The Well of Loneliness
The founding text of lesbian fiction. Prosecuted for obscenity in England, defended by Virginia Woolf, and still moving nearly a century later. Stephen Gordon's love for Mary is told with tragic dignity; the book's simple demand ("give us also the right to our existence") reverberates across the decades. A love story that is also an act of courage.
Once Stephen's childhood ends and the novel moves into her adult life in Paris and the war, the book sags: readers call this half repetitive and overlong, and more than one “gave up after 100 pages” rather than face another three hundred. The persistent complaint is Stephen herself, whom the narrative treats gently even as she grows self-pitying and self-absorbed; one reader admits they “spent way too much time with an insufferable prick” by the final chapters, and another dismisses the plotting as “the drippy tale of a woman who just wants to be loved,” full of “eye-rolling histrionics.” Modern reviewers add a separate charge: casual contempt for people outside Stephen's wealthy circle sits oddly beside the novel's plea for tolerance, and the tone overall lands closer to unbroken misery than romance.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
