La comunità lesbica nell’Europa tra le due guerre mondiali e il caso di Radclyffe Hall

Abstract

The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall’s most famous and most discussed novel, is considered one of the pillars of lesbian literature and historiography. In the same year of its publication, 1928, it undergoes a trial in England for obscenity because it was considered an “obscene libel” and was immediately censored as the first novel to deal openly with desire between women. The Well of Loneliness is an emblematic text and its story is exemplary for the understanding of that attempt to remove lesbianism in a patriarchal and heteronormative society. The aim is to draw a general picture of the construction of lesbian identity and its (in)visibility in the public space in the first half of the twentieth century, in particular between the twenties and thirties, trying to analyze the cultural, social and medico-legal framework in which Radclyffe Hall, Lesbian Identity and The Well of Loneliness are inserted.