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Book
Radclyffe Hall · 1928
Hall's 1928 novel was tried for obscenity and banned in Britain for a single line — and that night, they were not divided — and it remains the founding English-language plea for a love the law would not name, written by an author who believed her own desire was a flaw in the making and demanded compassion for it anyway.
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What this book knows
To be born invert is to love without sanction — and still demand the world acknowledge that love as real.
shame
thousands of miserable, unwanted people, who have no right to love, no right to compassion because they're maimed — God's cruel; He let us get flawed in the making.
WL-RC-181Youth, what of youth? Shut away from so many of the pleasures that belonged by right to every young creature — more pitiful still was the lot of a girl who gave her love to an invert.
WL-RC-360desire
All that she was, and all that she had been and would be again, was fused at that moment into one imperative need, and that need was Stephen.
WL-RC-126They were lovers who walked in the vineyard of life. Love had lifted them up as on wings of fire, made them courageous, invincible, enduring.
WL-RC-280self-and-identity
Had nature been less daring with her, she might well have become a breeder of children, upholder of home — she belonged to the soil and fruitfulness of Morton.
WL-RC-094She must show that being the thing she was, she could climb to success over all opposition, in spite of a world trying its best to get her under.
WL-RC-225Editor’s framing
The book is dated in its science and its self-pity, and reading it well means not flinching from either. Hall wrote inside the sexology of her day, which framed homosexuality as congenital inversion — a person born into the wrong body's longings — and her protagonist Stephen Gordon pleads from inside that frame, asking a cruel God why He let her get flawed in the making. Attend to what survives the dated vocabulary: the demand, unprecedented in English fiction of the period, that this love be acknowledged as real and its bearers as deserving of compassion rather than punishment. The plea is shaped by shame because shame was the only register the culture left open, but the book refuses to end in apology. Vela reads it as the historical hinge it is — the text that made later, freer writing about queer desire possible by being banned for asking so little.
Featured passage
They no longer felt desolate, hungry outcasts; unloved and unwanted, despised of the world. They were lovers who walked in the vineyard of life, plucking the warm, sweet fruits of that vineyard. Love had lifted them up as on wings of fire, had made them courageous, invincible, enduring. Nothing could be lack- ing to those who loved — the very earth gave of her fullest bounty. The earth seemed to come alive in response to the touch of their healthful and eager bodies — nothing could be lacking to those who loved. And thus in a cloud of illusion and glory, sped the last enchanted days at Orotava. Wf Dy oats, Ppa he BOOK FIVE CHAPTER 40 z ARLY in April Stephen and Mary returned to the house in Paris. This second home-coming seemed wonderfully sweet by reason of its peaceful and happy completeness, so that they turned to smile at each other as they passed through the door, and Stephen said very softly: “Welcome home, Mary.’ And now for the first time the old house was home. Mary went quickly from room to room humming a little tune as she did so, feeling that she saw with a new understanding the inanimate objects which filled those rooms — were they not Stephen’s? Every now and again she must pause to touch them because they were Stephen’s. Then she turned and went into Stephen’s bedroom; not timidly, dreading to be unwelcome, but quite without fear or restraint or shyness, and this gave her a warm little glow of pleasure. Stephen was busily grooming her hair with a couple of brushes that had been dipped in water. The water had darkened her hair in patches, but had deepened the wide wave above her forehead. Seeing Mary in the glass she did not turn round, but just smiled for a moment at their two reflections. Mary sat down in an arm-chair and watched her, noticing the strong, thin line of her thighs; noticing too the curve of her breasts — slight and compact, of a certain beauty. She had taken off her jacket and looked very tall in her soft silk shirt and her skirt of dark serge. ‘ Tired? ’ she inquired, glancing down at the girl. ‘ No, not a bit tired,’ smiled Mary. Stephen walked over to the stationary basin and proceeded to wash her hands under the tap, spotting her white silk cuffs in the process. Going to the cupboard she got out a clean shirt, 368 THE WELL OF LONELINESS slipped in a pair of simple gold cufft-links, and changed; after which she put on a new neck-tie. Mary said: ‘ Who’s been looking after your clothes — sewing on buttons and that sort of thing? ° ‘I don’t know exactly — Puddle or Adèle. Why? ’
They no longer felt desolate, hungry outcasts; unloved and unwanted, despised of the world.
6 published passages · book excerpt · research analysis
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