Pretty maudlin and extravagant autobiography of a Lesbian, which
alienates the reader by the lack of that restraint which made The
Well of Loneliness a moving and genuine book. There are some pretty
squishy love passages, with a cheapness of interpretation which
belies their validity. The story traces the dawning suspicion that
she is not like other women; she goes into her affair with Carl, a
six-months' test of the possibility of normal heterosexual
relations, and she proves to herself that she cannot attain
physical satisfaction with a man. Then comes - in full detail - the
account of the two big affairs of her life, first with a
contemporary, then with a younger woman, who turns out to be her
life mate. One wonders how this book will pass censorship. (Kirkus
Reviews)
This is the unusual and compelling story of Diana, a tantalizingly
beautiful woman who sought love in the strange by-paths of Lesbos.
Fearless and outspoken, it dares to reveal that hidden world where
perfumed caresses and half-whispered endearments constitute the
forbidden fruits in a Garden of Eden where men are never accepted.
This is how "Diana: A Strange Autobiography" was described when
it was published in paperback in 1952. The original 1939 hardcover
edition carried with it a Publisher's Note: This is the
autobiography of a woman who tried to be normal.
In the book, Diana is presented as the unexceptional daughter of
an unexceptional plutocratic family. During adolescence, she finds
herself drawn with mysterious intensity to a girl friend. The
narrative follows Diana's progress through college; a trial
marriage that proves she is incapable of heterosexuality;
intellectual and sexual education in Europe; and a series of
lesbian relationships culminating in a final tormented triangular
struggle with two other women for the individual salvation to be
found in a happy couple.
In her introduction, Julie Abraham argues that Diana is not
really an autobiography at all, but a deliberate synthesis of
different archetypes of this confessional genre, echoing, as it
does, more than a half-dozen novels. Hitting all the high and low
points of the lesbian novel, the book, Abraham illustrates, offers
a defense of lesbian relationships that was unprecedented in 1939
and radical for decades afterwards.
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