Banned and tried: The Well of Loneliness
Celebrating a groundbreaking novel for Banned Books Week
It's Banned Books Week 2024. How sad that we're dealing with book bans in this country — more than ever, at that. This year’s theme: “Let Freedom Read.” But book banning and censorship are nothing new, at least in the U.S. and Britain.
Because so many of today’s bans and challenges target LGBTQ stories, I’m presenting The Well of Loneliness (1928) by Radclyffe Hall. This groundbreaking novel, published nearly 100 years ago (!!) was banned outright in the author’s native England. It went on trial both there in the U.S., and we’ll be getting to the outcome of both.
The Well of Loneliness, often described as the story of young woman’s coming to terms with her lesbian identity, is more than that. It's also about someone born with a female body making sense of her maleness. It was certainly ahead of its time in expressing the concept of gender identity without the vocabulary available today.
The book’s author, Radclyffe Hall, wore elegant suits, preferred to be called "John," and wanted to be accepted by society as male. Because Hall is always referred to as “she,” I’ll be using that pronoun, though were she alive today, I’m pretty confident she’d prefer another. Hall described herself as a "congenital invert," a term that referred to an inborn gender reversal — women born with a masculine soul and vice versa.
The novel’s main character is Stephen Gordon, whose father fittingly gave her a male name. Hall touchingly, often achingly, weaves the story of Stephen's life and loves using the limited descriptive language available at the time.
At the time The Well of Loneliness was published, the story of same-sex love was a topic rarely written about outside of scientific textbooks. Hall wrote it, she said, as a plea for tolerance. Despite the occasional purple prose, it’s a great read.
"Corrupting influence" on the young
The Well of Loneliness caused a furor upon its publication in England in 1928. Its theme of women in love was presented in a completely non-graphic manner, yet shortly after its publication, copies of the book were seized and accused of violating the Obscene Publications Act of 1857.
In the post-World War I era, any depictions of women that were outside the maternal model were considered a “corrupting influence” on the young, as described in the press. Well of Loneliness was indeed judged as corrupting, as the book’s protagonist, a wealthy young woman named Stephen Gordon, falls in love with other women.
The campaign against the book was led by the 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."
Radclyffe Hall and her publisher were forced to endure an obscenity trial. The prosecution won, with the British court agreeing that the novel was obscene, as it defended “unnatural practices between women.” Copies already printed were burned; Hall and her publisher were forced to pay for its destruction.
For even greater detail about this literary ordeal, see How to Burn a Book: Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness by Francis Booth.
Fortunately, the book was published concurrently in France, so it became an underground hit. But the book remained banned in England until 1959 — and since Radclyffe Hall died in 1943, she didn’t live to see the day that the ban was finally lifted in Britain.
The American trial
Somewhat surprisingly, The Well of Loneliness fared better in the United States. Some months after its publication and seizure in Britain, an American Publisher, Covici and Freide, published it.
Almost immediately the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice brought it to court on the basis of the 1873 Comstock Laws, which aimed its legal glare at literature they deemed obscene and lewd.
The court’s decision hinged on the publishers’ attorneys argument that lesbianism in and of itself was not obscene, which followed that the book could not be considered so, either.
The case was dismissed and summed up: “The people must establish that the defendants are guilty of a violation of Section 1141 beyond a reasonable doubt. After a careful reading of the entire book we conclude that the book in question is not in violation of the law and each of the defendants is acquitted.”
Did a post myself on banned books. I say read them. Demand them from your libraries. Keep them in print. Do not let anyone tell you what you can say or read.
https://substack.com/@robinyaklin/p-149317324
This book is a great choice to highlight for Banned Books Week. I agree that the language is a bit too florid, but the characters and the plot are vivid and engaging.
I used to maintain a Virginia Woolf fan page and wrote a couple Instagram posts about her involvement with the obscenity trial. She supported Radcliffe Hall based on the principles of free speech and free expression but had no admiration for the novel:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxl6mQQBA-m/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxoVxzqBWM9/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
I get the feeling that Woolf might have sat the whole thing out were it not for V. Sackville-West pestering her to publicly challenge the censorship.