Homosexual Themes In 'The Well Of Loneliness'

Through history, we have seen many movies that indirectly presented gay theme to an audience where producers was reluctant to show these characters openly in fear of going against society's norm. However, there were many authors that embedded lesbian themes in their book even before movie producers began to do so. For example, the first novel that presented lesbian themes in the 19th century was Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928). It features an upper class family who had a reversal in gender traits-- ‘women acting’ as men and vice versa. One of the family member finds love with another, but they suffer from social isolation as society at the time severely rejected ‘unnatural’ behaviours. The novels pleas that society should give

The film was consisted of ten women from different background speaking of their sexual identity which gives the documentary a sense of realism. The Documentary starts of with a female protagonists who abandons her woman-lover at the train station to leave with a man. This clip shows that the protagonists is confused with her sexual identity or that she is ashamed to openly date the woman in public. One of the most interesting comments in the documentary is when one of the interviewee states that she went to New York searching for lesbians, but she couldn’t find any. That's when she realize that not all women look or dress as the pulp fiction books had implied. In 21st century we still see this kind of thinking because often we’ll hear people saying “you don't look gay” or “you don't dress gay”. These comments are just stereotypical ideals that the bourgeois have disseminated into the media, music and books about the gay

That's When they realize that they too were like these fictional characters. They also outlined that one of the major drawbacks with the lesbian romance novels was that the lesbian couples had to undergo some type of calamity that will break their spirit and life where they will either die or move to different city/country. Also most books implied that such relationships was of the devil and lebians were witches, therfore they should be burnt. Even though there were some drawbacks to lesbian books, I think that it was a excellent medium to show these type of relationships to the public. Michael Warner in his article Publics and Counterpublics relates to this documentary because the inyerviwees often talked about searching for a physical space where they can go to feel accepted e.g lesbian bars. Warner states that a public is established when a group of individuals have a “common visibility and common action” (p. 50). This quote relates to unforbidden love as the producers embedded clips of a woman finding their identity then looking for a lesbian at a gay club to find totality. This example shows that the women at the club had something in common (sexuality), creating a public of similar interests. Even though readers of a lesbian romantic novels are strangers, they create a public of similar interests. But still,