Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl
...The happy ending is supposed to be a significant thing about this book. I’m curious what other books it is being compared to. Does anyone know?
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I had wondered the same thing. There is a Wikipedia page on Lesbian Literature and it said something about pre-1950s American lesbian literature having unhappy endings as then it escaped the censor by its depiction of such relationships as being unfortunate rather than being promoted. But I don't recall it giving any examples of such American novels and I don't know of any myself.
As far as among the English writers I know; in Radclyffe Hall's well known late 1920s
The Well of Loneliness Stephen (the main female character) has an anguished mind in the last chapter (as best as I remember, but I may read it again), I don't recall an unhappy ending in Lawrence's
The Rainbow (but I read that long ago), and while I have not read it I could not see any claim that Virginia Woolf's well known
Orlando had an unhappy ending (someone who has read it may be able to clarify?).
So, as far as I found, there is a Wikipedia claim that earlier American novels, which they do not name, had unhappy endings, and among English ones there is
The Well of Loneliness.
EDIT: For anyone else interested in a copy of
The Well of Loneliness it is well out of copyright in 50 and "pure" 70 year countries, and I found a copy in Project Gutenberg Australia but filed under author being 'Hall' (but not in Project Gutenberg nor the Mobileread Library, as far as I could see, so I assume it is still in copyright in the USA). Kobo has a number of paid ebook versions served to New Zealand (we are 50 years) and I assume Amazon will do so too.