''The Well of Loneliness'' is a lesbian novel by British author
Radclyffe Hall
Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author, best known for the novel ''The Well of Loneliness'', a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, Hall often went by the name Jo ...
that was first published in 1928 by
Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960.
Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation ...
. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose " sexual inversion" (
homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
) 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 typically suffered by "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".
Shortly after the book's publication, it had become the target of a campaign by James Douglas, editor of the ''
Sunday Express
The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
''. Douglas wrote that "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of
prussic acid
Hydrogen cyanide, sometimes called prussic acid, is a chemical compound with the formula HCN and structure . It is a colorless, extremely poisonous, and flammable liquid that boils slightly above room temperature, at . HCN is produced on an in ...
than this novel." A British court judged it
obscene
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin ''obscēnus'', ''obscaenus'', "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be use ...
because it defended "unnatural practices between women"; In
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, it would not be published again for another three decades, in 1959. In the United States, the book survived legal challenges in
New York state
New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...
and in Customs Court.
Publicity over ''The Well of Loneliness''s legal battles increased the visibility of
lesbian
A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...
s in British and American culture. 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. Some readers have valued it, while others have criticised it for Stephen's expressions of
self-hatred
Self-hatred is personal self-loathing or hatred of oneself, or low self-esteem which may lead to self-harm.
In psychology and psychiatry
The term "self-hatred" is used infrequently by psychologists and psychiatrists, who would usually describe ...
, and viewed it as inspiring shame. Although critics differ as to the value of ''The Well of Loneliness'' 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 , ''Palatable Poison''.
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
Prix Femina
The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created in 1904 by 22 writers for the magazine '' La Vie heureuse'' (today known as '' Femina''). The prize is decided each year by an exclusively female jury. They reward French-language works written ...
and the
James Tait Black Prize
The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Unit ...
. She had long thought of writing a novel about sexual inversion; now, she believed, her literary reputation would allow such a work to be given a hearing. Since she knew she was risking scandal and "the shipwreck of her whole career", she sought and received the blessing of her partner,
Una Troubridge
Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge (born Margot Elena Gertrude Taylor; 8 March 1887 – 24 September 1963) was a British sculptor and translator. She is best known as the long-time lesbian partner of Marguerite Radclyffe Hall, author of ''The We ...
, before she began work. Her goals were social and political; she wanted to end public silence about
homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
and bring about "a more tolerant understanding" – as well as to "spur all classes of inverts to make good through hard work...and sober and useful living".
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." 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.
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.
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...
's novels continued in their influence upon 1920s Parisian society depicting lesbian and gay subculture. When Stephen first travels to Paris, at the urging of her friend Jonathan Brockett – who may be based on
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...
– she has not yet spoken about her inversion to anyone. Brockett, acting as tour guide, hints at a secret history of inversion in the city by referring to
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (; ; née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child a ...
's rumoured relationship with the
Princesse de Lamballe Princesse (French 'princess') may refer to:
*"Princesse", single hit for Julie Zenatti
* Princesse (Nekfeu song)
* La Princesse 15-metre (50-foot) mechanical spider designed and operated by French performance art company La Machine.
See also
* P ...
.
Brockett next introduces Stephen to Valérie Seymour, who – like her prototype,
Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted a salon (gathering), literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors throu ...
– is the hostess of a
literary salon
A salon is a gathering of people held by an inspiring host. During the gathering they amuse one another and increase their knowledge through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "e ...
, 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. 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". 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".
Many of those familiar with the subculture she described, including her own friends, disagreed with her portrayal of it;
Romaine Brooks
Romaine Brooks (born Beatrice Romaine Goddard; May 1, 1874 – December 7, 1970) was an American painter who worked mostly in Paris and Capri. She specialized in portrait painting, portraiture and used a subdued tonal Palette (painting), palette ...
called her "a digger-up of worms with the pretension of a distinguished archaeologist". Hall's correspondence shows that the negative view of bars like Alec's that she expressed in ''The Well'' was sincerely meant, but she also knew that such bars did not represent the only homosexual communities in Paris. It is a commonplace of criticism that her own experience of lesbian life was not as miserable as Stephen's. 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.
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
May "Toupie" Lowther (also Toupée; 15 April 1874 – 30 December 1944) was an English tennis player and fencer, active during the late 19th century and early 20th century. During the First World War, she led an all-female English unit of ambul ...
, 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. In later years she said the character of Stephen was based on her, which may have been partly true.
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". This military metaphor continues later in the novel when inverts in postwar Paris are repeatedly referred to as a "miserable army". Hall invokes the image of the
shell-shocked
Shell shock is a term coined in World War I by the British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers to describe the type of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) many soldiers were afflicted with during the war (before PTSD was termed). It is a react ...
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".
Christianity and spiritualism
Hall, who had converted to the
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
in 1912, was devoutly religious. She was also a believer in communication with the dead who had once hoped to become a
medium
Medium may refer to:
Science and technology
Aviation
*Medium bomber, a class of war plane
*Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data
* Medium of ...
– a fact that brought her into conflict with the church, which condemned
spiritualism
Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) ...
. Both these beliefs made their way into ''The Well of Loneliness''.
Stephen, born on Christmas Eve and named for the first martyr of Christianity, dreams as a child that "in some queer way she sJesus". When she discovers that Collins, object of her childhood crush, has housemaid's knee, she prays that the affliction be transferred to her: "I would like to wash Collins in my blood, Lord Jesus – I would like very much to be a Saviour to Collins – I love her, and I want to be hurt like You were". This childish desire for martyrdom prefigures Stephen's ultimate self-sacrifice for Mary's sake. After she tricks Mary into leaving her – carrying out a plan that leads Valérie to exclaim "you were made for a martyr!" – Stephen, left alone in her home, sees the room thronged with inverts, living, dead and unborn. They call on her to intercede with God for them, and finally possess her. It is with their collective voice that she demands of God, "Give us also the right to our existence".
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
Cain ''Káïn''; ar, قابيل/قايين, Qābīl/Qāyīn is a Biblical figure in the Book of Genesis within Abrahamic religions. He is the elder brother of Abel, and the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, the first couple within the Bible. He wa ...
..." Hall uses the
mark of Cain
The curse of Cain and the mark of Cain are phrases that originated in the story of Cain and Abel in the Book of Genesis. In the stories, if someone harmed Cain, the damage would come back sevenfold. Some interpretations view this as a physic ...
, a sign of shame and exile, throughout the novel as a metaphor for the situation of inverts. Her defence of inversion took the form of a religious argument: God had created inverts, so humanity should accept them. ''The Wells use of religious imagery outraged the book's opponents, but Hall's vision of inversion as a God-given state was an influential contribution to the language of
LGBT rights
Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality.
Notably, , 33 ...
.
Plot summary
The book's protagonist, Stephen Gordon, is born in the late
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
to upper-class parents in
Worcestershire
Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...
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". 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
A footman is a male domestic worker employed mainly to wait at table or attend a coach or carriage.
Etymology
Originally in the 14th century a footman denoted a soldier or any pedestrian, later it indicated a foot servant. A running footman deli ...
.
Stephen's father, Sir Phillip, dotes on her; he seeks to understand her through the writings of
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (28 August 1825 – 14 July 1895) was a German lawyer, jurist, journalist, and writer who is regarded today as a pioneer of sexology and the modern gay rights movement. Ulrichs has been described as the "first gay man in ...
, the first modern writer to propose a theory of homosexuality, 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. 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 "
anodyne
An anodyne is a drug used to lessen pain through reducing the sensitivity of the brain or nervous system. The term was common in medicine before the 20th century, but such drugs are now more often known as analgesics or painkillers.
The term ''a ...
against boredom", allowing her "a few rather schoolgirlish kisses". The pair conduct a relationship that, although not explicitly stated, seems to have some sexual element, at least for Stephen. Then Stephen discovers that Angela is having an affair with a man. Fearing exposure, Angela shows a letter from Stephen to her husband, who sends a copy to Stephen's mother. Lady Anna denounces Stephen for "presum ngto use the word love in connection with...these unnatural cravings of your unbalanced mind and undisciplined body." Stephen replies, "As my father loved you, I loved...It was good, good, ''good'' – I'd have laid down my life a thousand times over for Angela Crossby." After the argument, Stephen goes to her father's study and for the first time opens his locked bookcase. She finds a book by
Krafft-Ebing
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (full name Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing; 14 August 1840 – 22 December 1902) was a German psychiatrist and author of the foundational work ''Psychopathi ...
– assumed by critics to be ''
Psychopathia Sexualis
''Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie'' (''Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study'', also known as ''Psychopathia Sexualis, with Especial Reference to the Antipathetic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-forensic Study'') is an ...
'', a text about homosexuality and
paraphilias
Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. It has also been defined as sexual interest in anything ot ...
– and, reading it, learns that she is an invert.
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
Salon may refer to:
Common meanings
* Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments
* French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home
* Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment
Arts and entertainment
* Salon (P ...
hostess Valérie Seymour. During World War I she joins an ambulance unit, eventually serving at the front and earning the
Croix de Guerre
The ''Croix de Guerre'' (, ''Cross of War'') is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was first awa ...
. 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".
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!"
Sexology
Hall describes ''The Well of Loneliness'' as "The first long and very serious novel entirely upon the subject of sexual inversion". She wrote ''The Well of Loneliness'' in part to popularise the ideas of
sexologists
Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behaviors, and functions. The term ''sexology'' does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sexuality, such as social criticism.
Sexologists ap ...
such as
Richard von Krafft-Ebing
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (full name Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing; 14 August 1840 – 22 December 1902) was a German psychiatrist and author of the foundational work ''Psychopathi ...
and
Havelock Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939) was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in ...
, who regarded homosexuality as an inborn and unalterable trait: congenital sexual inversion.
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. Exposure to these ideas leads Stephen to describe herself and other inverts as "hideously maimed and ugly". 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. Hall championed their ideas over those of the
psychoanalysts
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might be ...
, who saw homosexuality as a form of arrested psychological development, and some of whom believed it could be changed. 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".
The term sexual inversion implied
gender role
A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on that person's sex. Gender roles are usually cent ...
reversal. Female inverts were, to a greater or lesser degree, inclined to traditionally male pursuits and dress; according to Krafft-Ebing, they had a "masculine soul". Krafft-Ebing believed that the most extreme inverts also exhibited reversal of
secondary sex characteristic
Secondary sex characteristics are features that appear during puberty in humans, and at sexual maturity in other animals. These characteristics are particularly evident in the sexually dimorphic phenotypic traits that distinguish the sexes of a sp ...
s; Ellis's research had not demonstrated any such physical differences, but he devoted a great deal of study to the search for them. 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.
Social impact and legacy
Awareness of homosexuality in society
In 1921,
Lord Birkenhead
Earl of Birkenhead was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1922 for the noted lawyer and Conservative politician F. E. Smith, 1st Viscount Birkenhead. He was Solicitor-General in 1915, Attorney-General from 1915 to ...
, the
Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain
The lord chancellor, formally the lord high chancellor of Great Britain, is the highest-ranking traditional minister among the Great Officers of State in Scotland and England in the United Kingdom, nominally outranking the prime minister. The ...
, 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". 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. ''The Well of Loneliness'' made sexual inversion a subject of household conversation for the first time. 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."
In a study of a working-class lesbian community in
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...
, in the 1940s and 1950s, ''The Well of Loneliness'' was the only work of lesbian literature anyone had read or heard of. For many young lesbians in the 1950s, it was the only source of information about lesbianism. ''The Well''s name recognition made it possible to find when bookstores and libraries did not yet have sections devoted to
LGBT literature LGBT literature may refer to:
* Lesbian literature
* Gay literature
* Bisexual literature
* Transgender literature
* Or any other literature featuring the LGBT community
The LGBT community (also known as the LGBTQ+ community, GLBT community, ...
. As late as 1994, an article in ''
Feminist Review
''Feminist Review'' is a triannual peer-reviewed academic journal with a focus on exploring gender in its multiple forms and interrelationships. The journal was established in 1979. It is published by SAGE Publishing and is edited by a collective.
...
'' noted that ''The Well'' "regularly appears in
coming-out
Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity.
Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...
stories – and not just those of older lesbians". It has often been mocked:
Terry Castle
Terry Castle (born October 18, 1953) is an American literary scholar. Once described by Susan Sontag as "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today," she has published eight books, including the anthology ''The Literat ...
says that "like many bookish lesbians I seem to have spent much of my adult life making jokes about it", and
Mary Renault
Eileen Mary Challans (4 September 1905 – 13 December 1983), known by her pen name Mary Renault ("She always pronounced it 'Ren-olt', though almost everyone would come to speak of her as if she were a French car." ), was an English writer best ...
, who read it in 1938, remembered laughing at its "earnest humourlessness" and "impermissible allowance of self-pity". Yet it has also produced powerful emotional responses, both positive and negative. One woman was so angry at the thought of how ''The Well'' would affect an "isolated emerging lesbian" that she "wrote a note in the library book, to tell other readers that women loving women can be beautiful". A
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
survivor said, "Remembering that book, I wanted to live long enough to kiss another woman."
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. 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. 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. 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. Lesbian journalist
Evelyn Irons
Evelyn Graham Irons (17 June 1900 – 3 April 2000) was a Scottish journalist, the first female war correspondent to be decorated with the French Croix de Guerre.
Early life
Irons was born in Govan, Glasgow to Joseph Jones Irons, a stockbroke ...
– 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". Some welcomed their newfound visibility: when Hall spoke at a luncheon in 1932, the audience was full of women who had imitated her look. 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.
Negative portrayal of the feminine lesbian
In the 1970s and early '80s, when
lesbian feminist
Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logica ...
s rejected the
butch and femme
''Butch'' and ''femme'' (; ; ) are terms used in the lesbian subculture to ascribe or acknowledge a masculine (butch) or feminine (femme) identity with its associated traits, behaviors, styles, self-perception, and so on. The terms were found ...
identities that Hall's novel had helped to define, writers like
Jane Rule
Jane Vance Rule (28 March 1931 – 27 November 2007) was a Canadian writer of lesbian-themed works. Her first novel, ''Desert of the Heart'', appeared in 1964, when gay activity was still a criminal offence. It turned Rule into a reluctant m ...
and Blanche Wiesen Cook criticised ''The Well'' for defining lesbianism in terms of masculinity, as well as for presenting lesbian life as "joyless".
Furthermore, ''The Well'' arguably embodies what modern readers may regard as
misogynistic
Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practiced fo ...
and
biphobic
Biphobia is aversion toward bisexuality and bisexual people as individuals. It is a form of homophobia against those in the bisexual community. It can take the form of denial that bisexuality is a genuine sexual orientation, or of negative ste ...
ideas in its presentation of the
femme
''Femme'' (; , literally meaning "woman") is a term traditionally used to describe a lesbian who exhibits a feminine identity or gender presentation. Alternate meanings of the word also exist with some non-lesbian individuals using the word, ...
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".
Moreover, Hemmings continues that both Mary and Angela represent the "'traitorous femme' who remains untrustworthy as she may leave you er female loverfor a man".
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. Some women in this period ascribed to the theory of
Otto Weininger
Otto Weininger (; 3 April 1880 – 4 October 1903) was an Austrian philosopher who lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1903, he published the book ''Geschlecht und Charakter'' (''Sex and Character''), which gained popularity after his suici ...
, 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".
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." What many refer to as Stephen's ' butch lesbianism', Prosser suggests, is actually a
transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...
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".
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" prevalent in the nineteenth century. Sex was seen as something that "could only occur in the presence of an imperial and imperious penis", such that sex between women was simply not recognised to exist. Newton shows how sexologists of the time, like
Ellis
Ellis is a surname of Welsh and English origin. Retrieved 21 January 2014 An independent French origin of the surname is said to derive from the phrase fleur-de-lis.
Surname
A
* Abe Ellis (Stargate), a fictional character in the TV series ' ...
, echoes this sentiment, where his "antifeminism and reluctance to see active lust in women committed him to fusing inversion and masculinity". In a society "very conscious of sex and its vast importance", 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", which simultaneously enabled the feminine women in the novel to demonstrate their lesbianism through "association with their masculine partners".
The novel has had its defenders among feminists in the academy, such as
Alison Hennegan
Alison Hennegan is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Trinity Hall. She is also a prominent campaigner for gay and lesbian rights in the UK and a journalist.
Hennegan's academic work focuses on le ...
, 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.
In more recent criticism, critics have tended to focus on the novel's historical context, but ''The Wells reputation as "''the most depressing'' lesbian novel ever written" persists and is still controversial. Some critics see the book as reinforcing
homophobic
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred or antipathy, m ...
beliefs, while others argue that the book's tragedy and its depiction of shame are its most compelling aspects.
''The Well''s ideas and attitudes now strike many readers as dated, and few critics praise its literary quality. 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.
Publication and contemporary response
Three publishers praised ''The Well'' but turned it down. Hall's agent then sent the manuscript to
Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960.
Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation ...
who, though cautious about publishing a controversial book, saw the potential for a commercial success. Cape tested the waters with a small
print run
Print circulation is the average number of copies of a publication. The number of copies of a non-periodical publication (such as a book) are usually called print run. Circulation is not always the same as copies sold, often called paid circulat ...
of 1500 copies, priced at 15
shilling
The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence o ...
s – about twice the cost of an average novel – to make it less attractive to sensation-seekers. Publication, originally scheduled for late 1928, was brought forward when he discovered that another novel with a lesbian theme,
Compton Mackenzie
Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie, (17 January 1883 – 30 November 1972) was a Scottish writer of fiction, biography, histories and a memoir, as well as a cultural commentator, raconteur and lifelong Scottish independence, Scottish nation ...
's ''Extraordinary Women'', was to be published in September. Though the two books proved to have little in common, Hall and Cape saw ''Extraordinary Women'' as a competitor and wanted to beat it to market. ''The Well'' appeared on 27 July, in a black cover with a plain jacket. Cape sent review copies only to newspapers and magazines he thought would handle the subject matter non-sensationally.
Early reviews were mixed. Some critics found the novel too preachy; others, including
Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf (; – ) was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, Woolf was an avid publisher of his own work ...
, 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. In the three weeks after the book appeared in bookstores, no reviewer called for its
suppression
Suppression may refer to:
Laws
* Suppression of Communism Act
*Suppression order a type of censorship where a court rules that certain information cannot be published
* Tohunga Suppression Act 1907, an Act of the Parliament of New Zealand aimed ...
or suggested that it should not have been published. 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.'"
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.
Possible autobiography
Although Hall's childhood bore little resemblance to Stephen's life, 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. 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, does not resemble Hall's partner Una Troubridge, an accomplished sculptor who translated
Colette
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (; 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known mononymously as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her ...
's novels into English. Hall said she drew on herself only for the "fundamental emotions that are characteristic of the inverted".
''Sunday Express'' campaign
James Douglas, editor of the ''
Sunday Express
The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
'', did not agree. Douglas was a dedicated moralist and an exponent of
muscular Christianity
Muscular Christianity is a philosophical movement that originated in England in the mid-19th century, characterized by a belief in patriotic duty, discipline, self-sacrifice, masculinity, and the moral and physical beauty of athleticism.
The mov ...
, a movement which sought to reinvigorate the
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...
by promoting physical health and manliness. His colourfully worded editorials on subjects such as "the
flapper
Flappers were a subculture of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts (knee height was considered short during that period), bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptab ...
vote" (that is, the extension of suffrage to women under 30) and "modern sex novelists" helped the ''Express'' family of papers prosper in the cutthroat circulation wars of the late 1920s. These leader articles (
editorial
An editorial, or leading article (UK) or leader (UK) is an article written by the senior editorial people or publisher of a newspaper, magazine, or any other written document, often unsigned. Australian and major United States newspapers, suc ...
s) shared the pages of the ''Sunday Express'' with gossip, murderers' confessions, and features about the love affairs of great men and women of the past.
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 his editorial the next day, Douglas wrote that " sexual inversion and perversion" had already become too visible and that the publication of ''The Well'' brought home the need for society to "cleans itself from the leprosy of these lepers". For Douglas the
sexological
Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behaviors, and functions. The term ''sexology'' does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sexuality, such as social criticism.
Sexologists ap ...
view of homosexuality was
pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...
, incompatible with the
Christian doctrine
Christian theology is the theology of Christian belief and practice. Such study concentrates primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, as well as on Christian tradition. Christian theologians use biblical exegesis, ...
of
free will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actio ...
; instead, he argued, homosexuals were damned by their own choice – which meant that others could be corrupted by "their propaganda". Above all, children must be protected: "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of
prussic acid
Hydrogen cyanide, sometimes called prussic acid, is a chemical compound with the formula HCN and structure . It is a colorless, extremely poisonous, and flammable liquid that boils slightly above room temperature, at . HCN is produced on an in ...
than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul." He called on the publishers to withdraw the book and the
Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...
to take action if they did not. (The comparison between pornography and poison was made by
Lord Chief Justice
Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or are ...
Obscene Publications Act 1857
The Obscene Publications Act 1857 (20 & 21 Vict. c.83), also known as Lord Campbell's Act or Campbell's Act, was a piece of legislation in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland dealing with obscenity. For the first time, it made the sale ...
.)
In what Hall described as an act of "imbecility coupled with momentary panic",
Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960.
Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation ...
sent a copy of ''The Well'' to the Home Secretary for his opinion, offering to withdraw the book if it would be in the
public interest
The public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public" and society.
Overview
Economist Lok Sang Ho in his ''Public Policy and the Public Interest'' argues that the public interest must be assessed impartially and, therefore ...
to do so. The Home Secretary was
William Joynson-Hicks
William is a male given name of Germanic languages, Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norm ...
, a
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
known for his crackdowns on alcohol, nightclubs and gambling, as well as for his opposition to a revised version of ''
The Book of Common Prayer
The ''Book of Common Prayer'' (BCP) is the name given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The original book, published in 1549 in the reign o ...
''. He took only two days to reply that ''The Well'' was "gravely detrimental to the public interest"; if Cape did not withdraw it voluntarily, criminal proceedings would be brought.
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
upright=1.3, Mardi Gras papier-mâché masks, Haiti
upright=1.3, Papier-mâché Catrinas, traditional figures for day of the dead celebrations in Mexico
Papier-mâché (, ; , literally "chewed paper") is a composite material consisting of p ...
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.
One consignment of 250 copies was stopped at
Dover
Dover () is a town and major ferry port in Kent, South East England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies south-east of Canterbury and east of Maidstone ...
. Then the Chairman of the
Board of Customs
HM Customs (His or Her Majesty's Customs) was the national Customs service of England (and then of Great Britain from 1707, the United Kingdom from 1801) until a merger with the Department of Excise in 1909. The phrase 'HM Customs', in use si ...
balked. He had read ''The Well'' and considered it a fine book, not at all obscene; he wanted no part of suppressing it. On 19 October he released the seized copies for delivery to Leopold Hill's premises, where the
Metropolitan Police
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
were waiting with a search warrant. Hill and Cape were summoned to appear at
Bow Street Magistrates' Court
Bow Street Magistrates' Court became one of the most famous magistrates' court in England. Over its 266-year existence it occupied various buildings on Bow Street in Central London, immediately north-east of Covent Garden. It closed in 2006 and ...
to show cause why the book should not be destroyed.
Response
From its beginning, the ''Sunday Express''s campaign drew the attention of other papers. Some backed Douglas, including the ''
Sunday Chronicle
The ''Sunday Chronicle'' was a newspaper in the United Kingdom, published from 1885 to 1955.
The newspaper was founded in Manchester by Edward Hulton in August 1885. He was known for his sporting coverage, already publishing the ''Sporting Chron ...
'', ''
The People
The ''Sunday People'' is a British tabloid Sunday newspaper. It was founded as ''The People'' on 16 October 1881.
At one point owned by Odhams Press, The ''People'' was acquired along with Odhams by the Mirror Group in 1961, along with the ' ...
'' and ''Truth''. The ''Daily News and Westminster Gazette'' ran a review that, without commenting on Douglas's action, said the novel "present das a martyr a woman in the grip of a vice". Most of the British press defended ''The Well''. ''The Nation'' suggested that the ''Sunday Express'' had only started its campaign because it was August, the journalistic
silly season
In the United Kingdom, silly season is a period in the summer months known for frivolous news stories in the mass media. The term was first attested in 1861, and listed in the second (1894) edition of ''Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable''. ...
Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
newspaper, called Douglas a "stunt journalist"; he said no one would give the book to a child, no child would want to read it, and any who did would find nothing harmful. Dawson also printed a scathing condemnation of the Home Office by
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
and started a counter-campaign that helped Hall obtain statements of support from the
National Union of Railwaymen
The National Union of Railwaymen was a trade union of railway workers in the United Kingdom. The largest railway workers' union in the country, it was influential in the national trade union movement.
History
The NUR was an industrial union ...
and the
South Wales Miners' Federation
The South Wales Miners' Federation (SWMF), nicknamed "The Fed", was a trade union for coal miners in South Wales. It survives as the South Wales Area of the National Union of Mineworkers.
Forerunners
The Amalgamated Association of Miners (AA ...
.
Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf (; – ) was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, Woolf was an avid publisher of his own work ...
and
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly ''A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910), and ''A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short stori ...
drafted a letter of protest against the suppression of ''The Well'', assembling a list of supporters that included Shaw, T. S. Eliot,
Arnold Bennett
Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist. He wrote prolifically: between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboratio ...
,
Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain (29 December 1893 – 29 March 1970) was an English Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, writer, feminist, socialist and pacifist. Her best-selling 1933 memoir ''Testament of Youth'' recounted her experiences during the First ...
and
Ethel Smyth
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth (; 22 April 18588 May 1944) was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas.
Smyth tended t ...
. According to
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
, the plan broke down when Hall objected to the wording of the letter, insisting it mention her book's "artistic merit – even genius". ''The Well''s sentimental romanticism, traditional form, and lofty style – using words like ''withal'', ''betoken'' and ''hath'' – did not appeal to
Modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
aesthetics; not all those willing to defend it on grounds of literary freedom were equally willing to praise its artistry. The petition dwindled to a short letter in ''
The Nation and Athenaeum
''The Nation and Athenaeum'', or simply ''The Nation'', was a United Kingdom political weekly newspaper with a Liberal/Labour viewpoint. It was formed in 1921 from the merger of the ''Athenaeum'', a literary magazine published in London since 1828 ...
'', signed by Forster and Virginia Woolf, that focused on the
chilling effects
Lumen, formerly Chilling Effects, is an American collaborative archive created by Wendy Seltzer and founded along with several law school clinics and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to protect lawful online activity from legal threats. L ...
of censorship on writers.
UK trial
The obscenity trial began on 9 November 1928. Cape's
solicitor
A solicitor is a legal practitioner who traditionally deals with most of the legal matters in some jurisdictions. A person must have legally-defined qualifications, which vary from one jurisdiction to another, to be described as a solicitor and ...
Harold Rubinstein sent out 160 letters to potential witnesses. Many were reluctant to appear in court; according to Virginia Woolf, "they generally put it down to the weak heart of a father, or a cousin who is about to have twins". About 40 turned up on the day of the trial, including Woolf herself, Forster, and such diverse figures as biologist
Julian Huxley
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. ...
Charles Ricketts
Charles de Sousy Ricketts (2 October 1866 – 7 October 1931) was a British artist, illustrator, author and printer, known for his work as a book designer and typographer and for his costume and scenery designs for plays and operas.
Ricketts ...
of the
Royal Academy of Art
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...
and
Rabbi
A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...
Norman Haire
Norman Haire, born Norman Zions (21 January 1892, Sydney – 11 September 1952, London) was an Australian medical practitioner and sexologist. He has been called "the most prominent sexologist in Britain" between the wars.
Life
When Norman was b ...
, who was the star witness after Havelock Ellis bowed out, declared that homosexuality ran in families and a person could no more become it by reading books than if he could become syphilitic by reading about
syphilis
Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, an ...
. None were allowed to offer their views of the novel. Under the
Obscene Publications Act
Since 1857, a series of obscenity laws known as the Obscene Publications Acts have governed what can be published in England and Wales. The classic definition of criminal obscenity is if it "tends to deprave and corrupt," stated in 1868 by Lord ...
of 1857,
Chief Magistrate
Chief magistrate is a public official, executive or judicial, whose office is the highest in its class. Historically, the two different meanings of magistrate have often overlapped and refer to, as the case may be, to a major political and admini ...
Sir
Chartres Biron
Sir Henry Chartres Biron (10 January 1863 – 28 January 1940) was a British barrister who was later chief magistrate of the metropolitan police courts. He presided over the trial for obscenity of Radclyffe Hall's lesbian novel, ''The Well ...
could decide whether the book was obscene without hearing any testimony on the question. "I don't think people are entitled to express an opinion upon a matter which is the decision of the court," he said. Since Hall herself was not on trial, she did not have the right to her own counsel, and Cape's
barrister
A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. Their tasks include taking cases in superior courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, researching law and ...
Norman Birkett
William Norman Birkett, 1st Baron Birkett, (6 September 1883 – 10 February 1962) was a British barrister, judge, politician and preacher who served as the alternate British judge during the Nuremberg Trials.
Birkett received his education ...
had persuaded her not to give evidence herself.
Birkett arrived in court two hours late. In his defence, he tried to claim that the relationships between women in ''The Well of Loneliness'' were purely
platonic
Plato's influence on Western culture was so profound that several different concepts are linked by being called Platonic or Platonist, for accepting some assumptions of Platonism, but which do not imply acceptance of that philosophy as a whole. It ...
in nature. Biron replied, "I have read the book." Hall had urged Birkett before the trial not to "''sell'' the inverts in our defence". She took advantage of a lunch recess to tell him that if he continued to maintain her book had no lesbian content she would stand up in court and tell the magistrate the truth before anyone could stop her. Birkett was forced to retract. He argued instead that the book was tasteful and possessed a high degree of
literary merit
Artistic merit is the artistic quality or value of any given work of art, music, film, literature, sculpture or painting.
Obscenity and literary merit
The 1921 US trial of James Joyce's novel ''Ulysses'' concerned the publication of the ''Nausi ...
. James Melville, appearing for Leopold Hill, took a similar line: the book was "written in a reverend spirit", not to inspire libidinous thoughts but to examine a social question. The theme itself should not be forbidden, and the book's treatment of its theme was unexceptionable.
In his judgement, issued on 16 November, Biron applied the
Hicklin test
The Hicklin test is a legal test for obscenity established by the English case ''Regina v Hicklin'' (1868). At issue was the statutory interpretation of the word "obscene" in the Obscene Publications Act 1857, which authorized the destruction of ...
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.
Appeal
Hill and Cape appealed to the London
Court of Quarter Sessions
The courts of quarter sessions or quarter sessions were local courts traditionally held at four set times each year in the Kingdom of England from 1388 (extending also to Wales following the Laws in Wales Act 1535). They were also established in ...
. The prosecutor,
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
Sir
Thomas Inskip
Thomas Walker Hobart Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote, (5 March 1876 – 11 October 1947) was a British politician who served in many legal posts, culminating in serving as Lord Chancellor from 1939 until 1940. Despite legal posts dominating his ...
, solicited testimony from biological and medical experts and from the writer
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
...
. But when Kipling appeared on the morning of the trial, Inskip told him he would not be needed. James Melville had wired the defence witnesses the night before to tell them not to come in. 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. After deliberating for only five minutes, they upheld Biron's decision.
''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". Though the introduction, by journalist
P. R. Stephensen
Percy Reginald Stephensen (20 November 1901 – 28 May 1965) was an Australian writer, publisher and political activist, first aligned with communism and later shifting support towards far-right politics. He was the co-founder of the fascist Aus ...
, 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. It portrayed Hall as a humourless moralist who had a great deal in common with the opponents of her novel. 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''.
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
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'',
Janet Flanner
Janet Flanner (March 13, 1892 – November 7, 1978) was an American writer and pioneering narrative journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975.Yagoda, Ben ''About T ...
reported that it sold most heavily at the news vendor's cart that served passengers travelling to London on '' La Fleche D'Or''.
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
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...
James Chuter Ede
James Chuter Ede, Baron Chuter-Ede of Epsom, (11 September 1882 – 11 November 1965), was a British teacher, trade unionist and Labour Party politician. He served as Home Secretary under Prime Minister Clement Attlee from 1945 to 1951, becomi ...
told Troubridge that any publisher reprinting the book would risk prosecution. In 1949 Falcon Press brought out an edition with no legal challenge. ''The Well'' has been in print continuously ever since and has been translated into at least fourteen languages. In the 1960s it was still selling 100,000 copies a year in the United States alone. 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. In 1974, it was read to the British public on
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
's ''
Book at Bedtime
''Book at Bedtime'' (''A Book at Bedtime'' until 9 July 1993) is a long-running radio programme that is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 each weekday evening between 22.45 and 23.00.
The programme presents readings of fiction, including modern classics, ...
''.
US publication and trial
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers i ...
had planned to publish ''The Well of Loneliness'' in the United States at the same time as Cape in the United Kingdom. But after Cape brought forward the publication date, Knopf found itself in the position of publishing a book that had been withdrawn in its home country. They refused, telling Hall that nothing they could do would keep the book from being treated as pornography.
Cape sold the US rights to the recently formed publishing house of
Pascal Covici
Pascal Avram "Pat" Covici (November 4, 1885–October 14, 1964) was a Romanian Jewish-American book publisher and editor, best known for his close associations with authors such as John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, and many more noted American literary ...
and Donald Friede. Friede had heard gossip about ''The Well'' at a party at
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (; August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm mora ...
's house and immediately decided to acquire it. He had previously sold a copy of Dreiser's ''
An American Tragedy
''An American Tragedy'' is a 1925 novel by American writer Theodore Dreiser. He began the manuscript in the summer of 1920, but a year later abandoned most of that text. It was based on the notorious murder of Grace Brown in 1906 and the trial of ...
'' 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
Morris Ernst (August 23, 1888 – May 21, 1976) was an American lawyer and prominent attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In public life, he defended and asserted the rights of Americans to privacy and freedom from censorshi ...
, co-founder of the
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
, to defend the book against legal challenges. Friede invited John Saxton Sumner of the
New York Society for the Suppression of Vice
The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV or SSV) was an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public, founded in 1873. Its specific mission was to monitor compliance with state laws and work with the courts and di ...
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
The New England Watch and Ward Society (founded as the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice) was a Boston, Massachusetts, organization involved in the censorship of books and the performing arts from the late 19th century to the middle ...
, 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.
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.
In the US, as in the UK, the Hicklin test of obscenity applied, but New York
case law
Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of a l ...
had established that books should be judged by their effects on adults rather than on children and that literary merit was relevant. When defending ''The Well'', Ernst argued that because lesbianism itself was not an obscene subject, the book did not have any sexual explicitness. Ernst obtained statements from authors including Dreiser,
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...
,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularize ...
,
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. Millay was a renowned social figure and noted feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. She wrote much of he ...
,
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was ...
,
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...
,
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, ...
,
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in seve ...
,
Ellen Glasgow
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (April 22, 1873 – November 21, 1945) was an American novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942 for her novel ''In This Our Life''. She published 20 novels, as well as short stories, to critical ac ...
and
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos (; January 14, 1896 – September 28, 1970) was an American novelist, most notable for his ''U.S.A.'' trilogy.
Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He traveled widely as a young man, visit ...
. 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
Brief, briefs, or briefing may refer to:
Documents
* A letter
* A briefing note
* Papal brief, a papal letter less formal than a bull, sealed with the pope's signet ring or stamped with the device borne on this ring
* Design brief, a type of ed ...
. His argument relied on a comparison with ''Mademoiselle de Maupin'' by
Théophile Gautier
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier ( , ; 30 August 1811 – 23 October 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic.
While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier's work is difficult to classify and rem ...
, 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.
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
A trier of fact or finder of fact is a person or group who determines which facts are available in a legal proceeding (usually a trial) and how relevant they are to deciding its outcome. To determine a fact is to decide, from the evidence prese ...
; 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 Wells 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.
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. Customs barred the book from entering the country, which might also have prevented it from being shipped from state to state. Two months later in July, the
United States Customs Court
The United States Court of International Trade (case citations: Int'l Trade or Intl. Trade) is a U.S. federal court that adjudicates civil actions arising out of U.S. customs and international trade laws. Seated in New York City, it exercises ...
ruled that the book did not contain "one word, phrase, sentence or paragraph which could be truthfully pointed out as offensive to modesty".
Other 1928 lesbian novels
Three other novels with lesbian themes were published in England in 1928:
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen CBE (; 7 June 1899 – 22 February 1973) was an Irish-British novelist and short story writer notable for her books about the "big house" of Irish landed Protestants as well her fiction about life in wartime London.
Life
E ...
's ''The Hotel'',
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
's ''
Orlando
Orlando () is a city in the U.S. state of Florida and is the county seat of Orange County. In Central Florida, it is the center of the Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures rele ...
'' and
Compton Mackenzie
Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie, (17 January 1883 – 30 November 1972) was a Scottish writer of fiction, biography, histories and a memoir, as well as a cultural commentator, raconteur and lifelong Scottish independence, Scottish nation ...
's satirical novel ''Extraordinary Women''. None were banned. ''The Hotel'', like earlier English novels in which critics have identified lesbian themes, is marked by complete reticence, while ''Orlando'' may have been protected by its Modernist playfulness. 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". Mackenzie was disappointed; he had hoped a censorship case would increase his book's sales. 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, it sold only 2,000 copies.
A fourth 1928 novel, ''Ladies Almanack'' by the American writer
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes (, June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel ''Nightwood'' (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist litera ...
, not only contains a character based on Radclyffe Hall but includes passages that may be a response to ''The Well''. ''Ladies Almanack'' is a ''
roman à clef
''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship ...
'' of a lesbian literary and artistic circle in Paris, written in an archaic, Rabelaisian style and starring
Natalie Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted a literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors through her salon and al ...
as Dame Evangeline Musset. Much as Sir Phillip paces his study worrying about Stephen, Dame Musset's father "pac shis library in the most normal of Night-Shirts". 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?" ''Ladies Almanack'' is far more overtly sexual than ''The Well''; its cryptic style, full of in-jokes and ornate language, may have been intended to disguise its content from censors. It could not in any case be prosecuted by the Home Office, since it was published only in France, in a small, privately printed edition. It did not become widely available until 1972.
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. According to
Janet Flanner
Janet Flanner (March 13, 1892 – November 7, 1978) was an American writer and pioneering narrative journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975.Yagoda, Ben ''About T ...
, who reported on the opening night for ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', 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". 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.
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'', but was actually adapted from the novel ''Olivia'', now known to have been written by
Dorothy Bussy
Dorothy Bussy ( Strachey; 24 July 1865 – 1 May 1960) was an English novelist and translator, close to the Bloomsbury Group.
Family background and childhood
Dorothy Bussy was a member of the Strachey family, one of ten children of Jane St ...
. A mid-1930s
exploitation film
An exploitation film is a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content. Exploitation films are generally low-quality "B movies", though some set trends, attract critical attention, become hi ...
, ''Children of Loneliness'', stated it was "inspired by" ''The Well''. Little of Hall's novel can be discerned in its story of a butch lesbian who is blinded with acid and run over by a truck, freeing the naïve young roommate she seduced to find love with a fullback. A critic for the ''
Motion Picture Herald The ''Motion Picture Herald'' was an American film industry trade paper published from 1931 to December 1972.Anthony Slide, ed. (1985)''International Film, Radio, and Television Journals'' Greenwood Press. p. 242. It was replaced by the ''QP Herald ...
'' reported that during the film's run in Los Angeles in 1937 – as a double feature with ''Love Life of a Gorilla'' – a self-identified "doctor" appeared after the screening to sell pamphlets purporting to explain homosexuality. He was arrested for selling obscene literature.
In 1985, the Mexican writer and social activist
Nancy Cárdenas
Nancy Cárdenas (29 May 1934 – 23 March 1994) was a Mexican actor, poet, writer and feminist.
Education
Born in Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila, Cárdenas earned a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters at the National Autonomous University of Mexic ...
produced a play based on the novel. The play was staged in
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
's Fru Fru Theatre and was performed by
Irma Serrano
Irma Consuelo Cielo Serrano Castro (; born 9 December 1933) is a Mexican singer, actress and politician. Famous for her "tantalizing", "untamed spitfire" voice, she is one of the most noted performers of the ranchera and corrido genres; she was ni ...
and
Sonia Infante
Sonia Angélica Infante López (2 February 1944 – 16 July 2019), known as Sonia Infante, was a Mexican film and television actress.
The daughter of Ángel Infante, she followed him and her uncle Pedro into an acting career. Her film debut was i ...
Lesbian Herstory Archives
The Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) is a New York City-based archive, community center, and museum dedicated to preserving lesbian history, located in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The Archives contain the world's largest collection of materials by and a ...
Project Gutenberg Australia
Project Gutenberg Australia, abbreviated as PGA, is an Internet site which was founded in 2001 by Colin Choat. It is a sister site of Project Gutenberg, though there is no formal relationship between the two organizations. The site hosts free eboo ...