Talk:Orlando: A Biography

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[edit] Trial about a contemporary novel?

She was aware of the difficulties of such topics, having been called upon to testify in a trial about a contemporary novel which openly defended a transgender-related topic (not even about lesbianism, which was much more anathema in those days).

What does this refer to? It seems like an account of the trial of The Well of Loneliness, in which Woolf had planned to testify (but did not, because the judge ruled that the literary merit of the novel was irrelevant). But I don't think that Woolf could have had the trial of The Well in mind when she wrote a 1928 novel, as this implies, since it didn't go to trial until November 1928.

Also, it makes no sense to suggest that the public reaction to The Well was less harsh because it was about transgender rather than lesbianism -- the idea of transgender as a separate concept didn't exist yet. The Well was about "congenital sexual inversion," which lumped together some things we would now see as transgender along with homosexuality. Some modern readers see the protagonist of The Well as a transman, but it's certainly been widely viewed as a lesbian novel (sometimes "the lesbian novel") ever since its publication. —Celithemis 23:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)