"A Curious Double Insight": The Well of Loneliness and Native American Alternative Gender Traditions

Although it has been widely interpreted and criticized as a lesbian novel, Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness is more accurately seen as the story of an alternatively gendered person. Just as two-spirit people in traditional Native American cultures have assumed alternative gender identities by undertaking the dress, work, and behavior patterns associated with the other gender, so Stephen Gordon attempts to assume a male gendered identity as defined by Edwardian English culture. Reading the novel from this perspective clarifies the distinction between gender and sexual orientation and recognizes the novel's own cultural context.