Radclyffe Hall

The Unlit Lamp Radclyffe Hall

Joan has a right to love whom she likes, and to go where she likes and to work and be independent and happy, and if she can't be happy then she has a right to make her own unhappiness; it's a thousand times better to be unhappy in your own way than to be happy in someone else's. The Unlit Lamp is the usual early 20th-Century tale of gay women who sacrifice their happiness to satisfy the wants and expectations of others, resulting in unhappiness all round and painful martyrdom for the central characters, who turn down every happiness offered them.