I was recommended "The well of Loneliness" by the nice lady who runs the Occult bookshop. She said it was full of misery and allusions, and went on about how terribly depressing it was. I thought is sounded wonderful and said so, and immediatly ordered myself a copy when I got home.
I have to say it is one of the best novels I've read in ages. I loved it so much. I think I don't read nearly enough queer fiction. But this one was really good, it seemed to be everything I was hoping for when reading Sarah Walters or Orlando. I think it helped that the charcter grew up within 10 miles of the village I grew up in. There was a great scene where the main character and her girlfriend were spending the day kissing in the Malverns and when they got home they explained to her husband that they'd been at Tewksbury Abbey and had had trouble with the car. I had a summer job helping to run the Abbey gift shop, and it made me so happy to think of fictional Victorian lesbians using it as an excuse. I think the closeness of the book to where I grew up, and the fact that it was such a difficult place for growing up with any homosexual tendencies, even a century later really hit home. While the main character, Stephen (girl with a boy's name) was realy more what we now term, transgendered, and she termed, invert, than I was. So many of the same things occured in the book that I experienced growing up. In particular the paranoia about people laughing must be laughing at you cause they know your secret. All very well done.
I also liked the fact that though it was terribly tragic, there was always someone there who loved and supported the main character aware of her difficulties. I think it would have been too easy to write the book of the incredibly persecuted person, where things are just terrible and no one understands. But having a sympathetic person made the whole thing seem so much more real and tragic. The prejudices faced by the people who didn't understand just stood out as so much more shocking and horrible.
It made me think how despite everything we've really not come as far in the past 100 years as we'd like to think. I don't think most lesbians, or bisexual women today, would feel the same need to think that women could only be fulfilled by marriage with men. However there still seems to be a need for women to have that security. It seems like lots of women end up settling down and marrying in the end. Society still seems to be full of the same prejudices. Reading this book made me think so much of Brandon Teena and just in the past few months the barman murdered in South London for being gay. I wish I could have seen the characters in the book and told them it was alright as things would get better, but I really don't feel like they have.
But it was an amazing book, tragic and full of allusions, and yet at the same time so real and full of so many interesting characters. I can't believe it's taken me this long to find and read it. But I loved it and would heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the tragic side of queer life and gender issues.
