Windows act as the threshold between the
private sphere of the home and the public sphere. Patriarchal society encodes
gender into these spaces: the domestic sphere as supposedly the realm of women
and the public sphere as that of men. Thus arbitrarily coding spaces however
relies upon the acceptance of a gender binary. A character such as Stephen
Gordon in The Well of Loneliness, whose gender identity disrupts the gender binary, then disrupts the
gendered coding of these spaces. Furthermore, the window gains yet greater
significance in its liminality because of this disruption.
During Stephen's childhood and adolescence
at Morton, Radclyffe Hall often situates Stephen in the public sphere. While
her father is alive, Stephen's freedom in activity and behaviour is not so
strictly curtailed as it might be - that is to say that her father dilutes
attempts of social conditioning on the basis of the sex assigned her at birth -
and so Stephen has greater access to spaces that are dominated by men. Hall
uses Stephen's relative freedom to subvert the positioning of women at the
window, gazing outwards into a sphere in which their movements would be
severely restricted - as Virginia Woolf exemplifies in A Room of One's Own.
Instead, Stephen in her youth sees the windows of Morton as beckoning her home,
as if the house itself is a character of ‘most compassionate kindness’ (p.109)
and acceptance: ‘she fancied that Morton was thinking about her, for its
windows seemed to be beckoning, inviting: “Come home, come home, come inside
quickly, Stephen!”’ (ibid.). While Stephen sees Morton as part of her identity
throughout the novel, looking upon the windows from the outside, beckoning her
in, suggests that the home is Other to Stephen, more analogous to the way in
which one might identify with a relative: sharing a common background, sharing a sense of connection and belonging somewhat but still distinctly separate. Moreover, Stephen’s
understanding of Morton as home is not confined to the physical building but
encompasses its grounds, as well as the surrounding environment
as far as Stephen may see. In this way, Stephen's place in the domestic sphere
and the public sphere is blurred: she both identifies strongly with her home,
but her sense of home permeates beyond what we may conventionally consider as
the domestic sphere, by absorbing in from the public sphere.
When Stephen's mother is made explicitly
aware of Stephen's sexual orientation, Stephen's forced exile complicates her
positioning within domestic and public spheres. Stephen cannot remain at home
in Morton and, upon visiting, she feels disconnected: ‘she would feel like a
stranger within the gates, an unwanted stranger there only on sufferance. […]
its windows no longer beckoned, invited: “Come home, come home, come inside
quickly Stephen!”’ (p.230). Her public appearances with her mother however must
suggest of no scandal - no change - so Stephen's public persona must become a
lie. This isolates Stephen and only by Jonathan Brockett's recognition of
Stephen's queer identity can she again have a public life, albeit
subcultural and exiled.
Within the circles of the Parisian
subculture, Stephen and her partner Mary meet Jamie and Barbara. Frequently
Hall aligns the two couples - Mary in particular often notes their similarity -
so as to insinuate the parallels that the reader may draw between the couples in
terms of character, dynamics and plotline. Hall describes Jamie and Barbara's
dwelling in distinctly gloomy terms – ‘the distempered grey walls were a mass
of stains, for whenever it hailed or rained or snowed the windows and skylight
would always start dripping’ (p.394) -- but with ‘an eye-shaped window that
would not open’ (p.395) in one of the rooms. In and of itself this window may
have little significance - it is not the site of any significant plot
development in the narrative, but as Jamie and Barbara's tragic ending
foreshadows Stephen and Mary's own tragedy, we would do well to bear it in mind
in the final scenes of The Well of Loneliness.
As the narrative draws to a close, the window
at the threshold of the domestic sphere once again becomes of great
significance. From the window of Stephen's bedroom that faces on the courtyard,
she watches on as her final sacrifice – giving ‘light to those who live in
darkness’ (p.482) -- pushes Mary into the relative protection of a relationship
that will be read in society as heterosexual and therefore acceptable by the
standards of the wider population – no longer an exiled relationship. As Mary
and Martin disappear out of sight, the room fills with the spirits of inverts
in a great culmination of queer purgatory. The imagery denoting purgatory
finally situates Hall's undeniably queer characters in this liminal space from
which they may only ever look upon a society which rejects them and infringes
upon them – as the rain and snow leak into Jamie and Barbara’s studio --
without the freedom to truly integrate themselves in the public sphere – the eye-shaped
window will not open -- while they remain isolated in the relative safety of
exile within a queer domestic sphere. Here, Stephen indubitably learns that ‘the
loneliest place in this world is the no-man’s land of sex’ (p.79).
- Ruth Tolerton
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