“Nature’s Mistake”: Evaluate constructions of same-sex desire in The Well of Loneliness

“Nature’s Mistake”: Evaluate constructions of same-sex desire in The Well of Loneliness

“Then she noticed on a shelf near the bottom was a row of books standing behind the others; the next moment she had one of these in her hands, and was looking at the name of the author: Krafft-Ebing- she had never heard of that author before” (‘Well of Loneliness, p207).

This quotation, remains significant in the novel for many reasons: chiefly masculinity in femininity as an abnormality or illness. This needed exploring in relation to Stephen gordon’s lesbian identity.

In the essay I would like you to discuss how Stephen Gordon’s lesbian identity must be understood as more complex than scientific or medical thinking will allow and the fluidity of Stephen Gordon’s challenges the inflexibility of such rigid sexual taxonomies. Elaborate on this please. It may be useful to use this sentence: If Krafft Ebing offers one interpretive model of the sexual subject, Edward Carpenter also provides a useful model for discussing Stephen’s identity since he revises discourses of inversion, degeneracy and criminality that were connected to understanding same-sex desire in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

Eve kosofsky Sedgwick might provide a useful critical framework in which to assess ‘the Wells’ silence on lesbian desire. Analysing the different silences present in the novel would be useful as a means of considering the responses to same-sex desire.

At the end of the novel, Stephen’s penultimate call needs to be focused upon- this is the quotation “Acknowledge us, oh god, before the whole world. Give us the right to our existence” p447.

Exploring how Stephen Gordon fails to conform to normative models of femininity and bears a male name because her parents wanted a boy, she adopts a masculine position and acts with the “intuition of those who stand midway between the sexes,….so ruthless, so poignant, so accurate, so deadly” (p81). A reading of Edward Carpenter would be useful here.

Reading how Stephen’s physical description corresponds to the theory of Havelock Ellis’s inversion may be useful here- especially in this reference “Stephens’s craze for physical culture increased, and now it began to invade the schoolroom. Dumb-bells appeared in the schoolroom bookcases, while half worn out gym shoes skulked in the corners… Stephen loved raftery and raftery loved Stephen. It was love at first sight” (p56).
Analysing Stephen’s relationship should form some basis in this essay. Focusing on her relationships with Collins, Angela Crossby and Mary. An elaboration of Stephen’s loneliness would be useful as it is a crucial trope in exploring homosexual desire (especially in this novel). If you could analyse loneliness in relation to the following quotes:

Stephen was “like a soul that wakes up to find itself wandering, unwanted, between the spheres” (p32).

“Why should I live in this great isolation of spirit and body- why should I, why? I shall never be a great writer because of my maimed and insufferable body” (p217).

Interestingly you mention something in your draft about the religious overtones in the novel and Stephen likens herself to Cain: “And the lord set a mark upon Cain” (p207) and she compares herself to Cain when she states “like Cain I was marked and blemished” (p303). Later she develops a unification of the self when she states:”there were many others exactly like her in this very city, in every city; and they did not al live out crucified lives, denying their bodies, stultifying their brains…they lived natural lives-lives that to them were perfectly natural…All things-the amazing completeness of it” (p.302).

I would like you to develop an analysis of the character Puddle who “loathed and despised the conspiracy of silence that forbade her to speak frankly” (p153). Develop this point if you can. Carpenter’s model of intermediacy is captured in Stephen who is allowed to “write with a curious double insight- write both men and women from a personal knowledge” (p208). It may be useful to develop this further in relation to Stephen as a writer.

Brockett might be useful to develop a reading of Carpenter’s intermediate type in this novel.

 
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