In Hall's time, Paris was known for having a relatively large and visible gay and lesbian community — in part because France, unlike England, had no laws against male homosexuality.[32] When Stephen first travels there, at the urging of her friend Jonathan Brockett — who may be based on Noel Coward[33] — she has not yet spoken about her inversion to anyone. Brockett, acting as tour guide, hints at a secret history of inversion in the city by referring to Marie Antoinette's rumored relationship with the Princesse de Lamballe.[34]
The Temple of Friendship at Natalie Barney's home at 20, Rue Jacob
Brockett next introduces Stephen to Valérie Seymour, who — like her prototype, Natalie Clifford Barney[33] — is the hostess of a literary salon, many of whose guests are lesbians and gay men. Immediately after this meeting Stephen announces she has decided to settle in Paris at 35 Rue Jacob (purchased at Seymour's recommendation), with its temple in a corner of an overgrown garden. Barney lived and held her salon at 20 Rue Jacob.[35] Stephen is wary of Valérie, however, and does not visit her salon until after the war, when Brockett persuades her that Mary is becoming too isolated. She finds Valérie to be an "indestructible creature" capable of bestowing a sense of self-respect on others, at least temporarily: "everyone felt very normal and brave when they gathered together at Valérie Seymour's".[36] With Stephen's misgivings "drugged", she and Mary are drawn further into the "desolate country" of Paris gay life. At Alec's Bar — the worst in a series of depressing nightspots — they encounter "the battered remnants of men who... despised of the world, must despise themselves beyond all hope, it seemed, of salvation".[37]
Many of those familiar with the subculture she described, including her own friends, disagreed with her portrayal of it; Romaine Brooks called her "a digger-up of worms with the pretension of a distinguished archaeologist".[38] Hall's correspondence shows that the negative view of bars like Alec's that she expressed in The Well was sincerely meant,[39] but she also knew that such bars did not represent the only homosexual communities in Paris.[40] It is a commonplace of criticism that her own experience of lesbian life was not as miserable as Stephen's.[41] By focusing on misery and describing its cause as "ceaseless persecution" by "the so-called just and righteous", she intensified the urgency of her plea for change.[42]
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
