.

@yelyzaveta.s @ysfineart inverted, reading “The Well of Loneliness”, by Raddclyffe Hall. This novel is often cited as the first English novel to focus entirely on a lesbian protagonist.

‘If our love is a sin, then heaven must be full of such tender and selfless sinning as ours.’

‘God,’ she gasped, we believe; we have told You we believe...We have not denied You, then rise up and defend us. Acknowledge us, oh God, before the whole world. Give us also the right to our existence!’

The book follows the life of highly autobiographical character, Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose “sexual inversion” is apparent from an early age. Throughout the novel, Gordon explores same sex desire and eventually finds herself in love with a woman while serving as an ambulance driver during the First World War. Her happiness is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as the typical sufferings of queer people at the time.

First published in 1928, it was quickly banned in the UK until the 1940s for its sympathetic depiction of queerness as natural and God-given. While same sex relationships between women were not illegal in the UK, they were widely and openly disparaged. Same-sex relationships between men, however, were illegal.

Hall, born August 12, 1880, was a self-identified “congenital invert” who lived openly as a with her lifelong partner, Una Troubridge, until Hall’s death on October 7, 1943. They listed themselves as “joint head of household” on the 1921 census. Hall’s wealth and status somewhat protected them from the persecution commonly suffered by other members of the queer community.

#queer #lgbtq #history #lesbian #portraitphotography