The Well of Loneliness - Other 1928 Lesbian Novels

Other 1928 Lesbian Novels

Three other novels with lesbian themes were published in England in 1928: Elizabeth Bowen's The Hotel, Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Compton MacKenzie's satirical novel Extraordinary Women. None of them were banned. The Hotel, like earlier English novels in which critics have identified lesbian themes, is marked by complete reticence, while Orlando may have been protected by its Modernist playfulness. The Home Office considered prosecuting Extraordinary Women, but concluded that it lacked the "earnestness" of The Well and would not inspire readers to adopt "the practices referred to". Mackenzie was disappointed; he had hoped a censorship case would increase his book's sales. Despite advertising that tried to cash in on the controversy over The Well by announcing that Radclyffe Hall was the model for one of the characters, it sold only 2,000 copies.

A fourth 1928 novel, Ladies Almanack by the American writer Djuna Barnes, not only contains a character based on Radclyffe Hall but includes passages that may be a response to The Well. Ladies Almanack is a roman à clef of a lesbian literary and artistic circle in Paris, written in an archaic, Rabelaisian style and starring Natalie Barney as Dame Evangeline Musset. Much as Sir Phillip paces his study worrying about Stephen, Dame Musset's father "pac his library in the most normal of Night-Shirts". When, unlike Sir Phillip, he confronts his daughter, she replies confidently: "Thou, good Governor, wast expecting a Son when you lay atop of your Choosing .... Am I not doing after your very Desire, and is it not the more commendable, seeing that I do it without the Tools for the Trade, and yet nothing complain?" Ladies Almanack is far more overtly sexual than The Well; its cryptic style, full of in-jokes and ornate language, may have been intended to disguise its content from censors. It could not in any case be prosecuted by the Home Office, since it was published only in France, in a small, privately printed edition. It did not become widely available until 1972.