Talk:The Well of Loneliness

Old comments
Why isn't there a plot summary ("Spoilers follow...")? Nuttyskin 03:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You haven't written one yet. --Aim Here 07:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Discussion moved from Talk:The Well of Loneliness/Comments
I changed the rating of this page from 'stub' class to 'A' class - it looks extremely concise and well referenced.--HisSpaceResearch 06:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Although I agree in principle, I feel that an article should at least have undergone a peer review before it can be awarded with A-status. Without such a review, POV issues are much more likely to exist (in general). Errabee 14:30, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I've updated the class to GA, since it has been listed as a GA. Aleta 17:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Good Article nomination
Good morning (GMT time); I have passed this article as a Good Article under the GA Criteria. However, my advice for approval is:


 * Insert more relevant images to the article, particuarly in the second tenth of the article. (This is in line with WP:GA? point 6) (a) - (c).)
 * As defined in WP:GA? point 2) (b), although the use of Inline Citations are not mandatory, they are strongly desired. This is where the references section has the code " " and each reference is of the format.

Otherwise, congratulations are in order for the lead editors - well done, and keep up the excellent work!

Kind regards, Anthony cfc  [ T • C] 01:24, 14 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you! I'm a little surprised by the second suggestion, though -- are the 154 footnotes (not counting duplicates) not enough, or am I missing the point?


 * Illustrating this article is a bit difficult in the current climate of sharply restricting Fair Use on Wikipedia, but I'll see what I can do.  &mdash;Cel ithemis  01:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Prix Femina
Hi. It says Hall won the Prix Femina for Adam's Breed, but as you can see here, she's not on the list of laureates. Shouldn't that info be removed? Raystorm   (¿Sí?)  14:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Those are the French language winners. The award for foreign novels is separate.  &mdash;Cel  ithemis  20:33, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Aha! Do you have a link to it? Thanks you so much for clearing it up, we are trying to get the Spanish version of this article to FA status, and we were kinda stumped with this. :-) Raystorm   (¿Sí?)  14:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know of a list online. Can't you just copy the citation?   &mdash;Cel  ithemis  23:01, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * We did, until someone pointed out the discrepancy with the online list I showed you. That added with the info someone gathered about there not being a prize for foreign novels until much later (I think the 1980's or something like that) made us wonder if she had indeed won the prize. It's weird that there is no online list where Hall figures. Well, we wanted to add one, but I suppose if we can't, we can't. We'll just add the citation. The article is already at FAC, so... By the way, I said it at the time, but congratulations again for writing such a wonderful article! :-) I hope we make it justice at es:wiki. Cheers Raystorm   (¿Sí?)  16:00, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, and good luck with the FAC! It's really cool to see it translated.


 * Re the Prix Femina, I'm not sure of all the changes of name and organization it's been through over the years, but there were several awards given to British novels in the 20s; A Passage to India, To the Lighthouse, and Mary Webb's Precious Bane are all noted winners. There was apparently at one time a separate award for American novels as well, which Willa Cather won.  I guess either those two merged in 1985 or were discarded for a while and revived then.  If you want to bolster the point you could add a citation to this and/or the Leslie Taylor paper.  &mdash;Cel  ithemis  01:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, I found today a Spanish source that clearly states Hall won the Prix Femina Vie Hereuse for Adam's Breed, so even if it's not an online citation, it should work just fine. :-) I'll check out your links anyway, thanks for providing them. :-) Cheers! Raystorm   (¿Sí?)  17:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Impact
This shows that the publicity surrounding the book and the trial put the authorities off trying to ban other books. Worth a mention? Malick78 (talk) 19:18, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations....
on your featured article!

Can I suggest that the word "invert" should be consistently used in quote marks, starting at the sentence in the Intro: ''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 having a debilitating effect on "inverts". ''

The reason for this is that it is an historic term no longer in common parlance. The casual reader is only to understand what an "invert" is by reference to "inverted sexuality" in the intro. Amandajm (talk) 01:12, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Portal bar
I added the Portal bar to the bottom of the article, and it was subsequently moved to the See also section. I understand Portals often appear in the See also section, but I typically see Portal bar at the bottom of articles. What does the MoS say re: Portal bars? Also, is a See also section necessary when its only contents is a bar? I find the bar in a section, as opposed to the bottom of an article distracting. Sorry to use this article's talk page for discussion about a portal bar. -- Another Believer ( Talk ) 21:47, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Grammar problem
"Little of Hall's novel can be discerned in its story of a butch lesbian who is blinded with acid and run over by a truck, freeing the naïve young roommate she seduced to find love with a fullback." The grammatical construction here is totally ambiguous. It can be read as either the butch lesbian seduced the roommate because her roommate was a fullback, or the roommate was free to pursue a relationship with a fullback after the butch lesbian died. Kaldari (talk) 02:14, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 3 one external links on The Well of Loneliness. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20061019230702/http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/ulrichs_kh.html to http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/ulrichs_kh.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070311191732/http://www.pfc.org.uk:80/node/212 to http://www.pfc.org.uk/node/212
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070822014816/http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/pblintrhall.htm to http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/pblintrhall.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 07:42, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Daily Telegraph letter
This is not a topic I know much about, so I don't plan to do this myself, but there's a letter of protest against the legal judgment in the Daily Telegraph, 22 Nov 1928, p10, signed by Vera Brittain, T S Eliot, E M Forster, John Buchan, Bernard Shaw, A P Herbert, Lytton Strachey, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, and many others, that deserves mention here. GrindtXX (talk) 18:39, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

FA sweeps
The article has some issues with the FA criteria. It has been tagged for citation needed or original research in some areas. Additionally, I was able to find more recent academic sources. Some of them pointed to gaps in the article's coverage, for example the quality of writing; "Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness has long been read as stylistically inferior to novels by Hall's ‘experimental’ peers. Led by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, the dominant opinion has, to quote Terry Castle, sentenced Hall to a reputation of ‘bad, bad, bad’ writing." (t &#183; c)  buidhe  19:56, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Literary quality question?
At the end of the first paragraph it says:

/////

Although critics differ as to the value of The Well of Loneliness as a work of literature, its treatment of sexuality and gender continues to inspire study and debate.

/////

should we factor in here that (a) criticism is dominated by entrenched values in any given era and therefore prejudice against LGBTQ+ people may influence criticism? also (b) prejudice against women may also influence criticism? Are we in danger of resinscribing such prejudices in such remarks?

eg can we find male equivalents where in the first paragraph there is a similar claim made? - in terms of seminal queer writing it would have to be eg The Picture of Dorian Grey etc.

Reading the entry for The Picture of Dorian Grey it says: ///// Wilde's only novel, it was subject to much controversy and criticism in its time but has come to be recognized as a classic of Gothic literature. /////

Perhaps this might be a more equable way to describe The Well of Loneliness also? eg something like

Hall's only novel, it was subject to great criticism in its time (some of which may have been motivated by anti-queer prejudice) but has come to be recognised as a classic of queer literature.

Thanks for any help and guidance!

MiloQuest (talk) 06:33, 19 October 2023 (UTC)