Episode 53
The Well of Loneliness
Tue, 2017-Jun-27 00:37 UTC
Length - 3:00
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Tuesday, 27 June 2017 is The Well of Loneliness.
The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by British author Radclyffe Hall. 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 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".
The novel became the target of a campaign by James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express, who wrote, "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel." Although its only sexual reference consists of the words "and that night, they were not divided", a British court judged it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women". In the United States the book survived legal challenges in New York state and in Customs Court.
Publicity over The Well'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 criticized it for Stephen's expressions of self-hatred, and viewed it as inspiring shame. Its role in promoting images of lesbians as "mannish" or cross-dressed women has also been controversial.
Although critics differ as to the value of The Well as a work of literature, its treatment of sexuality and gender continues to inspire study and debate.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:37 UTC on Tuesday, 27 June 2017.
For the full current version of the article, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well_of_Loneliness.
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