The Well of Loneliness

context: en: Douglas's campaign against The Well of Loneliness began on 18 August, with poster and billboard advertising and a teaser in the Daily Express promising to expose "A Book That Should Be Suppressed". In his editorial the next day, Douglas wrote that "sexual inversion and perversion" had already become too visible and that the publication of The Well brought home the need for society to "cleans[e] itself from the leprosy of these lepers". For Douglas the sexological view of homosexuality was pseudoscience, incompatible with the Christian doctrine of free will; instead, he argued, homosexuals were damned by their own choice – which meant that others could be corrupted by "their propaganda". Above all, children must be protected: "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul." He called on the publishers to withdraw the book and the Home Secretary to take action if they did not.In what Hall described as an act of "imbecility coupled with momentary panic", Jonathan Cape sent a copy of The Well to the Home Secretary for his opinion, offering to withdraw the book if it would be in the public interest to do so. The Home Secretary was William Joynson-Hicks, a Conservative known for his crackdowns on alcohol, nightclubs and gambling, as well as for his opposition to a revised version of The Book of Common Prayer. He took only two days to reply that The Well was "gravely detrimental to the public interest"; if Cape did not withdraw it voluntarily, criminal proceedings would be brought.Cape announced that he had stopped publication, but he secretly leased the rights to Pegasus Press, an English-language publisher in France. His partner Wren Howard took papier-mâché moulds of the type to Paris, and by 28 September, Pegasus Press was shipping its edition to the London bookseller Leopold Hill, who acted as distributor. With publicity increasing demand, sales were brisk, but the reappearance of The Well on bookshop shelves soon came to the attention of the Home Office. On 3 October Joynson-Hicks issued a warrant for shipments of the book to be seized.One consignment of 250 copies was stopped at Dover. Then the Chairman of the Board of Customs balked. He had read The Well and considered it a fine book, not at all obscene; he wanted no part of suppressing it. On 19 October he released the seized copies for delivery to Leopold Hill's premises, where the Metropolitan Police were waiting with a search warrant. Hill and Cape were summoned to appear at Bow Street Magistrates' Court to show cause why the book should not be destroyed.
qas: question: zh_tw: 這些影印品被運送到了哪裡？
answers: en: text: Leopold Hill's premises

question: zh_tw: 道格拉斯在 “每日快報” 上發表的反對 “孤獨之井” 的論述是什麼？
answers: en: text: need for society to "cleans[e] itself from the leprosy of these lepers"

context: en: James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express, did not agree. Douglas was a dedicated moralist, an exponent of muscular Christianity, which sought to reinvigorate the Church of England by promoting physical health and manliness. His colourfully worded editorials on subjects such as "the flapper vote" (that is, the extension of suffrage to women under 30) and "modern sex novelists" helped the Express family of papers prosper in the cutthroat circulation wars of the late 1920s. These leader articles shared the pages of the Sunday Express with gossip, murderers' confessions, and features about the love affairs of great men and women of the past.
qas: question: zh_tw: 詹姆斯・道格拉斯是哪一派基督教的支持者？
answers: en: text: muscular Christianity,

question: zh_tw: 《週日快報》當時的編輯是誰？
answers: en: text: James Douglas

context: en: Stephen moves to London and writes a well-received first novel. Her second novel is less successful, and her friend the playwright Jonathan Brockett, himself an invert, urges her to travel to Paris to improve her writing through a fuller experience of life. There she makes her first, brief contact with urban invert culture, meeting the lesbian salon hostess Valérie Seymour. During World War I she joins an ambulance unit, eventually serving at the front and earning the Croix de Guerre. She falls in love with a younger fellow driver, Mary Llewellyn, who comes to live with her after the war ends. They are happy at first, but Mary becomes lonely when Stephen returns to writing. Rejected by polite society, Mary throws herself into Parisian nightlife. Stephen believes Mary is becoming hardened and embittered and feels powerless to provide her with "a more normal and complete existence".Martin Hallam, now living in Paris, rekindles his old friendship with Stephen. In time, he falls in love with Mary. Persuaded that she cannot give Mary happiness, Stephen pretends to have an affair with Valérie Seymour to drive her into Martin's arms. The novel ends with Stephen's plea to God: "Give us also the right to our existence!"
qas: question: zh_tw: 瑪麗・盧埃林的職業是什麼？
answers: en: text: driver

context: en: The novel has had its defenders among feminists in the academy, such as Alison Hennegan, pointing out that the novel did raise awareness of homosexuality among the British public and cleared the way for later work that tackled gay and lesbian issues.In more recent criticism, critics have tended to focus on the novel's historical context, but The Well's reputation as "the most depressing lesbian novel ever written" persists and is still controversial. Some critics see the book as reinforcing homophobic beliefs, while others argue that the book's tragedy and its depiction of shame are its most compelling aspects.The Well's ideas and attitudes now strike many readers as dated, and few critics praise its literary quality. Nevertheless, it continues to compel critical attention, to provoke strong identification and intense emotional reactions in some readers, and to elicit a high level of personal engagement from its critics.
qas: question: zh_tw: 批評家給那小說怎樣的文學價值？
answers: en: text: high

context: en: Willette Kershaw, an American actress who was staging banned plays in Paris, proposed a dramatisation of The Well of Loneliness. Hall accepted a £100 advance, but when she and Troubridge saw Kershaw act, they found her too feminine for the role of Stephen. Hall tried to void the contract on a technicality, but Kershaw refused to change her plans. The play opened on 2 September 1930. No playwright was credited, implying that Hall had written the adaptation herself; it was actually written by one of Kershaw's ex-husbands, who reworked the story to make it more upbeat. According to Janet Flanner, who reported on the opening night for The New Yorker, Kershaw "made up in costume what she lacked in psychology", with designer boots, breeches and riding crop. Then she changed into a white dress for a final speech in which she "begged humanity, 'already used to earthquakes and murderers', to try to put up with a minor calamity like the play's and the book's Lesbian protagonist, Stephen Gordon". Hall threatened a lawsuit to stop the production, but the issue soon became moot, since the play closed after only a few nights. The public skirmish between Hall and Kershaw increased sales of the novel.A 1951 French film set in a girls' boarding school was released in the United States as The Pit of Loneliness to capitalise on the notoriety of The Well, but was actually adapted from the novel Olivia, now known to have been written by Dorothy Bussy. A mid-1930s exploitation film, Children of Loneliness, stated it was "inspired by" The Well. Little of Hall's novel can be discerned in its story of a butch lesbian who is blinded with acid and run over by a truck, freeing the naïve young roommate she seduced to find love with a fullback. A critic for the Motion Picture Herald reported that during the film's run in Los Angeles in 1937 – as a double feature with Love Life of a Gorilla – a self-identified "doctor" appeared after the screening to sell pamphlets purporting to explain homosexuality. He was arrested for selling obscene literature.In 1983, American performance artist Holly Hughes wrote a satirical play, The Well of Horniness, whose title is inspired by that of Hall's novel. The play is described as "a high-camp, low-brow Sapphic murder mystery" presented "in the cliff-hanging style of an old-time radio show."
qas: question: zh_tw: 豪爾為《孤井》工作而收到多少酬金？
answers: en: text: £100