The Unlit Lamp

This is a book to give rise to mixed emotions. On the one hand, it makes you feel angry that Joan feels she has no other option but care for his mother, despite her ambitions and the support she has from Elizabeth. And angry at Mrs Ogden for being to too clingy. On the other, there's the relationship between Elizabeth and Joan that pushes both of them forward, until Joan disapppoints Elizabeth one final time. Radclyffe Hall didn't write this novel as her great lesbian love story, but that's how it reads, and in many ways it was more compelling than Stephen and Mary in The Well of Loneliness.

What a sad book. I expected a happy ending, although with hindsight I'm not sure why. So I read right to the end expecting the cavalry to come over the hill and save the day and make Joan happy, and was very blindsided when they didn't.

It is interesting that the Well of Loneliness is thought of as the first lesbian novel, as this earlier novel is about Joan, who wants to leave her family home to go and live with Elizabeth, who she loves. There is no explicit nature to their love, but their strong feeling for each other is clear, and it is odd reading this as a modern reader trying to squeeze their relationship into my boxes and stereotypes. Joan is hindered by the strong sense of responsibility she feels for her aging mother, and by her show more own fears. I assumed it would be a book about how Joan eventually grew up and found herself and became happy, but instead it is a book about how Elizabeth gets bored of waiting, and Joan is miserable and stifled for the rest of her life.

I wonder if it is a self-justifying novel? 'Oh, I had to leave my family, because wouldn't it be unbearable to end up like this'?

The relationship between Joan and Elizabeth is uncomfortable as well. They meet when Joan is small (11ish?) and Elizabeth is her governess, and the progression of their relationship is surprisingly ikky when this fact is kept in mind. Joan is young and vulnerable, and it is oddly easy to frame Elizabeth's actions almost as 'grooming'.

Oh but how I wanted Elizabeth to come back to her and save the day, and they could go off to Cambridge together and learn so much about the world and be happy! It was a heartbreaking book in so many ways. show less

The Unlit Lamp, the story of Joan Ogden, a young girl who dreams of setting up a flat in London with her friend Elizabeth (a so-called Boston marriage) and studying to become a doctor, but feels trapped by her manipulative mother's emotional dependence on her. It's grim, you want to shake Joan so much, but Radclyffe Hall writes the story not just for this one character but for all women whose lives are lived in quiet desperation submitting to the will of others. A powerful story to make anyone hesitant to jump at the chances life offers us.

‘Joan! I don’t know you awfully well , and of course you’re only a kid as yet, but Elizabeth says you’re clever— and don’t you let yourself be bottled.’
‘Bottled?’ she queried.
‘Don’t you get all cramped up and fuggy, like one does when one sits over a fire all day. I know what I mean, it sounds all rot, only it isn’t rot. You look out! I have a presentiment that they mean to bottle you.’

I figured I would The Unlit Lamp before attempting Radclyffe Hall's more famous (or infamous) work The Well of Loneliness - simply because I wanted to see where her writing was coming from without having any expectations.

Radclyffe Hall doesn't quite manage to impress with her writing - there is a lot of telling rather than show more showing going on and a lot of repetition - but, to my surprise, I really liked The Unlit Lamp for being such an anti-hero of a book.
It is as depressing as any Hardy novel I have read, and even when read as a kind of cautionary tale about wasted lives, selfishness, responsibility, and infuriating parental manipulation, the story kept its pace until the very last.

Now I am still not sure who I want to slap more - Elizabeth or her mother. show less

Gloomy novel about carachters who die a lot and don't live very much when they're alive. More readable than the well of loneliness though.