Source of loneliness

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Source of Loneliness (title of the original edition: The Well of Loneliness ) is a novel by the English author Radclyffe Hall , published in 1928 . It tells the life of the lesbian Stephen Gordon , an English woman from an upper-class family whose sexual orientation comes to light at an early age. As an ambulance driver during World War I , she meets Mary Llewellyn and falls in love with her, but their mutual happiness is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall says has a devastating influence on homosexuals. The novel characterizes homosexuality as a natural, God-given condition and expressly calls for the right to a homosexual existence.

The novel was the target of a campaign by the then editor of the Sunday Express newspaper , in the course of which the following sentence was read, among other things: "I would rather give a healthy boy or girl a vial of hydrogen cyanide than this novel." Sex scene interpretable passage of the book consists of the words "and that night they were not separated", the novel was classified as obscene by a British court because it defended "unnatural practices between women". In the United States , the novel survived both indictments in New York State and trials in the United States Court of International Trade .

The coverage of the legal exchange brought the English and American lesbians more into the focus of public perception. For decades, “Brunnen” was the best-known lesbian novel in English and was often the first source of information on female homosexuality that young lesbians could find. The novel was viewed differently by homosexual readers. While some held him in high regard, others criticized the self-hatred of the main character, portrayed by the author, and believed that this created feelings of shame in correspondingly inclined women. It was also discussed to what extent the work was partly responsible for spreading the assumption that lesbians behaved and dressed “more masculine” than heterosexual women. Some critics now assume that Stephen Gordon should be understood as a transsexual .

Although the majority of the critics did not rate the novel as an outstanding literary achievement, the "fountain" triggered public debates and scholarly debates on the subject by addressing sexuality and gender roles , which continue to this day.

History of origin

In 1926 Radclyffe Hall was at the height of her career. Her novel "Adam's Breed" about the spiritual awakening of an Italian head waiter was a bestseller and won the Prix ​​Femina and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize a few years later . She had long planned to write a novel about homosexuality and decided that her reputation was now sufficient to attract enough attention to such a work. Knowing that she was risking a scandal and the end of her career, she had her partner Una Troubridge give her the blessing before starting work. Their goals were social and political. She wanted to put an end to the public ignorance of homosexuality and achieve more tolerance. She also wanted to encourage all homosexuals to make their fortune through hard work and a socially beneficial lifestyle.

In April 1928, Hall informed her editor that her new book would require the full support of the editor and that she would not allow a single word to be changed. “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.” (In German something like: “Ich I put my pen at the service of one of the most misunderstood and persecuted groups in the world. [...] As far as I know, nothing like it has ever been addressed in fictional literature. ")

Three editors declined to publish Source of Solitude . Hall's agent then sent the manuscript to Jonathan Cape , who was concerned about publishing a controversial book, but still saw the potential for commercial success. Cape had a small test run of 1,500 copies printed and set the price at 15 shillings, around twice as high as it was then common for novels. This was done to make the book less attractive to sensation seekers. The publication, originally planned for the fall of 1928, was postponed when it became known that another novel about lesbians, Compton Mackenzie's Extraordinary Women , was due to be published in September. Although the books had little in common, Hall and Cape viewed the novel as competition and did not want to jeopardize the book's commercial success. The first edition of Quelle der Einsamkeit therefore appeared on July 27th with a black envelope and a simple cover. Cape only sent the test copies to newspapers and magazines that he believed would not be sensational on the subject.

action

The book's protagonist, Stephen Gordon , was born in the late Victorian era into an upper-class family in Worcestershire, England. Since the parents wanted a boy, they baptized her with a male name that they had chosen before the birth. Even at birth, she is described as a baby with narrow hips and broad shoulders. As a girl she hates clothes, wants to cut her hair short and wants to be a guy. At the age of seven, she falls in love with a maid named Collins and is deeply disappointed when she sees Collins kiss a servant in the house.

Stephen's father, Sir Phillip, tries to understand his daughter with the help of the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs , one of the first modern authors to theoretically deal with the subject of homosexuality. Her mother, Lady Anna, is aloof from her daughter and regards her as an eyesore and unworthy, hideous descendants of her husband. At the age of eighteen, Stephen befriends a Canadian, Martin Hallam. But his later declaration of love to her only fills her with horror. In the winter of the same year, Sir Phillip dies from a falling tree. In the last moments of his life, he tries to explain to his wife that Stephen is gay, but dies before he can convey it.

Natalie Barney, role model for the fictional character Valérie Seymour

Stephen is now beginning to wrap himself in masculine, tailored clothing. At twenty-one she falls in love with Angela Crossby , the American wife of a new neighbor. Angela only sees Stephen as a "cure for boredom". Stephen learns that Angela is having an affair with another man. Since Angela is afraid of being exposed by Stephen, she shows her husband a letter from her, which forwards it to Lady Anna. She denounces Stephen's use of the word love in the letter and regards her desire as an expression of lack of discipline and a misguided feeling. Stephen replies that she loved Angela as much as her father, Sir Phillip, her mother. After the argument, Stephen goes to her father's study and opens a locked bookcase in which she finds a book by Richard von Krafft-Ebing . From studying this book she concludes that she is gay oriented. For the sake of better understanding, it should be borne in mind that homosexuality was a largely unexplored area at the time and education about the subject was not common.

Stephen moves to London and starts writing. Her first novel is successful, unlike her second book. A playwright friend, Jonathan Brockett, who is homosexual himself, urges her to travel to Paris to improve her writing skills by gaining life experience. She follows this suggestion, gets a first impression of the urban subculture of homosexuals and meets salon owner Valérie Seymour. During the First World War , she joins a medical unit . During the war, she served at the front, among other things, and was awarded the Croix de guerre . She falls in love with a younger driver, Mary Llewellyn, with whom she lives after the war. The initial happiness is tarnished by the fact that Stephen resumes writing, whereupon Mary feels lonely and neglected and rushes into Parisian city life. Stephen fears that Mary will become bitter and hard-hearted and finds herself unable to guarantee her a normal and fulfilling life.

Martin Hallam, whom she met at the age of eighteen and whom she rejected at the time, now also lives in Paris, reconnects with Stephen and finally falls in love with Mary. Convinced that she cannot make Mary happy, Stephen fakes an affair with Valérie Seymour to drive Mary into Martin's arms. The novel ends with Stephen's request to God “Give us also the right to our existence!” (In German for example: “Give us the right to our existence.”)

Scientific and religious influences

Sexology

Hall wrote Source of Loneliness, among other things, to popularize the ideas of sexologists like Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis , who saw homosexuality as an innate and immutable trait. In Krafft-Eving's Psychopathia sexualis (published 1886), the book Stephen found in her father's study, homosexuality is described as a degenerative disorder that occurs increasingly in families with an increase in cases of mental disorders. After reading the book, Stephen considers himself and other homosexuals hideous and abnormal. In later texts, such as Sexual Inversion (published in 1896) by Havelock Ellis, which also wrote a foreword to the source of loneliness , homosexuality is only described as a difference and no longer as a disorder, a view that Krafft-Ebing later took . Hall favored these views over those of psychoanalysts , who saw homosexuality as an expression of retarded sexual development and believed that sexual orientation could be changed.

The term “sexual inversion” used in English at the time instead of homosexuality (in German: sexual inversion) also implies reversed gender roles. It was therefore assumed that lesbians tend to have typically “masculine” goals and wear masculine clothing. Krafft-Ebing, who among other things held this opinion, was of the opinion that lesbians have a "male soul". He was also of the opinion that the secondary sexual characteristics were in some cases the same as those of the opposite sex. Although Ellis' research provided no evidence of such reversals, he conducted an intensive search for appropriate cases. This assumption is reflected in the source of loneliness, for example in Stephen's masculine build. Furthermore, the novel describes a scene in Valerie Seymour's salon in which it is said that the sound of a voice, the structure of the knuckles and the texture of the hands are supposed to reveal a possible homosexual orientation.

Feminine women in homosexual relationships posed a problem for proponents of the "sexual inversion" theory, as their emotional affection for women could not be explained by an incorrect gender role. Ellis described such women as passive objects of desire in masculine lesbians. However, the fictional character Mary makes active attempts to approach the reserved Stephen, which would contradict this idea. Although Stephen ends up assuming Mary would leave her for a straight relationship with Martin Hallam, Mary's intentions and actual sexual orientation remain unclear.

Catholicism and Spirituality

Hall, who converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1912 , was utterly religious. Furthermore, she believed in the possibility of communication with the dead and for a while also hoped to become a medium . This view brought them into conflict with the church, which outlaws such spiritualism . Both beliefs influenced the source of loneliness .

Stephen was born on Christmas Eve and named after Saint Stephen . When she learns that Collins has a swelling on his patella, she wishes the disease spread to her. This childish desire for a kind of martyrdom already indicates Stephen's self-sacrifice for Mary, if one understands her actions as such towards the end of the book. After getting Mary to leave her, Stephen sees a large number of ghosts of homosexuals, living, dead and still unborn in her lonely room. Eventually she becomes possessed by them and ultimately asks God, with the collective voice of all spirits, to give them the right to exist.

After Stephen has read the book Krafft-Ebings in her father's room, she opens a random passage in the Bible, looking for a sign. It opens Genesis 4:15, which describes how Cain is punished with the mark of Cain . Hall uses the Cain's mark, a symbol of shame and exile, as a metaphor for the homosexual situation throughout the novel. Your defense of homosexuality takes the form of a religious argument. God created homosexuals, so people should accept them. The frequent use of religious symbolism in the source of loneliness led to harsh criticism, but Hall's portrayal of homosexuality as a god-given condition influenced the formulation of homosexual rights.

reception

Reactions upon appearance

The first reviews were mixed. While some critics found the book too moralizing, poorly structured, or stylistically unconvincing, others praised both the seriousness and craftsmanship of the novel, and also expressed approval of its moral proposition. Three weeks after the book was published, no critic had said that it should not have been published or should not be indexed. A review in TP's & Cassell's Weekly foresaw no difficulties due to the book, the reviewer wrote: “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 offense. ”(in German, for example:“ It is impossible to predict what effect this book will have on the public attitude towards repression and ridicule [of homosexuals], but every reader will agree with Mr. Havelock Ellis' words in the preface that the poignant story is in no way told offensive. ”)

Sunday Express campaign

James Douglas , the editor of the Sunday Express , took a very strict position against the book. He was a committed moralist and a staunch Christian. He made a name for himself in the 1920s with conservative articles in which he criticized the right to vote for women under 30 and made derogatory comments about the "modern sex novelists".

Among other things, he wrote the following about the source of loneliness : “The adroitness and cleverness of the book intensifies its moral danger. It is a seductive and insidious piece of special pleading designed to display perverted decadence as a martyrdom inflicted upon these outcasts by a cruel society. It flings a veil of sentiment over their depravity. It even suggests that their self-made debasement is unavoidable, because they cannot save themselves. "

In German, for example: “The book's dexterity and cleverness intensifies the moral hazard it represents. It is a seductive plea designed to portray perversion and decadence as the martyrdom of these criminals imposed by a cruel society. It throws a veil of sentimentality over their depravity. It even suggests that their self-imposed degradation is inevitable because they cannot save themselves. "

Douglas' campaign against the source of loneliness began on August 18th with posters, placards and a teaser in the Daily Express announcing the unveiling of a book that was to be suppressed ("A Book That Should Be Suppressed"). In an article the next day, Douglas wrote that homosexuality and perversion had become all too obvious and that the source of loneliness showed society the need to "cleans [e] itself from the leprosy of these lepers". In his eyes, the sexual-scientific view of homosexuality was pseudoscience, which is incompatible with the Christian belief in free will. He argued that homosexuals would condemn themselves by their own choice and that by being free to choose others could be corrupted by their propaganda. Children in particular should be protected in his eyes. In the context of this argumentation there was also the statement “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. "(In German, for example:" I would rather give a healthy boy or girl a vial of hydrogen cyanide than this book. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul. ") He urged the editors to take the book back and the Home Office , the UK Home Office , to take action against the book if not.

In what Hall called a fit of madness and panic, Jonathan Cape sent a copy of Well of Solitude to the Home Secretary and offered to take the book off the market if it was in the public interest. The Secretary of the Interior at the time was William Joynson-Hicks , a member of the Conservative Party who was known for his tough crackdown on nightclubs, gambling and alcohol, as well as his opposition to the revised version of the Book of Common Prayer . After just two days, he replied that the novel was harmful to society and that unless the book was withdrawn immediately, a criminal case would follow.

Cape then announced that the publication had been canceled, but secretly gave the rights to the book to an English-language publisher in France. His partner Wren Howard took the sets to Paris, and on September 28, a delivery of the French publisher's version went to the London bookseller Leopold Hill. Due to popular demand, the Home Office soon took notice of the book's reappearance. On October 3, Joynson-Hicks ordered shipments of the book to be confiscated.

A shipment of 250 copies was confiscated at the port of Dover . The chairman of the Board of Customs responsible for import and export protested . He found the book not obscene and therefore wanted to counteract the campaign. On October 19, he released the seized books for delivery to Leopold Hill. The Metropolitan Police Service was waiting there with a search warrant. Hill and Cape had to appear in court to explain why the book should not be banned.

References and comments

  1. ^ Radclyffe Hall: The Well of Loneliness. New York: Avon, 1981, ISBN 0-380-54247-1 . Page 437: "Give us also the right to our existence", in German for example: "Give us the right to our existence".
  2. ↑ a b An overview of the critical debates is given in the introduction by Laura Doan and Jay Prosser: Palatable Poison: Critical Perspectives on The Well of Loneliness , Columbia University Press, 2001 ISBN 0-231-11875-9

literature

  • Biron, Sir Chartres (1928). "Judgment". Doan & Prosser, 39-49.
  • Castle, Terry (2001). "Afterword: It Was Good, Good, Good ". Doan & Prosser, 394-402.
  • Douglas, James (1928). "A Book That Must Be Suppressed". Doan & Prosser, 36-38.
  • Halberstam, Judith (2001). "'A Writer of Misfits': 'John' Radclyffe Hall and the Discourse of Inversion". Doan & Prosser, 145-161.
  • Hemmings, Clare (2001). "'All My Life I've Been Waiting for Something ...': Theorizing Femme Narrative in The Well of Loneliness . Doan & Prosser, 179–196.
  • Kent, Susan Kingsley (2001). "The Well of Loneliness as War Novel". Doan & Prosser, 216-231.
  • Medd, Jodie (2001). "War Wounds: The Nation, Shell Shock, and Psychoanalysis in The Well of Loneliness ". Doan & Prosser, 232-254.
  • Munt, Sally R. (2001). " The Well of Shame". Doan & Prosser, 199-215.
  • Newton, Esther (1989). "The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and The New Woman". Doan & Prosser, 89-109.
  • Prosser, Jay (2001). "; 'Some Primitive Thing Conceived in a Turbulent Age of Transition': The Transsexual Emerging from The Well ". Doan & Prosser, 129-144.
  • Rosner, Victoria (2001). "Once More unto the Breach: The Well of Loneliness and the Spaces of Inversion". Doan & Prosser, 316-335.
  • Rule, Jane (1975). "Radclyffe Hall". Doan & Prosser, 77-88.
  • Winning, Joanne (2001). "Writing by the Light of The Well : Radclyffe Hall and the Lesbian Modernists." Doan & Prosser, 372-393.
  • Sara Dunn: Inversions: Writings by Dykes, Queers and Lesbians by Betsy Warland; New Lesbian Criticism: Literary and Cultural Readings by Sally Munt . In: Feminist Review . No. 46, 1994, pp. 106-108. ISSN  0141-7789 .
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  • Laura Green: Hall of Mirrors: Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness and Modernist Fictions of Identity . In: Twentieth Century Literature . 49, No. 3, 2003. ISSN  0041-462X .
  • Radclyffe Hall: The Well of Loneliness . Avon, New York 1981, ISBN 0-380-54247-1 .
  • Alison Hennegan: Introduction to Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness . Virago Modern Classics, London 1982, ISBN 0-86068-254-4 .
  • Annis H. Hopkins: Is She or Isn't She? Using Academic Controversy and The Well Of Loneliness to Introduce the Social Construction of Lesbianism . 1998. Retrieved December 27, 2006.
  • Hubert Kennedy: Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich . In: glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture . 2004. Retrieved December 5, 2006.
  • Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madeline D. Davis: Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community . Penguin, New York 1994, ISBN 0-14-023550-7 .
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  • Cassandra Langer: Review of Amazons in the Drawing Room: The Art of Romaine Brooks by Whitney Chadwick; Joe Lucchesi . In: Woman's Art Journal . 22, No. 2, Autumn 2001 - Winter 2002, pp. 44-47. ISSN  0270-7993 . doi : 10.2307 / 1358903 .
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  • Celia Marshik: History's "Abrupt Revenges": Censoring War's Perversions in The Well of Loneliness and Sleeveless Errand . In: Journal of Modern Literature . 26, No. 2, 2003, pp. 145-159. ISSN  0022-281X .
  • Anaïs Nin: Henry and June . Harcourt, Inc, New York 1986, p. 133, ISBN 0-15-640057-X .
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  • Adam Parkes: Lesbianism, History, and Censorship: The Well of Loneliness and the Suppressed Randiness of Virginia Woolf's Orlando . In: Twentieth Century Literature . 40, No. 4, 1994. ISSN  0041-462X . This article online
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  • Catharine R. Stimpson: Zero Degree Deviancy: The Lesbian Novel in English . In: Critical Inquiry . 8, No. 2, Winter, 1981, pp. 363-379. ISSN  0093-1896 . doi : 10.1086 / 448159 .
  • Leslie A. Taylor, 'I Made Up My Mind to Get It': The American Trial of The Well of Loneliness, New York City, 1928–1929 . In: Journal of the History of Sexuality . 10, No. 2, 2001, pp. 250-286. ISSN  1043-4070 . doi : 10.1353 / sex.2001.0042 .
  • Melanie A. Taylor: 'The Masculine Soul Heaving in the Female Bosom': Theories of inversion and The Well of Loneliness . In: Journal of Gender Studies . 7, No. 3, 1998, pp. 287-296. ISSN  0958-9236 .
  • Lisa Walker: Looking Like What You Are: Sexual Style, Race, and Lesbian Identity . NYU Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0-8147-9372-X .
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