I think I know where this is going....

Evening, blog-spotters.

So, I was reminded yesterday, finally I think, of a book that I read for a module in university, rather unambiguously entitled 'Women's Literature'. The book itself I recall as being moving; unlyrical and poetic at turns, painstaking and yet distanced, oddly. The dialogue being in that rather staid, stiff sort of manner that's characteristic of early 20th century fiction.
But this novel appears ot have been bugging me at the back of my head for a while now.
I had thought that it would be a Virginia Woolfe that I would revisit in writing The Barefoot Gardener, but it appears that I was wrong. Virginia Woolf, to my mind, skirted subjects closer to her heart, and courted the conventional in her fictional characters (see To The Lighthouse) even if it was in parody.
The novel, then, to assuage your curiosity, is The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall. Or John, as she preferred to be called, apparently.
Opening the novel at a random page this evening, a practice that has never failed me yet, I found, amid my crib notes and underlinings (almost as though I meant for myself to find this piece, 15 years later) this quotation:
'If love is our sin, then heaven must be full of such tender and selfless sinning as ours', spoken by the principle character to her female lover.
This novel, published in 1928, was immediately banned, amid a trial for obscenity.

So, here is the link.
Cara, in my novel, is the modern day young, gay woman. She lives her life without apology, by her own moral code, with a power, a gentleness and femininity that is all her own. She is, in essence, the expression of all that a person being in love should be.
Stephen, the female protagonist of The Well of Loneliness, is conflicted between her faith and her loves. She is tortured by a world that will not accpet her, and tentalised by a love that she knows in her heart cannot be wrong; for what pure love can be?
Claire, in my novel, is in a stunning position, caught midway almost exactly between these two worlds. She would have grown up in 1960's rural, Northern Ireland, where judgement was de riguer. So adept was she at hiding who she really was, she has had no idea herself who she is until she meets Cara. This young woman to Claire is the catalyst for not only her discovery of who she is and how she loves, but also is the prompt for Claire to reach a decision point: does she go on with her illusion that she fits into a societal norm that she herself has constructed, and in doing so deny the one true love of her life? Or, does she release herself into a world where she can live the life she longs for, and allow herself to love the woman she desires most? Either decision, curiously, takes its own courage - something which I must be at pains to describe through my writing. There is no path for the coward and one for the brave; there is no right or wrong. There is simply the right decision for one person, in their time, for their reasons.
The ending of the novel, though, I feel should record some echo, or response to the 'crie de coeur' with which The Well concludes. This is currently work in progress.
I would like, above all, for The Barefoot Gardener to raise the question: How far have we really come? And for the reply to be: 'So far! So far. And yet, not all that far.'

Hope this sets you thinking, please leave me a post with opinions and thoughts - I would so love to hear them; writing is such a well of loneliness. ;)

Alison
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