The Well of Loneliness

The Well of Loneliness is a lesbian novel by British author Radclyffe Hall. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose sexual inversion (homosexuality) is apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn whom she meets while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection which Hall depicts as typically suffered by inverts with predictably debilitating effects. The novel portrays inversion as a natural God-given state and makes an explicit plea: Give us also the right to our existence.