Despised and Rejected was very much ahead of its time in its depiction of homosexual love and desire, in Antoinette's 'crushes' and slow acceptance that she won't be able to be in love with a man, in its honest attitude to the war, and in the radical way it links maleness with belligerence and being gay with the refusal to kill. And it is a book that longs for Britain and Europe to be united. Dennis sees that 'the roads and railways that had been made throughout Europe to connect one country with another had been torn up to form frontiers and sever the connection.' He wishes that 'the barriers of racial hatred and racial envy be swept away; art and civilisation arise once more in place of murder and barbarity.' Despised and Rejected is brave; and it is balanced, generous, sane and civilised.