The Well of Loneliness, or The Gospel According to Radclyffe Hall

2013 ◽  
pp. 177-202
Keyword(s):  
Radclyffe Hall ◽  
The Well Of Loneliness

Hall, Radclyffe (1880–1943)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Gunn
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Great War ◽  
Fictional Characters ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Bloomsbury Group ◽  
Radclyffe Hall ◽  
King's College ◽  
The Great War ◽  
The Well Of Loneliness

Radclyffe Hall was a British novelist, poet, and lyricist. A contemporary of the Bloomsbury Group and proponent of Havelock Ellis's sexological theories, Hall is best known for the ground-breaking novel of sexual inversion, The Well of Loneliness (1928). The novel was the center of a landmark obscenity trial, and has continued to attract controversy. Its depiction of inversion has been both lauded and criticized by feminist, queer, and trans theorists. Hall was born Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe-Hall on August 12, 1880 to wealthy parents who divorced in 1883. She briefly attended King's College London and spent a year studying in Germany. In 1912 Hall converted to Catholicism with her partner at the time, the singer Mabel Batten. At Batten’s request, Hall did not serve in the women’s ambulance corps during the Great War (Baker). However, a number of Hall’s fictional characters find autonomy and sexual identity through their war service.

Beyond the Well of Loneliness: The Fiction of Radclyffe Hall

1984 ◽  
Vol 3 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 197
Author(s):  
George Wickes ◽  
Claudia Stillman Franks
Keyword(s):  
Radclyffe Hall ◽  
The Well Of Loneliness

scholarly journals «Preferiría verte (muerta) a mis pies». Eróticas maternas e infancias butch en Radclyffe Hall

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-108
Author(s):  
Camila Arbuet Osuna ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Radclyffe Hall ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Sexual Shame ◽  
The Well Of Loneliness

We will analyze the counterpoint versions of motherhood and butch childhoods in those novels by Radclyffe Hall addressing “sexual inversion,” the lesbian bestseller The Well of Loneliness (1928) and The Unlit Lamp (1924), which present significant differences regarding the conditions of possibility and the misfortunes of a queer life. We will concern ourselves with the representations of maternal abjection, in the light of the importance that Radclyffe assigns to this deeply disturbing erotic bond (whether aversion or attraction) for the development of butch childhoods. We will argue that a careful reading of the perversions of this bond makes clear that Radclyffe’s perspective –for all of its morality, sexual shame and desire to be admitted within the privileges of heterosexuality– allows for a critique of exclusivist, monogamous, and unconditional emotional pacts, as well as of the conception of happiness they give rise to.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Farfan
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Sexual Norms ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Well Of Loneliness

This introduction sets forth the book’s central argument and establishes the historical, theoretical, and critical context for its case studies. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modern sexual identities emerged into view while at the same time being rendered invisible, as in Oscar Wilde’s 1895 trial on charges of gross indecency and the 1928 obscenity trial of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. Early stage representations of homosexuality were typically coded or censored, yet the majority of the works considered in this book were highly visible in their subversions of conventional gender and sexual norms. Queer readings of these plays and performances establish connections across high and popular cultural domains, demonstrating that some of traditional modernism’s perceived failures, rejects, and outliers were modernist through their sexual dissidence. These insights in turn contribute to a more precise understanding of how modernity was mediated and how such mediations enacted change.

Very Serious Books

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Forster
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
World War I ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
World War ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
Surplus Women ◽  
British Home ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Well Of Loneliness

This chapter draws on the records of the British Home Office to reconsider the censorship of two novels by women in the late 1920s: Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness and the Norah James’s less well-known Sleeveless Errand. It argues that the suppression of these novels was a function of the way they were positioned and received as “serious” works, capable of effecting social change. The chapter argues that specific circumstances in the late 1920s also shaped the perception of the novels. A perception that World War I had radically imbalanced the British population by creating two million "surplus women" created an context where representations of women's sexuality were perceived as especially dangerous. Hall’s representation in The Well of Loneliness of the book as a medium with authority and social agency made both novels seem especially dangerous in this context, and thus, in the eyes of the Home Office, worthy of suppression.

Filthy Material

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Forster
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Twentieth Century Literature ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
Radclyffe Hall ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media

Modernist literature is inextricable from the history of obscenity. The trials of such figures as James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Radclyffe Hall loom large in accounts of twentieth-century literature. Filthy Material: Modernism and the Media of Obscenity reveals the ways that debates about obscenity and literature were shaped by changes in the history of media. The emergence of film, photography, and new printing technologies shaped how “literary value” was understood, altering how obscenity was defined and which texts were considered obscene. Filthy Material rereads the history of modernist obscenity to discover the role played by technological media in debates about obscenity. The shift from the intense censorship of the early twentieth century to the effective “end of obscenity” for literature at the middle of the century was not simply a product of cultural liberalization but also of a changing media ecology. Filthy Material brings together media theory and archival research to offer a fresh account of modernist obscenity with novel readings of works of modernist literature. It sheds new light on figures at the center of modernism’s obscenity trials (such as Joyce and Lawrence), demonstrates the relevance of the discourse of obscenity to understanding figures not typically associated with obscenity debates (such as T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis), and introduces new figures to our account of modernism (such as Norah James and Jack Kahane). It reveals how modernist obscenity reflected a contest over the literary in the face of new media technologies.

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