“The Well Of Loneliness” by Radcliffe Hall
“The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that by seeing nothing it might avoid Truth.” Before I started to read the novel, I read a couple of reviews upon the Stephen, the main character and the plot of the novel. I felt rather disappointed with the thorough description of an abrupt character , a wealthy outsider, a rebel of society because of the sexual controversy of her behavior and afterwards, of her inclination to love and live with women. It’s sad the actual way the same sex love is depicted and judged, misjudged of course, seen as an inversion, like Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis thought, who argued that lesbianism was not a matter of choice, but was an affliction caused by “congenital inversion” that was present from birth. Morally and psychotherapeutically speaking, the book was a revelation in depicting the life of a woman that rather felt like a man, and loves feminine women, like Mary that finally will leave her and marry a men, after a trap set ...