Unlit lamp (Radclyffe Hall) 42

I've read two Radclyffe Hall novels for this challenge, but this third one, The unlit lamp (kindly lent to me by Simon from Stuck-in-a-book) is the one that I have enjoyed the most. Despite having similarly bleak themes to The well of loneliness, there was quite a lot of humour at least in the early part of the the book and I found the story interesting.

Set in the seaside town of Seabourne, the Unlit Lamp tells the story of two sisters, Joan and Millie, but focussing primarily on Joan, the elder. They live with their extremely conventional parents, Mr and Mrs Ogden; Mrs Ogden is quite bitter about married life but this leads to some of the entertaining and humourous scenes in the book. Joan and Millie are taught by Elizabeth, their governess - the Ogdens don't place much value on education for women. Joan and Elizabeth develop a close friendship, which develops lesbian overtones (that never actually really materialise), but this provokes strong jealousy in Mrs Ogden who wants to keep her elder daughter close to her. Joan has the chance of escape through Elizabeth, hoping to study medicine at Cambridge and then move to London to live in a flat with her friend, but she has to give up the dream when her father suffers ill-health and dies. She tries to help Millie escape from the family, but even she has to return home when she falls ill. Joan is effectively stuck living with Mrs Ogden, and cannot even dream of going to live with Elizabeth as she has turned her back on her affectation (love?) for Joan and got married.

The book develops into a tragedy of lost opportunity and family pressures which is quite far away from the light beginning where family life was just an irritant.

It's just been published once by Virago with an original green cover.

Saturday life (Radclyffe Hall)

Radclyffe Hall's Well of loneliness is a classic, and one which I found to be an interesting read, so I was keen to read more of her VMCs. A Saturday life seemed like a good title; I have worked every other Saturday for the last 2.5 years, so in a sense my Saturday life has been a working one for a while, but I am about to give this up and regain a proper Saturday life! Today is my first Saturday of freedom, so in preparation I thought I'd read this.

In someways similar to the Well of loneliness - the theme of an isolated, confused creative female trying to make her way in life, A Saturday life was a much lighter read. I was hooked from the beginning when I met the heroine Sidonia (such an unusual name!) as a child; in the first pages, her mother interuppted from the book that she is writing to come and attend to her eight-year-old daughter who refuses to stop dancing naked in the dining room! Her mother decides dance lessons are the answer, but Sidonia is not encouraged to come back after telling the other children that she prefers dancing without her clothes on. The story follows Sidonia as she grows up - she takes up sculpture, singing, and then goes to Florence.

In some ways I found the ending of the story disappointing; after such an unconventional growing up and early adulthood, Sidonia gets married and the last pages of the book see her giving birth to a child. It suggests that she has finally settled down which would be a tragedy given the creativity that she has displayed. On the other hand, given the rest of the book, one wonders how long it will last, and if so how her husband and son will cope once the bliss and sensibility of new motherhood wears off.

I have the Unlit Lamp and Adam's Breed to read to complete my Radclyffe Hall VMCs. This one was just published the once by Virago with an original green cover.

3*

Well of loneliness (Radclyffe Hall) 76

I spotted this on the shelves at work and remembered that I had read it earlier in the year, and should thus write about it for the VVV.

I remember picking it out because I had heard that it was a ground breaking book and one which really seemed to embody the ideas behind the Virago Modern Classics series. It certainly was revolutionary; with its lesbian themes it was immediately banned in Britain and only available in the US after a long court battle.

It tells the story of a girl named Stephen born into a family in England at the beginning of the last century. Just this existence of a girl with a boy's name suggests that there is something abnormal going on. Stephen's father desperately wanted a son, hence the name. As Stephen grows up, she finds that she wants to be a boy, and in adulthood pursues a series of lesbian relationships. It is not a happy existence and we learn a lot about the problems of being homosexuality 100 years ago.

The good thing about resurrecting this book from my memory is that having consulted my list, I see that she wrote three further VMCs: The unlit lamp, Adam's breed and A Saturday life which I am definitely now on the look out for.

Four VMC covers - I borrowed the most recent one from the library.