“All My Life I’ve Been Waiting” 181 argue that reading The Well in terms of femme narrative is important, not only as a challenge to the contemporary lesbian gaze that can only see itself in Stephen Gordon but also as a way of rethinking the novel as a whole My approach to sexual and gendered narrative in The Well draws on the seminal work of Laura Mulvey,11 read here alongside Judith Roof ’s discussion of lesbian narrative.12 While Mulvey’s work is much criticized for its oversimplification of gendered dynamics, her observations that “the determining male gaze projects its fantasy on to the female figure,” and “women are simultaneously looked at and displayed so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness,”13 are useful when they are understood to describe the ideal mechanisms of heterosexual narrative That the female figure is relentlessly placed within (hetero)sexual narrative as the passive, feminine object of the active male gaze is precisely why lesbian narrative, in which woman is neither passive, nor mere object of this gaze, is so difficult to delineate Roof ’s explanation for the heterosexuality of narrative is that “narrative and sexuality join at the oedipal.”14 Freud’s “riddle of the nature of femininity” can only be solved by men, since it is assumed to be men who take femininity as their object.15 Sexual narrative, then, is driven by a heterosexual male imperative to overcome a (feminine) “riddle,” or obstacle, in order to achieve selfhood/climax and thus close the narrative In linking the above understandings of (hetero)sexual narrative to femininity in The Well, I am interested, first, in the ways in which this landmark lesbian novel enacts a similar narrative progression Remembering Vera Brittain’s regret at Hall’s portrayal of “her ‘normal’ women [as] clinging and ‘feminine’ to exasperation,”16 I want to explore the extent to which femininity in The Well is simply a foil for the masculine resolution of narrative, an object to be “surpassed” in order for true (heroic and/or tragic) masculinity to be attained Certainly, Mary Llewellyn’s position as infantilized object and means for Stephen to reach her own understanding of the true nature of the deviant’s plight seems to mirror a conventional narrative structure Marilyn Farwell underscores the narrative implications of Mary’s passivity when she argues that “Mary is the passive figure with whom we are structurally comfortable and who in the end can become a ‘real woman’ and go with a ‘real man.’ ”17 One might also consider the role of feminine characters such as Stephen’s first lover, Angela; and Stephen’s mother, Anna In the first case, Angela, as object of Stephen’s affection, serves to bring Stephen to an awareness of her own, now undeniable, sexuality The ill-