The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

The friendship is ruined more loss follows the following year Sir Phillip is killed in a freak accident when he is crushed to death under a falling tree.

She is very fond of Martin but the love she feels for him is strictly platonic, possibly even sisterly, but Martin has more sexual feelings for her, and when he voices them, Stephen is horrified. When Stephen is eighteen years old, she becomes very close to a young man, a Canadian called Martin Hallam. She also feels that in some way she has sullied the ancestral line. By contrast, Stephen's mother, Lady Anna, feels that there is something wrong with her daughter and their relationship is very distant, by her mother's choosing. In order to do this he turns to books written by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first writer to develop academic theories about homosexuality. Stephen's father absolutely adores her, and wants to understand her. Her misery is unconfined when she spots Collins and a footman sharing a kiss one day. When Stephen turns seven years old she starts to notice women, specifically the family's housemaid, Collins, on whom she develops a crush, her first one. She has an androgynous physique even as a baby, She wants to be a boy. She hates being a girl, and everything to do with being a girl. Stephen Gordon is the female protagonist of the book given a boy's name at birth by parents who were expecting to have a boy, and christened their daughter with the name they had already chosen, Stephen is born in the late Victorian era in England, into an upper class family of means. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall