Understanding Your Identity“Who am I” is a question that most teenagers find themselves asking at some point during adolescence. A person's identity is not made up of just one thing: it includes religion, ethnicity, occupation, physicality, gender and sexuality. Understanding your identity means fully understanding all these completely different aspects of yourself. In Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Lonelies, Stephen Gordon struggles to understand his identity and his inversion. Her physical appearance clearly has an extremely strong effect on how she sees herself. “A Curious Double Insight: 'The Well of Loneliness' and Native American Alternative Gender Traditions” by Tara Prince-Hughes explains that identifying as a lesbian and as an invert means two completely different things. Through Native American traditions, Hughes explains that Stephen's definition of his identity resembles their Two-Spirit emphasis on gender rather than the lesbian emphasis on sexual desire. The article "Hall of Mirrors: Radclyffe Hall's 'The Well of Lonelies' and Modernist Fictions of Identity" by Laura Green discusses the difficulties Stephen faced with his reversal and how this reflected on his identity throughout the book. According to Tara Prince-Hughes' article, “lesbian” identification refers to a woman's sexual orientation and desire. However, identifying as “inverted” refers to a woman's masculine gender orientation. Stephen Gordon struggles throughout the book to find a way to express and understand his reversal. Stephen is aware of his instinctive masculinity, but being so young, he is completely confused by it. Growing up with masculine behaviors and the desire for an app...... middle of paper ......ip (Hall, 15). This is why the understanding and care that Sir Phillip offers Stephen is so extremely important and this is why she cares so much about their relationship. Works Cited Green, Laura. “Hall of Mirrors: Radclyffe Hall's “The Well of Solitude” and Modernist Fictions of Identity.” Twentieth Century Literature 49.3 (2003): 277-297. JSTOR. Network. May 21, 2014. a68a28954e4dbff3b7ba02306>. Hall, Radclyffe. The well of solitude. 1928. New York: Anchor, 1990. Print.Hughes, Tara. "'A Curious Double Insight'": 'The Well of Solitude' and Native American Alternative Gender Traditions. Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 53.2 (1999): 31-48. JSTOR. Network. May 23, 2014.10.2307/1348204?ref=search-gateway:a818b478ded3429f53821f78aba0ee0b>.