Palatable Poison: Critical Perspectives on The Well of Loneliness

by Laura Doan, Jay Prosser

Overview

The Well of Loneliness—the Radclyffe Hall novel at times referred to as "the bible of lesbianism"—was released in Britain in 1928 and was immediately controversial. Pronounced obscene following a sensational trial, the book has become a cultural icon as well as a source of considerable debate, especially among feminists, lesbians, and transgendered persons.

Palatable Poison gathers together classic essays on Radclyffe Hall's book—beginning with Havelock Ellis and early reviews—as well as pieces by such contemporary critics as Esther Newton, Judith Halberstam, Teresa de Lauretis, and Terry Castle. Providing an understanding of how views of the book have changed over time and covering such topics as race, the nation at war, and melancholy, the collection presents new and provocative ideas about the immense cultural impact of The Well of Loneliness and its unique place in the literature of sexual nonconformity.

Palatable Poison gathers together classic essays on Radclyffe Hall's book—beginning with Havelock Ellis and early reviews—as well as new pieces by such contemporary critics as Esther Newton, Judith Halberstam, Teresa de Lauretis, and Terry Castle. Providing an understanding of how views of the book have changed over time and covering such topics as fetishism, inversion, and melancholy, the collection presents new and provocative ideas about the immense cultural impact of The Well of Loneliness and its unique place in the literature of sexual nonconformity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231118750
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2002
Series:	Gender and Culture Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	0.97(w) x 6.00(h) x 9.00(d)
Lexile:	1550L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Laura Doan is professor of English at the State University of New York at Geneseo. She is the author of Fashioning Sapphism (Columbia, 2001), editor of The Lesbian Postmodern (Columbia, 1994), and coeditor of Sexology Uncensored, and Sexology in Culture.Jay Prosser is author of Second Skins: Body Narratives of Transsexuality (Columbia, 1998) and is lecturer in American literature at the University of Leeds.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, by Laura Doan and Jay Prosser
Part 1 Perspectives Past
1. Commentary (1928), by Havelock Ellis
The First Wave
2. "A Book That Must Be Suppressed'' (1928), by James Douglas
3. Judgment (1928), by Sir Chartres Biron
4. A Selection of Early Reviews
The Second Wave
5. "Radclyffe Hall'' (1975), by Jane Rule
6. "The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman'' (1989), by Esther Newton
7. "Perverse Desire: The Lure of the Mannish Lesbian'' (1991), by Teresa de Lauretis
Part 2 Perspectives Present
New Sexual Inversions
8. "Some Primitive Thing Conceived in a Turbulent Age of Transition'': The Transsexual Emerging from The Well, by Jay Prosser
9. "A Writer of Misfits'': "John'' Radclyffe Hall and the Discourse of Inversion, by Judith Halberstam
10. "The Outcast of One Age Is the Hero of Another'': Radclyffe Hall, Edward Carpenter and the Intermediate Sex, by Laura Doan
11. "All My Life I've Been Waiting for Something...'': Theorizing Femme Narrative in The Well of Loneliness, by Clare Hemmings
The Well's Wounds
12. The Well of Shame, by Sally R. Munt
13. The Well of Lonelinessas War Novel, by Susan Kingsley Kent
14. War Wounds: The Nation, Shell Shock, and Psychoanalysis in The Well of Loneliness, by Jodie Medd
15. Of Trees and Polities, Wars and Wounds, by Trevor Hope
On Location
16. "I Want to Cross Over into Camp Ground'': Race and Inversion in The Well of Loneliness, by Jean Walton
17. "Something Primitive and Age-Old as Nature Herself'': Lesbian Sexuality and the Permission of the Exotic, by Sarah E. Chinn
18. Once More unto the Breach: The Well of Loneliness and the Spaces of Inversion, by Victoria Rosner
19. Great Cities: Radclyffe Hall at the Chicago School, by Julie Abraham
20. Well Meaning: Pragmatism, Lesbianism, and the U.S. Obscenity Trial, by Kim Emery
21. Writing by the Light of The Well: Radclyffe Hall and the Lesbian Modernists, by Joanne Winning
Afterword: It Was Good, Good, Good, by Terry Castle
Suggested Readings
Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Suzanne Raitt

Palatable Poison gathers together significant new essays from across the spectrum of critical responses, and will reignite debates about The Well of Loneliness. This anthology gives us the best of both worlds: a vivid history of the reception of the novel and a reassessment of it in the light of new developments in criticism and theory.

— Suzanne Raitt, College of William and Mary