GLR September-October 2023

similar subject matter, Hall and Woolf spurned each other ’ s work. According to Diana Souhami, Hall “ distrusted innovation in literature and arts, and shunned what she saw as ... modernist heresies. ” While Woolf was a member of the famed Blooms bury group, a group of modernist authors and artists holding liberal views toward gender and sexuality, Souhami writes that Hall was “ right wing, a patriot, and a stalwart of the Catholic church ” who “ perceived authority and power as masculine. ” Thus, the author reacted with horror and indignation when her book was condemned under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 on November 16, 1928. Souhami further notes that Hall was “ bewildered ... to be branded obscene, corrupt, and de praved by the social class to which she felt allegiance. ” And yet, class consciousness was undoubtedly a major factor in the widespread indignation and eventual condemnation of the book by male judges and legislators. As illustrated by the British Parliament ’ s attempt to legislate lesbianism in 1921, representa tives sought to dismiss the discomfiting reality of sex between womenasa “ vice ” that was practiced by “ unfortunate specimens of humanity ” who were “ vile, ” “ unbalanced, ” and “ neurotic. ” Such descriptors evoke the upper-class anxieties that were espe cially prevalent in Britain after World War I. This association is reinforced by the Lord Chancellor ’ s assertion that any “ sophisti cated society ” would not harbor “ this kind of vice. ” Like the tu berculosis epidemic that was viewed as a disease “ maintained by ignorance and folly ” in London ’ s slums, lesbianism was simi larly positioned as a lower-class infection that might “ pollute ” the minds of otherwise virtuous women. Hall ’ s work thus repre sented an explicit challenge to the forms of collective identifica tion enacted by upper-class society, which conflated “ disease ” and “ vice ” as conditions of the uneducated and the unrefined. § T OWARD THE END of The Well of Loneliness , the protagonist ’ s friend Jonathan Brockett discovers her relationship with Mary Llewellyn, and Stephen experiences “ a queer sense of relief at the thought that he knew ... because there was no longer any need to behave as if those relations were shameful. ” Perhaps re flecting Hall ’ s relationship to her own sexuality, her novel has been criticized for representing homosexual life as shameful, tragic, and self-loathing, contrasting starkly with Woolf ’ s Or lando, which enacts a playfully queer romp through several his torical ages. Nevertheless, when the publisher of TheWell of Loneliness , Jonathan Cape, shifted printing to Paris, he found that “ the fact that in Britain it could only be procured illicitly made it all the more enticing. ” WhileHall ’ s work certainly did not “ pollute ” womenwith lesbianism as suggested by the ignorant House of Lords debate in 1921, a book that was explicitly about love between women led to a widespread discussion of homosexuality among the public, thus paving the way for social reform. The sensational ist obscenity trial did more to publicize the text than Hall her self could have hoped, though unfortunately she was deeply hurt by the outcome and subsequently lost confidence as a writer. Alternatively, Woolf demonstrated that silence and censorship imposed upon homosexual themes need not be internalized purely as a source of shame but might also be mobilized as an enabling space for revolutionary experimentation, provocation, and the subversion of compulsory heterosexuality. September – October 2023

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