#TheWellOfLoneliness | Reviews of The Well of Loneliness in English Books| Hashreview

#TheWellOfLoneliness

The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. 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 Read More..

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Description	The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. 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 in World War I, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as having a debilitating effect on inverts. The novel portrays inversion as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence".Hall, 437; Munt, 213.The novel became the target of a campaign by James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express newspaper, who wrote, "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel." Although its only sexual reference consists of the words "and that night, they were not divided", a British court judged it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women".Quotation from Hall, 313. For accounts of the British trial and the events leading up to it, see Souhami, 192–241, and Cline, 225–267. For a detailed examination of controversies over The Well of Loneliness in the 1920s, see chapter 1 of Doan, Fashioning Sapphism. An overview can be found in the introduction to Doan & Prosser, 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 judgment. In the United States the book survived legal challenges in New York state and in Customs Court.A detailed discussion of the US trials can be found in Taylor, "I Made Up My Mind".Publicity over The Wells legal battles increased the visibility of lesbians in British and American culture.See Doan, Fashioning Sapphism, chapter 5. 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.Cook, 718–719, 731. Some readers have valued it, while others have criticized it for Stephen's expressions of self-hatred and seen it as inspiring shame.O'Rourke's Reflections on the Well of Loneliness contains a reader response survey. See also Love, "Hard Times and Heartaches". Its role in promoting images of lesbians as "mannish" or cross-dressed women has also been controversial. Although few critics rate The Well highly as a work of literature, its treatment of sexuality and gender continues to inspire study and debate.For an overview of critical responses and controversies, see the introduction to Doan & Prosser, Palatable Poison.
Description	The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. 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 in World War I, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as having a debilitating effect on inverts. The novel portrays inversion as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence".Hall, 437; Munt, 213.The novel became the target of a campaign by James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express newspaper, who wrote, "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel." Although its only sexual reference consists of the words "and that night, they were not divided", a British court judged it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women".Quotation from Hall, 313. For accounts of the British trial and the events leading up to it, see Souhami, 192–241, and Cline, 225–267. For a detailed examination of controversies over The Well of Loneliness in the 1920s, see chapter 1 of Doan, Fashioning Sapphism. An overview can be found in the introduction to Doan & Prosser, 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 judgment. In the United States the book survived legal challenges in New York state and in Customs Court.A detailed discussion of the US trials can be found in Taylor, "I Made Up My Mind".Publicity over The Wells legal battles increased the visibility of lesbians in British and American culture.See Doan, Fashioning Sapphism, chapter 5. 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.Cook, 718–719, 731. Some readers have valued it, while others have criticized it for Stephen's expressions of self-hatred and seen it as inspiring shame.O'Rourke's Reflections on the Well of Loneliness contains a reader response survey. See also Love, "Hard Times and Heartaches". Its role in promoting images of lesbians as "mannish" or cross-dressed women has also been controversial. Although few critics rate The Well highly as a work of literature, its treatment of sexuality and gender continues to inspire study and debate.For an overview of critical responses and controversies, see the introduction to Doan & Prosser, Palatable Poison.

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Name	The Well of Loneliness
Name
Authors	Radclyffe Hall
Authors
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Genre	Novel
Genre
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Series
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Number in series
Language	English
Language
Country	United Kingdom
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