The Well of Loneliness

Stephen Gordon has always been different. Firstly, she was born a girl against her parent’s wishes. Secondly, she is raised to be boyish, much to her mother’s disdain. Third—but most important—is that Stephen loves women, and it is a very isolating life to lead. Revisit one of Britian’s most famous banned books—the original lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness.

In 1928, there were three lesbian novels published in England: Viriginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography, Compton Mackenzie’s Extraordinary Women, and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. Between them, each book offered then-revolutionary ideas about love, sexuality, and gender; but only one has been banned, welcomed praise, and garnered controversy for almost a century.

Stephen Gordon has always been different. Firstly, she was born a girl against her parent’s wishes. Secondly, she is raised to be boyish—the son her father always wanted—much to her mother’s disdain. However, the most damning thing of all is Stephen’s love for other women, something society isn’t quite ready to accept. While Stephen lives a good life—that is, having wealth and opportunity by virtue of being born into an upper-class aristocratic family—it is far from an easy one. For Stephen, life is a frustrating existence where she does not know the meaning of herself or where she belongs in the world…that is until she meets Angela Crossby, and comes to know romantic love for the very first time.

Autobiographical in nature, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness is an intensely emotional novel about what it means to be queer in the early twentieth century.

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