Women modernist writers breached the barriers set up for them by their male counterparts and society by writing about the political, philosophical, and often the taboo. Two women authors, Virginia Woolf and Radclyffe Hall, ventured into the field of taboo subject matter, exploring Sapphist desires in their texts, and consequently redefined the limits for women writers. Two of the most significant modernist texts that explore these Sapphist desires are Woolf's Orlando and Hall's The Well of Loneliness. Critics have grappled with these texts since their publication, but the works have been analyzed for different reasons. Woolf's novel, as the creation of a renowned highbrow author, is often studied based on its literary merits. Hall's novel, on the other hand, was at the center of an obscenity trial due to its portrayal of "unnatural" practices among women, and subsequently defined the "lesbian" for a willlingly ignorant society. For these reasons, a pattern emerges among critics. Woolf's novel is often discussed in literary journals, while publications on Hall's often appear in journals based on sex and gender theory. When the two are discussed together, Hall's novel is usually addressed only because of the historical signficance of its trial, while Woolf's is praised and dissected for its literary acheivement.

My intention is to analyze both novels in terms of literary and theoretical frameworks. In this way, I hope to fill a blank space in the current critical canon. What are the literary merits of Radclyffe Hall's work? Does Virginia Woolf's novel deserve so much more praise in terms of breaking down sexual boundaries? Most importantly, with this study I hope to unveil why Hall's work created such a controversy, and why it ended up as the item of conflict in the 20th century trial, rather than Woolf's novel published in the same year.