the well of loneliness

Cape sent review copies only to newspapers and magazines he thought would handle the subject matter non-sensationally. Whoever we are, we tend to see ourselves in her." [69] 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. [143] In 1949 Falcon Press brought out an edition with no legal challenge. They call on her to intercede with God for them, and finally possess her. 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. 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. Orlando: A Biography (Wordsworth Classics), Dictionary of the Strange, Curious & Lovely, Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, 'The archetypal lesbian novel, the one whose title, at least, is familiar to everyone' --. Sorry, there was a problem saving your cookie preferences. 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. [89], After Stephen reads Krafft-Ebing in her father's library, she opens the Bible at random, seeking a sign, and reads Genesis 4:15, "And the Lord set a mark upon Cain ..."[90] Hall uses the mark of Cain, a sign of shame and exile, throughout the novel as a metaphor for the situation of inverts. Approved third parties also use these tools in connection with our display of ads. 21 August, 1928 (Catalogue ref: DPP 1/88) "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."[11]. Hill and Cape were summoned to appear at Bow Street Magistrates' Court to show cause why the book should not be destroyed. It should be MANDATORY that everyone reads this book. [96], Early reviews were mixed. 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. Lady Anna denounces Stephen for "presum[ing] to use the word love in connection with...these unnatural cravings of your unbalanced mind and undisciplined body." ― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness. [138] 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. The book's protagonist, Stephen Gordon, is born in the late Victorian era[13] to upper-class parents in Worcestershire who are expecting a boy and who christen her with the name they had already chosen. Anyone could pick up this book and see clearly everything she's very clearly alluding to, so there isn't much mystery, but instead, a whole lot of straightforward honesty about an aspect of the world most overlook without even realizing. There isn't anything too astounding about her writing style, and nothing too "deep" about it either. It became an international bestseller, and for decades was the single most famous lesbian novel. This, coupled with Mary's dependence on Stephen, seems to emphasise the supposed inferiority of the feminine to the masculine. The Well of Loneliness was banned for obscenity when published in 1928. When, unlike Sir Phillip, he confronts his daughter, she replies confidently: "Thou, good Governor, wast expecting a Son when you lay atop of your Choosing ... Am I not doing after your very Desire, and is it not the more commendable, seeing that I do it without the Tools for the Trade, and yet nothing complain? "[18] After the argument, Stephen goes to her father's study and for the first time opens his locked bookcase. Cook, 719. The panel of twelve magistrates who heard the appeal had to rely on passages Inskip read to them for knowledge of the book, since the Director of Public Prosecutions had refused to release copies for them to read. "Good" repeated three times. Please try again. In America, the publishers Pascal Covici (who would later join Viking and become John Steinbeck’s fairy godfather) and Donald Friede took a $10,000 bank loan — around $137,000 in today’s money — in order to purchase the rights from Cape. Angela uses Stephen as an "anodyne against boredom", allowing her "a few rather schoolgirlish kisses". Banned upon publication due to its lesbian theme, it tells the story of Stephen Gordon, an upper-class Englishwoman and who struggles as a lesbian with the confines of society. 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. [126] Since Hall herself was not on trial, she did not have the right to her own counsel, and Cape's barrister Norman Birkett had persuaded her not to give evidence herself. 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. 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.

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