![\"\"](\"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/well-of-loneliness.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThe Well of Loneliness<\/em>, Radclyffe Hall\u2019s groundbreaking lesbian\nnovel first published in 1928, has always been in my sights as a classic I\nprobably should have under my belt, but as it hasn\u2019t had a reputation as a\nparticularly good read, I always felt a bit faint-hearted at the prospect of\npicking it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having taken the plunge, I did not regret it. To be sure there, there is an\nawful lot of purple prose: \u2018The night with its large summer stars and its\nsilence was pregnant with a new and mysterious purpose, so that lying at the\nmercy of that age-old purpose, Stephen would feel little shivers of pleasure\ncreeping out of the night and into her body.\u2019 But if you can stick with it,\nthere are rewards to be had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stephen is the only child of Sir Philip and Lady Anna Gordon, and from the\nvery start chafes against her female identity. (It clearly goes deeper than Sir\nPhilip having given her a boy\u2019s name.) At the age of seven, she develops a\npassionate crush on the housemaid, and, given the current anxiety about\nchildren and sexuality, this part of the book seems to tread far more dangerous\nground than the later passages of imagistically expressed desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During her childhood and adolescence Stephen is protected from the world by\nher father, who understands only too well what his daughter is \u2013 an \u2018invert\u2019 in\nthe parlance of the time \u2013 yet cannot bring himself to explain it to her. But\nfollowing his death and the scandal of her affair with the capricious wife of a\nlocal businessman, she finds herself cast out by her cold and intransigent\nmother: \u2018This thing that you are is a sin against creation.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Luckily for Stephen, she is immensely wealthy and can afford to walk away\nfrom her stately pile and set herself up in a house in Chelsea, and then in\nParis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the modern reader, perhaps the most successful part of the book is when\nStephen volunteers for an all-female ambulance corps serving in World War I in\nnorthern France. There is not only historical interest, but Hall must abandon\nher prolix style to convey the immediacy of working at great personal risk so\nnear the front line to rescue men with appalling injuries. It is in the\nambulance corps that Stephen meets the love of her life, Mary, a young Welsh\ngirl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of the war, there follows a brief period of bliss when they\nreturn to Paris, but even in such a forgiving city, the pressure of being\nsocial outcasts weighs on them. Their hopes are raised when they meet the\nrather grand but obtuse Lady Massey, who takes to them both and invites them to\nher Christmas country house party. Stephen and Mary are overwhelmed by expectation\nand excitement, only to be crushed when Lady Massey rescinds her invitation\ndays before they are due to travel, writing \u2018. . . I must consider my position\nin the county . . . rumours have reached me about you and Mary . . . I must ask\nyou not to come.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n From this point on, they feel themselves thrown into outer darkness, and\nHall displays a remarkable degree of loathing, and even self-loathing (since\nthe book parallels her own experience fairly closely) in describing those whom\nStephen and Mary must accept are \u2018their kind\u2019: \u2018There they sat, closely herded\ntogether at the tables, creatures shabby yet tawdry, timid yet defiant \u2013 and\ntheir eyes, Stephen never forgot their eyes, those haunted, tormented eyes of\nthe invert.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Penguin Modern Classic edition of the book has an invaluable introduction by Maureen Duffy, who places it in its historical context, with fascinating information on the obscenity trial arising from its original publication, and the support for it from literary London. Absorbing in its exploration of family and social relationships, harrowing, and often even funny, the book stands as a reminder in these dark days that there has been irreversible progress in some areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" a reminder in these dark days that there has been irreversible progress in some areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,309,126,59],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7670"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7675,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670\/revisions\/7675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}