From the beginning of Stephen’s life there was something different about her. She resembled her father Sir Phillip almost uncannily, which made her mother uneasy. She played rough with her father, riding on his back as if he were a bucking bronco. In Hall’s description of Stephen’s early adolescence, she is supporting a view point that a lesbian is born intrinsically gay. In the ongoing debate of nature or nurture it seems that Hall believes that it

is predetermined at birth what one’s sexual orientation will be. To further strengthen this belief, Stephen’s first crush is on a female housekeeper. When Stephen is only five years old she develops what can only be understood as a crush on Collins and does everything in her power to be near her. At the same time that this crush is developing Stephen has taken toward dressing us as a young boy. When dressed as “Nelson” she realized how much more comfortable she was as this boy. At age seven she asked her father “Do you think that I could be a man, supposing I thought very hard-or prayed, Father?” (Well of Loneliness p. 26) This was only the start of a heartbreaking struggle for Stephen to discover herself.

Like many lesbians, Stephen feels that she is an outcast of society. Her peers starting at a very early age ostracize her. She struggles to feel accepted by anyone other than a very select few. While she is incredibly close with her father, she has an incredibly distant relationship, it one at all, with her mother. Because her mother always perceives her as queer she is not shown tenderness of warmth by Anna, which she so desperately craves. Her peers treat her horribly and she dreads spending time with them. The Antrim children were her most dreaded peers. The detested the ultra feminine Violet and would have much rather spent time with Roger but because she was a girl he would never give her a chance. In her late teens she was forced to attend socials and always felt incredibly awkward. It was obvious that she was not liked by anyone at the parties, but on top of that she knew that she made people feel awkward. But the hardest for Stephen was being ostracized as an adult. When Anna discovered that she was in love with Angela Crosby she was sent away from her home. Morton had been her only true and pure love aside from her father. Stephen lost part of her soul when her own mother abolished her from her home. She became jaded and grew to expect these hardships that came with being an invert. She would not trust that any friendship would last once one suspected she was a lesbian. Stephen and her lover Mary had developed a friendship with Lady Massey until Lady Massey understood their relationship. She wrote to Stephen, “The rumors that have reached me about you and Mary-certain things that I don’t want to enter into-have simply forced me to break off our friendship.” (Well of Loneliness p. 370) Like all inverts, to have the freedom to express their emotions in public, the two lovers were confined to appalling nightclubs that were intended for inverts and drug users. The horrendous clubs allowed the two to dance together and sit holding each other, but it was a detestable environment that they were subjected to.

Many of the lesbians that were not feminine in novel were extremely intelligent. These inverts understood that it was vital to their being to develops their minds so as to use them as their weapons. Stephen was first encouraged by Sir Phillip to use her bright mind to her advantage. He supported her love for books at a very early age. He understood her sexuality well before her and advised her “I want you to learn to make friends with your books; some day you

Some topics in this essay:
Father” Loneliness, Sir Phillip, Instead Stephen, Angela Ralph, Angela Crosby, Ultimately Stephen’s, Morton Puddle, Lady Massey, Leslie Feinberg, Morton Stephen, desire protect, protect lovers, angela crosby, puddle encourages stephen, puddle encourages, protect mary, father stephen, cut hair, physical activities, father” loneliness, desire protect lovers, novel stephen,