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| author | Marianna D'Aries |
| title | The Stephen Archive: Readings of Lesbian and Transgender Embodiment in The Well of Loneliness |
| abstract | Though Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel, The Well of Loneliness, has been a site of rich theoretical production
for both feminist and queer theory, critical work on the novel has largely remained committed to claiming its main character, Stephen Gordon, as either
a lesbian woman or a transgender man. These analyses overlook the historically specific context of discourse around gender and sexuality during the time
of the novel's production and publication and instead read back modern notions of queerness onto a body that refuses these categories. Using the work of
Heather Love, Judith Halberstam, and Ann Cvetkovich I read constructions of female masculinity which hang upon the novel through an affective lens. I
conclude that The Well is just as much a transgender novel as it is a lesbian novel; however, it can be useful to both lesbian and transgender
archives without claiming Stephen as either a lesbian or a transgender man. Although I apply my methodology mainly to The Well of Loneliness and
briefly to Kimberly Peirce's 1999 film Boys Don't Cry, it is applicable to other texts featuring ambiguously gendered bodies. I argue that more
nuanced questions about gender and sexuality can be explored when critical discussions of ambiguous bodies can escape the impulse to make identity claims
on these bodies. The Well of Loneliness demands a reading of bodies which are changing, transforming, becoming, and unbecoming without distinct
destinations, if any destination at all. A place to start generative and productive theory is by focusing on affect precisely because it resists a
discussion limited to identity categories and it refuses binary thinking. |
| school | The College of Liberal Arts, Drew University |
| degree | B.A. (2017) |
| advisor | Debra J. Liebowitz |
| committee | Debra J. Liebowitz
Wendy K. Kolmar
Jill Cermele |
| full text | MDAries.pdf |
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