Men's pyjamas
Kay Dick
The Well of Loneliness Radclyffe Hall (Virago £3.50)
someone recently remarked, 'What more 4. ean be said about The Well of Loneli- ,,'ss?' Reasonable enough as a comment, `61Isidering how much has already been cl'id the greater part of which can be totally wi.sregarded. Even so, the subject is still r.nth Us in a paperback with a splendid isproduction of a Gluck painting. Corgi iss9ued a paperback (nastily produced) in , 68. The Virago edition contains an in- iresting introduction by Alison Hennegan, 1.11e,rary editor of Gay News. Radclyffe bnads 'case-book' novel of female ,Posexuality, published in 1928, produc- Yet another ridiculous chapter in the Iiste'rY of censorship, resulted in a verdict story the book was an offence to public Sei.eneY', and led Sir Chartres Biron, Bow hki'eet magistrate, to order its destruction. aw public figures protested, including b,a‘v: '1 repeat it ought not to have been °tined'. bInevitably it went underground, joined e ranks of the greatly in demand — the 1,:hed books. My mother gave me a copy 60„en I was 18: her lover (male) 01:ght it in Paris for her. I found it rather dig fashioned; it had no salacious passages, ksaPPointingly prudish for a banned book. , 1),,s a novelist, Radclyffe Hall (Adam's ' ly'ed, The Unlit Lamp, etc.) is substantial- ear gushing, a trifle boring, extremely Barnesest. The Well of Loneliness is certainly 4101.1 "t, yet it has its virtues in its pas- DeriatelY felt and courageous for the 1,0 Id) attempt to describe a sexual situa- Toll Which its author viewed as a tragedy. of daY, of course, with the militant activists 1;41 ,. aY Liberation hogging the media ,elIght, often with unnecessary abandon, kaVelYffe Hall's despairing apologia is old lb:, She and her book appear to belong to 41",e he ancient pioneers who, metaphorically klizilr case, chained themselves to railings endured forcible feeding. k sh,,4cling it again one appreciates why it li."`„(ed the English judicial establishment. • b.."as, clearly, a book by a traitor; a class 1,0'it°r, a member of the county set, rider t.o Linds Hi h Tory in politics, a Catholic . vonv ' g . irk. ert — this last an indication of ecce.n- 4,.'itY although some of our best families Cne,°f the old faith. Radclyffe Hall was no • I94te Writing her Claudine books in the was s and being praised for so doing. She for . Itglish, to her backbone, not some d4reigner with odd moral values, and she tleaefd to state what everyone (unless blind, len and dumb) knew, that women did of- Iliire. In love with women, even in the ', and, what was worse, actually con-
demned the English talent for closetry by taking her heroine to Paris where, as Sterne so properly points out, 'They order this matter better in France'. It's a wonder she got off so lightly with a mere book banning: in less temperate times she surely would have been burnt at the stake.
As a prose writer Radclyffe Hall is turgid, given to Biblical images and much influenced by her reading of German literature. She was, of course, a masochist. This is clear in her treating Stephen, the heroine, as some abnormal creature, which she stresses by stark and harshly masculine features and body. A touch of the transvestite too here: those tailor-made suits, those starched collars, those heavy plain silk shirts and ties, and endearingly, those crepe-de-chine men's pyjamas from Sulka. At least Stephen was well-groomed and clean (like her horse), which cannot always be said of the ladies of today men- tioned above. Stephen had to go to Paris to appreciate that dress is no indication of in- version.
There are three distinct sections in The Well of Loneliness. Stephen's family background, her caring and futile father, her snobbish, feather-brained mother, and Puddle the indomitable governess who sees her through thick and thin. The mistake Radclyffe Hall made from the start was to treat Stephen as a freak, and show how all those solid shire folk knew it, in spite of her good seat on a horse. Her snobbery is evi- dent in the choice of Angela, a one time ac-
tress, as the object of Stephen's first sexual impulse. This episode actually is the best in the book (apart from scenes between Stephen and her horse): it depicts that old truth that often a woman softens up another woman for the male. Colette describes this with deadly accuracy. Radclyffe Hall misses the point, simply because she is too English in upbringing.
There is the documentary relating to women driving ambulances in the First
World War, where Stephen meets the gentle orphaned Mary. Much fraught by religious and moral doubts is Stephen before she takes the girl to bed (`that night they were not divided'). The final section which shows that Paris could not care less, since all are sexually emancipated, was Stephen's purgatory, a mixture of pathos and bathos, to which one reacts with pity and irritation. One has ever to remember that Radclyffe Hall was a devoted Catholic with a great sense of sin, and although there is much to praise (the power and drive which inspires this book, the acute portraits, the sensitive information, the honesty of purpose) it is a tragedy she relates; Stephen's homosexuali- ty, in Radclyffe Hall's judgment, was mat- ter for punishment, by man and God. She gives Stephen's Mary to the former's only heterosexual male friend, a gesture of atonement, of making it all right between herself and the God who had forsaken her. It might be said that she asked to be banned with her admission of guilt. That is the real tragedy of The Well of Loneliness.
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