp. 216, 247.
- ^ Hall 1981, pp. 271–272.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 387.
- ^ Quotation from Hall 1981, p. 271. Interpretation from Medd 2001, pp. 241–245, and Kent 2001, pp. 223–224.
- ^ Cline 1998, p. 81; Doan 2004, p. 88.
- ^ Souhami 1999, p. 99.
- ^ Cline 1998, p. 143.
- ^ Halberstam 2001, p. 156, notes the significance of Stephen's name.
- ^ Hall 1981, pp. 21–22.
- ^ Munt 2001, pp. 202, 207.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 434.
- ^ Castle 1993, pp. 49–52 discusses this scene in light of Hall's interest in spiritualism.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 205.
- ^ Medd 2001, p. 242.
- ^ Souhami 1999, pp. 167–168; Munt 2001, p. 213; Stimpson 1981, p. 368.
- ^ In his decision condemning the book, Sir Chartres Biron called the references to God "singularly inappropriate and disgusting". Biron 1928, p. 48.
- ^ Munt 2001, p. 213.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 274.
- ^ Baker 1985, p. 210.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 13.
- ^ Kennedy 2004.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 15.
- ^ Hall 1981, pp. 147–149.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 201.
- ^ Green 2003, pp. 284–285.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 379.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 437.
- ^ Doan 2001, p. 2, "The Mythic Moral Panic: Radclyffe Hall and the New Genealogy".
- ^ Doan 2001, p. 126.
- ^ Rule 1975, p. 82.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 204.
- ^ Doan 2001, pp. 141–150.
- ^ Faderman 1981, pp. 317–325.
- ^ Doan 2001, p. 7, "The Mythic Moral Panic: Radclyffe Hall and the New Genealogy".
- ^ Doan 2001, p. 26.
- ^ Taylor 1998, pp. 288–289.
- ^ Quotation from Hall 1981, p. 352. Baker 1985, p. 218, connects these aspects of the novel with sexology.
- ^ Hemmings 2001, pp. 189–194; Marshik 2003.
- ^ Doan 2001, pp. 132–136.
- ^ Doan 2001, p. 25.
- ^ Whitlock 1987, p. 559.
- ^ Baker 2005.
- ^ Kennedy & Davis 1994, p. 34.
- ^ Cook 1979, p. 719: "[M]ost of us lesbians in the 1950s grew up knowing nothing about lesbianism except Stephen Gordon's swagger [and] Stephen Gordon's breeches".
- ^ O'Rourke 1989, p. 115.
- ^ Dunn, Warland & Munt 1994, p. 107.
- ^ Castle 2001, p. 394; Renault 1984, p. 281.
- ^ O'Rourke 1989, p. 128.
- ^ Stevens 1990.
- ^ Doan 2001, pp. 185–191.
- ^ Doan 2001, pp. 114–117 and passim.
- ^ Langer, Chadwick & Lucchesi 2001, p. 45; Elliott 1998, p. 74.
- ^ Doan 2001, pp. 27, 193.
- ^ Doan 2001, pp. 113, 123.
- ^ Doan 2001, pp. 124–125.
- ^ Bullough & Bullough 1977, p. 897.
- ^ Cook 1979, p. 731; Doan & Prosser 2001, pp. 15–16; Halberstam 2001, p. 146. The word "joyless" is Cook's. Walker 2001, p. 21, notes the influence of The Well on butch and femme.
- ISBN 978-0-231-11874-3
- ISBN 978-0-231-11874-3
- ^ .
- ^ Prosser 1998, p. 137.
- ^ Prosser 1998, p. 169.
- ^ a b c d e Newton 1984b
- ISBN 978-0-141-19183-6.
- ^ Hennegan 1982.
- ^ Doan & Prosser 2001, p. 17; Love 2000.
- ^ Walker 2001, p. 21.
- ^ Love 2000; Newton 1984a, p. 90; Munt 2001, p. 213.
- ^ Hopkins 1998: "[T]o many [students], especially some younger lesbian students for whom the coming out process has been relatively painless, The Well is an affront, an out-dated, unbelievable, ugly insult to their self-image and to their self-esteem."
Franks 1982, p. 125: "very few critics have ever given the novel itself high praise. On the contrary, they often point out that stylistically, the work is marred by inflated language and stilted dialogue."
Doan & Prosser 2001 (1990s): "the persistent implication is that if Hall had only been a better writer, she might have been a better modernist and certainly a better lesbian".
Castle 2001, p. 398: "Their authors are all in varying degree...quick to acknowledge their own frustrations with Hall's often monstrously overwrought parable."
- ^ Doan & Prosser 2001, p. 2: "The novel continues to unsettle and provoke. Generations of feminists...may have dismissed or celebrated the novel...but they have never ignored it."
Castle 2001, pp. 399–400, refers to its "uncanny rhetorical power – a power unaffected by its manifest failures as a work of art – to activate readerly feeling ... Something in the very pathos of Stephen Gordon's torment ... provokes an exorbitant identification in us. Whoever we are, we tend to see ourselves in her." She also notes a "level of emotional seriousness and personal engagement one seldom sees" in criticism of The Well.
- ^ Cline 1998, pp. 235–238.
- ^ For more on the practice of setting a high price for books with "dangerous" subject matter, see Cohler 2000.
- ^ Baker 1985, pp. 208–209.
- ^ For example, the anonymous reviewers in Glasgow's Herald, 9 August 1928, and the North Mail and Newcastle Chronicle, 11 August 1928; both reprinted in Doan & Prosser 2001, pp. 57 and 61.
- ^ Doan & Prosser 2001, pp. 50–73, "A Selection of Early Reviews"; see also Doan & Prosser 2001, pp. 4–5, "Introduction".
- ^ Doan & Prosser 2001, p. 5; Souhami 1999, p. 213.
- ^ Con O'Leary, 11 August 1928, in Doan & Prosser 2001, p. 61.
- ^ Flood, Alison (10 January 2019). "'It has made me want to live': public support for lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall over banned book revealed". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
- ^ Franks 1982, p. 137; Cline 1998, pp. 16–20.
- ^ O'Rourke 1989, pp. 101–103.
- ^ Fitzgerald 1978, p. 50.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 340.
- ^ Franks 1982; Baker 1985, p. 214; Souhami 1999, p. 174.
- ^ Souhami 1999, p. 166.
- ^ Doan & Prosser 2001, pp. 10–11; Doan 2001, p. 15.
- ^ Doan & Prosser 2001, p. 11.
- ^ Douglas 1928, pp. 36–38.
- ^ Souhami 1999, pp. 194–196.
- ^ Cline 1998, pp. 247–248; Souhami 1999, pp. 204–206.
- ^ Souhami 1999, pp. 207–210.
- ^ Cline 1998, pp. 245–246; Doan & Prosser 2001, pp. 69–70.
- ^ Doan & Prosser 2001, p. 67.
- ^ a b Doan & Prosser 2001, p. 13.
- ^ Cline 1998, p. 246.
- ^ Doan 2001, p. 19.
- ^ Franks 1982, p. 94; Cline 1998, pp. 252–258.
- ^ a b Winning 2001, p. 376.
- ^ Cline 1998, pp. 248–249.
- ^ Doan & Prosser 2001, p. 14; Souhami 1999, p. 173.
- ^ Miller 1995, pp. 187–88.
- ^ Souhami 1999, p. 211.
- ^ Souhami 1999, p. 197.
- ^ a b Cline 1998, pp. 256–258.
- ^ Souhami 1999, p. 225.
- ^ Cline 1998, p. 260.
- ^ Souhami 1999, pp. 216, 225–226.
- ^ Souhami 1999, pp. 226–227.
- ^ Biron 1928, p. 44.
- ^ Miller 1995, p. 189.
- ^ Biron 1928, pp. 39–49.
- ^ a b Kitch 2003.
- ^ Souhami 1999, pp. 233–235.
- ^ a b Doan 2004, p. 88.
- ^ Doan 2004, pp. 95–96.
- ^ Baker 1985, p. 257; Cline 1998, p. 280.
- ^ a b Flanner 1979, p. 48.
- ^ Souhami 1999, pp. 405–406.
- ^ Newton 1984a, p. 103n6.
- ^ Baker 1985, pp. 353, 374n1.
- ^ a b c d e f Taylor 2001, passim
- ^ Cline 1998, p. 271.
- ^ Taylor 2001, p. 284.
- ^ "Customs Seeks to Bar 'Well of Loneliness'". The New York Times. 16 May 1929. p. 18.
- ^ "'Well of Loneliness' Held Not Offensive". The New York Times. 27 July 1929. p. 11.
- ^ Taylor 2001, p. 283.
- ^ a b Foster 1956, pp. 281–287.
- ^ Winning 2001, p. 375; Parkes 1994.
- ^ Marshik 2003.
- ^ a b Souhami 1999, p. 237.
- ^ Baker 1985, pp. 254–255.
- ^ Barnes 1992, p. xxxi.
- ^ Barnes 1992, p. 8. Susan Sniader Lanser notes the resemblance of this scene to The Well; Barnes 1992, p. xxxv
- ^ Barnes 1992, pp. xli–xlii.
- ^ Barnes 1992, pp. xv–xviii.
- ^ Cline 1998, pp. 277–279; Souhami 1999, pp. 250–259.
- ^ Flanner 1979, p. 71. Kershaw's wardrobe change for the curtain speech is noted in Baker 1985, p. 265.
- ^ Cline 1998, pp. 277–278.
- ^ Russo 1987, p. 102.
- ^ "New Picture". Time. 3 May 1954. Archived from the original on 4 January 2008. Retrieved 18 January 2007.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 40.
- ^ Barrios 2003, pp. 158–160.
- ^ Rabell, Malkah (18 March 1985). "El pozo de la soledad". El Día (in Spanish). p. 19.
Sources
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- Medd, Jodie (2001). "War Wounds: The Nation, Shell Shock, and Psychoanalysis in The Well of Loneliness". In Doan; Prosser (eds.). Palatable Poison. pp. 232–254.
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- Prosser, Jay (2001). "'Some Primitive Thing Conceived in a Turbulent Age of Transition': The Transsexual Emerging from The Well". In Doan; Prosser (eds.). Palatable Poison. pp. 129–144.
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- Winning, Joanne (2001). "Writing by the Light of The Well: Radclyffe Hall and the Lesbian Modernists". In Doan; Prosser (eds.). Palatable Poison. pp. 372–393.
- Dunn, Sara; Warland, Betsy; Munt, Sally (1994). "Inversions: Writings by Dykes, Queers and Lesbians by Betsy Warland; New Lesbian Criticism: Literary and Cultural Readings by Sally Munt". JSTOR 1395428.
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- ISBN 978-0-688-00396-8.
- Fitzgerald, William (February 1978). "Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness: Sources and Inspiration". The Journal of Sex Research. 14 (1). Taylor & Francis: 50–53. JSTOR 3812156.
- Flanner, Janet (1979). Paris was Yesterday: 1925–1939. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-005068-4.
- Foster, Jeanette H. (1956). Sex Variant Women in Literature: A Historical and Quantitative Survey. New York: Vantage Press.
- Franks, Claudia Stillman (1982). "Stephen Gordon, Novelist: A Re-Evaluation of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness". Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 1 (2): 125–139. JSTOR 464075.
- Gilmore, Leigh (1994). "Obscenity, Modernity, Identity: Legalizing The Well of Loneliness and Nightwood". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 4 (4). Austin, TX: JSTOR 4617155.
- Green, Laura (2003). "Hall of Mirrors: Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness and Modernist Fictions of Identity" (PDF). Twentieth Century Literature. 49 (3): 277–297. JSTOR 3175982.
- Hall, Radclyffe (1949). The Well of Loneliness. London: The Falcon Press. OCLC 4944993.
- Hall, Radclyffe (1981). The Well of Loneliness. New York: ISBN 978-0-380-54247-5.
- Hennegan, Alison (1982). Introduction to Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness. London: ISBN 978-0-86068-254-7.
- Hopkins, Annis H. (1998). "Is She or Isn't She? Using Academic Controversy and The Well of Loneliness to Introduce the Social Construction of Lesbianism". Archived from the original on 10 September 2004. Retrieved 27 December 2006.[unreliable source?]
- Kennedy, Hubert (2004). "Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich". glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Archived from the original on 19 October 2006. Retrieved 5 December 2006.
- Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky; Davis, Madeline D. (1994). Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-023550-0.
- Kitch, Tasmin (11 September 2003). "The Times Book Club and The Well of Loneliness". Times Online. Retrieved 3 December 2006.
- Langer, Cassandra; Chadwick, Whitney; Lucchesi, Joe (Autumn 2001 – Winter 2002). "Review of Amazons in the Drawing Room: The Art of Romaine Brooks by Whitney Chadwick; Joe Lucchesi". JSTOR 1358903.
- Love, Heather (2000). "Hard Times and Heartaches: Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness". Journal of Lesbian Studies. 4 (2): 115–128. S2CID 147760713.
- Marshik, Celia (2003). "History's "Abrupt Revenges": Censoring War's Perversions in The Well of Loneliness and Sleeveless Errand". Journal of Modern Literature. 26 (2): 145–159. S2CID 162222203.
- Miller, Neil (1995). Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. New York City: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-09-957691-0.
- Newton, Esther (1984). "The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman". Signs. 9 (4): 557–575. S2CID 144754535.
- Nin, Anaïs (1986). ISBN 978-0-15-640057-2.
- O'Rourke, Rebecca (1989). Reflecting on The Well of Loneliness. London / New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-01841-8.
- Parkes, Adam (1994). "Lesbianism, History, and Censorship: The Well of Loneliness and the Suppressed Randiness of Virginia Woolf's Orlando". Twentieth Century Literature. 40 (4): 434–460. JSTOR 441599.
- Prosser, Jay (1998). Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-10934-5.
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- Stevens, Lillian L. (14 July 1990). "Texas Lesbians, in Particular; The Third Annual Texas Lesbian Conference Builds on the Past with a Promise for the Future". Gay Community News. p. 16.
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- Whitlock, Gillian (1987). "'Everything is Out of Place': Radclyffe Hall and the Lesbian Literary Tradition". JSTOR 3177881.
Further reading
- Armstrong, Mary A. (2008). "Stable Identity: Horses, Inversion Theory, and The Well of Loneliness". Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory. 19 (1): 47–78. S2CID 13118656.
- Blackford, Holly (2020). "Seeing Red: The Inside Nature of the Queer Outsider in Anne of Green Gables and The Well of Loneliness". Literary Cultures and Twentieth-Century Childhoods. Springer International Publishing. pp. 75–91. ISBN 978-3-030-35392-6.
- Busl, Gretchen (2017). "Drag's Double Inversion: Insufficient Language and Gender Performativity in The Well of Loneliness and Nightwood". English Studies. 98 (3): 310–323. S2CID 151475634.
- Hill, Emily S. (2016). "God's Miserable Army: Love, Suffering, and Queer Faith in Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness". Literature and Theology. 30 (3): 359–374. .
- McCleery, Alistair (2019). "Banned Books and Publishers' Ploys: The Well of Loneliness as Exemplar". Journal of Modern Literature. 43 (1): 34–52. S2CID 214024619.
- Nair, Sashi (2014). "'Moral poison': Radclyffe Hall and The Well of Loneliness". Secrecy and Sapphic Modernism: Reading Romans à Clef between the Wars. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 36–68. ISBN 978-0-230-35618-4.
- Pająk, Paulina (2018). "'Echo Texts': Woolf, Krzywicka, and The Well of Loneliness". Woolf Studies Annual. 24: 11–34. JSTOR 26475572.
- Roche, Hannah (2018). "An 'ordinary novel': genre trouble in Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness" (PDF). Textual Practice. 32 (1): 101–117. S2CID 156538545.
- Spišiaková, Eva (2020). "'We've called her Stephen': Czech translations of The Well of Loneliness and their transgender readings". Target. International Journal of Translation Studies. 32 (1): 144–162. S2CID 213383610.
- Watkins, Susan (2007). "'The aristocracy of intellect': Inversion and Inheritance in Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness". Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel in the Public Sphere. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 48–69. ISBN 978-0-230-28784-6.
- Zaragoza, Gora (2018). "Gender, Translation, and Censorship: The Well of Loneliness (1928) in Spain as an Example of Translation in Cultural Evolution". Redefining Translation and Interpretation in Cultural Evolution.
External links
- Facsimiles of correspondence relating to the seizure of The Well of Loneliness at The National Archives
- Letter by Radclyffe Hall about the writing of The Well at the Lesbian Herstory Archives
- Radclyffe Hall at Times Online including correspondence, document facsimiles, and text of legal judgments
- The Well of Loneliness at Standard Ebooks
- The Well of Loneliness at Faded Page (Canada)
- The Well of Loneliness at Project Gutenberg
- The Well of Loneliness courtesy of Project Gutenberg Australia
- The Well of Loneliness at Google Books