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= The_Well_of_Loneliness =
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Introduction
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'The Well of Loneliness' is a lesbian novel by British author
Radclyffe Hall that was first published in 1928 by Jonathan Cape. It
follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an
upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" (homosexuality) is
apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn, whom
she meets while serving as an ambulance driver during the First World
War, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and
rejection, which Hall depicts as the typical sufferings of "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 became the target of a
campaign by James Douglas, editor of the 'Sunday Express'. Douglas
wrote that "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a
phial of prussic acid than this novel." A British court judged it
obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women"; not
until 1949, twenty years later, was it again published in England. In
the United States, the book survived legal challenges in New York
state and in Customs Court.
Publicity over 'The Well of Loneliness's legal battles increased the
visibility of lesbians 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, and viewed it as inspiring
shame. The novel was subject to great criticism in its time (some of
which may have been motivated by prejudice) but has come to be
recognised as a classic of queer literature.
The book entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.
Background
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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 and the James Tait Black Prize. 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,
before she began work. Her goals were social and political; she wanted
to end public silence about homosexuality 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.
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'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 - 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's rumoured
relationship with the Princesse de Lamballe.
Brockett next introduces Stephen to Valérie Seymour, who - like her
prototype, Natalie Clifford Barney - is the hostess of a literary
salon, 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
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, 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 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
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Hall, who had converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1912, was
devoutly religious. She was also a believer in communication with the
dead and had once hoped to become a medium - a fact that brought her
into conflict with the church, which condemned spiritualism. Both
these beliefs made their way into 'The Well of Loneliness'.
Stephen, born on Christmas Eve and named after the first martyr of
Christianity, dreams as a child that "in some queer way she [is]
Jesus". 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 ..." Hall uses the mark of Cain, 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 Well' 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.
Plot summary
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The book's protagonist, Stephen Gordon, is born in the late Victorian
era to upper-class parents in Worcestershire 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.
Stephen's father, Sir Phillip, dotes on her; he seeks to understand
her through the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, 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 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[ing] to 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 - assumed by critics to be 'Psychopathia Sexualis', a
text about homosexuality and paraphilias - 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 hostess Valérie Seymour. During World War I she joins an
ambulance unit, eventually serving at the front and earning the Croix
de Guerre. 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
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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 such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis, 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, 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 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 characteristics; 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.
Awareness of homosexuality in society
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In 1921, Lord Birkenhead, the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain,
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,
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. As late as 1994, an article in 'Feminist Review'
noted that 'The Well' "regularly appears in coming-out stories - and
not just those of older lesbians". It has often been mocked: Terry
Castle says that "like many bookish lesbians I seem to have spent much
of my adult life making jokes about it", and Mary Renault, 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 survivor said, "Remembering that book, I wanted to live
long enough to kiss another woman."
Clothing and sexuality
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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 - 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
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In the 1970s and early '80s, when lesbian feminists rejected the butch
and femme identities that Hall's novel had helped to define, writers
like Jane Rule 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 and biphobic ideas in its presentation of the
femme 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 [her
female lover] for a man".
Bisexuality
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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, 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
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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 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, 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, 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 Well' reputation as "'the most
depressing' lesbian novel ever written" persists and is still
controversial. Some critics see the book as reinforcing homophobic
beliefs, while others argue that the book's tragedy and its depiction
of shame are its most compelling aspects.
'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
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Three publishers praised 'The Well' but turned it down. Hall's agent
then sent the manuscript to Jonathan Cape who, though cautious about
publishing a controversial book, saw the potential for a commercial
success. Cape tested the waters with a small print run of 1500 copies,
priced at 15 shillings - 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'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, 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 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
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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's novels into English. Hall said she
drew on herself only for the "fundamental emotions that are
characteristic of the inverted".
''Sunday Express'' campaign
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James Douglas, editor of the 'Sunday Express', did not agree. Douglas
was a dedicated moralist and an exponent of muscular Christianity, a
movement which sought to reinvigorate the Church of England by
promoting physical health and manliness. His colourfully worded
editorials on subjects such as "the flapper 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 (editorials)
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[e] itself from the leprosy of these lepers". For Douglas the
sexological view of homosexuality was pseudoscience, incompatible with
the Christian doctrine of free will; 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 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 to take action if they did not. (The
comparison between pornography and poison was made by Lord Chief
Justice, Lord Campbell, on introducing the Obscene Publications Act
1857.)
In what Hall described as an act of "imbecility coupled with momentary
panic", Jonathan Cape 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 to do so. The Home Secretary was William
Joynson-Hicks, a Conservative 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'. 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 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. Then the Chairman
of the Board of Customs 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 were waiting
with a search warrant. Hill and Cape were summoned to appear at Bow
Street Magistrates' Court 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 People' and 'Truth'. The 'Daily News and Westminster
Gazette' ran a review that, without commenting on Douglas's action,
said the novel "present[ed] as 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 when good stories
are scarce. 'Country Life' and 'Lady's Pictorial' both ran positive
reviews. Arnold Dawson of the 'Daily Herald', a 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 H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw and started a
counter-campaign that helped Hall obtain statements of support from
the National Union of Railwaymen and the South Wales Miners'
Federation.
Leonard Woolf and E. M. Forster drafted a letter of protest against
the suppression of 'The Well', assembling a list of supporters that
included Shaw, T. S. Eliot, Arnold Bennett, Vera Brittain and Ethel
Smyth. According to Virginia Woolf, 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 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', signed by Forster and Virginia
Woolf, that focused on the chilling effects of censorship on writers.
UK trial
==========
The obscenity trial began on 9 November 1928. Cape's solicitor 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, Laurence Housman of the British Sexological
Society, Robert Cust JP of the London Morality Council, Charles
Ricketts of the Royal Academy of Art and Rabbi Joseph Frederick Stern
of the East London Synagogue. Norman Haire, 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. None were
allowed to offer their views of the novel. Under the Obscene
Publications Act 1857, Chief Magistrate Sir Chartres Biron 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 Norman Birkett 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 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.
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 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
prosecutor, Attorney General Sir Thomas Inskip, solicited testimony
from biological and medical experts and from the writer Rudyard
Kipling. 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,
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', Janet Flanner 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 James Chuter Ede 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's
'Book at Bedtime'. In May 1999, a dramatized version was broadcast on
BBC Radio 4 and has since been repeated on Radio 4 Extra.
US publication and trial
======================================================================
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 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 and Donald Friede. Friede had heard gossip about 'The
Well' at a party at Theodore Dreiser's house and immediately decided
to acquire it. He had previously sold a copy of Dreiser's 'An American
Tragedy' 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,
co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, to defend the book
against legal challenges. Friede invited John Saxton Sumner of the New
York Society for the Suppression of Vice to buy a copy directly from
him, to ensure that he, not a bookseller, would be the one prosecuted.
He also travelled to Boston to give a copy to the Watch and Ward
Society, 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 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, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St.
Vincent Millay, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, H. L. Mencken,
Upton Sinclair, Ellen Glasgow and John Dos Passos. 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. His argument relied on a
comparison with 'Mademoiselle de Maupin' by Théophile Gautier, which
had been cleared of obscenity in the 1922 case 'Halsey v. New York'.
'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; 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 Well' 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 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's 'The Hotel', Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando' and
Compton Mackenzie'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, 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' of a lesbian literary and artistic
circle in Paris, written in an archaic, Rabelaisian style and starring
Natalie Barney as Dame Evangeline Musset. Much as Sir Phillip paces
his study worrying about Stephen, Dame Musset's father "pac[es] his
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, who reported
on the opening night for 'The New Yorker', 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. A mid-1930s
exploitation film, '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' 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
produced a play based on the novel. The play was staged in Mexico
City's Fru Fru Theatre and was performed by Irma Serrano and Sonia
Infante.
Sources
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External links
======================================================================
* [
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2005/january2/
Facsimiles of correspondence relating to the seizure of 'The Well of
Loneliness'] at The National Archives
*
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20070822014816/http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/pblintrhall.htm
Letter by Radclyffe Hall about the writing of 'The Well'] at the
Lesbian Herstory Archives
*
[
https://archive.today/20060113221607/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,8464,00.html
Radclyffe Hall at Times Online] including correspondence, document
facsimiles, and text of legal judgments
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* [
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0609021h.html The Well of
Loneliness] courtesy of Project Gutenberg Australia
*
License
=========
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well_of_Loneliness
