The Well of Loneliness - Radclyffe Hall

"Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents—a fencer, a horse
rider and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions." 

I' m conflicted about this book. On one hand I enjoyed the writing style, it was elegant and there were some genuinely beautiful and moving passages. The subject matter of queerness and gender non-conformity is dear to my heart, and I deeply related to many of Stephan's struggles which Hall expresses and explores with skill. 

However, the plot drags in the middle, and the opinions expressed are one-sided. Stephan is at least slightly an autobiographical representation of Hall and this gives the book a great emotional weight. But it also closes Hall's ability to write other points of view. The side characters of Wanda and Valerie are fascinating and show opposing reactions to living as a queer women in the early 1900s. I thought that with their introduction, Hall would explore some of the different view-points within the queer community at the time. But no... not at all. A thoroughly missed opportunity I feel, as the side characters turn out to serve no narrative purpose at all. 

I have to be honest that I didn't feel that this was accurately categorised as a lesbian book, though I understand why it was. Our understanding of people and psychology has come along quite a ways. I personally believe that Stephan, and possibly Radclyffe Hall in extension, weren't lesbians but transgender men that didn't have the words. The book itself talks about inverts and the "normal" women that fall in love with them. This also makes sense when looking at Stephan's attitudes to gay men which is frankly down right homophobic. If you read this as a transgender man hating that these man have what they don't i.e. a male body yet are "squandering" it by being feminine, then this makes more sense. Though it is by no means condonable. 

I could not help but be shocked at some of the hypocrisy, the books striving for acceptance of a minority while at the same time there is an underlying attitude of snobbishness and chauvinism towards other minorities. Stephan had certainly taken in the classist dogma of much of the landed gentry and would have been downright awful if she had been born male as her gender non-conformity was the only thing that gave her any self doubt/ interesting foibles. 

Age Rating 14+ Nothing untoward.