Okay then...

[selenak]

You know, I'm happy there will be a movie version of Eileen Atkins' play VITA AND VIRGINIA, starring Eva Green as Virginia Woolf, and Gemma Atterton as Vita Sackville-West. But you know why I just linked the article about this upcoming movie that's on "The Mary Sue" and not, say, the article in "Variety" or the article in "Hollywood Reporter" on the same subject? Because both of them refer to Vita Sackville-West as a socialite, whereas the Mary Sue calls her, correctly, a novelist. (She also was a poet, biographer and gardener.)

Now I'm aware Vita Sackville-West's books have by and large fallen out of favour by now. In fact, the probably best read of her writings in the last two decades were texts she didn't mean for publication, such as Portrait of a Marriage, her account of her affair with Violet Trefusis and her son Nigel's comments on his parents' marriage, her correspondance with her husband, Harold Nicolson (btw, the Sackville-West/Nicolson marriage is extremely interesting an example of two bisexuals, both more on the gay side of the Kinsey scale but not exclusively, having a decades long intense relationship with each other that after the first few years doesn't involve sex anymore) and of course her correspondance with Virginia Woolf. And there are ample reasons to call Vita a snob. And of course there's a reason why Virginia Woolf's books have become literary canon while Vita Sackville-West's have not. But she was without the shadow of a doubt a very profilic writer, who put a great deal of her time into creating these books. Which is why these "socialite" and "society girl" labels annoy me. (Not to mention that she probably spent far more time stomping around mud-deep in her gardens than going to parties in Belgrave.) I suspect the article writers only heard "aristocrat" and "inspired Orlando" and immediately jumped to the (wrong) cliché of Vita the cheery flapper.

On the bright side of things, I really do want to watch this movie, especially since the Vita/Virginia affair was non-tragic, downright light-hearted, and benefiting both parties, and not-tragic lesbian affairs are still rare in fictionalized reality tales. Also, hooray for the actresses!

Comments

[chelseagirl]

I'm definitely excited about this.

I hope Leonard doesn't become the villain, though.

I read Vita's All Passion Spent; it was not brilliant but it had its merits. And, hmmm, I know I borrowed Portrait of a Marriage from my aunt; I should look for it as I'm cleaning out her books now.

[kore]

Man, I'm so tired of Leonard as either saintly keeper or sexist villain. I wish there was a portrayal of them that showed the relationship as nourishing and inhibitory for both, like all marriages. Altho that supposed lunch where Eliot and Leonard discussed their mad wives does send a chill down the spine.

[chelseagirl]

Yes, letting people be the complicated wonderful messes they are is sometimes too difficult.

Ouch. I don't remember that in either the Woolf or Eliot bios I've read, but admittedly that was some decades ago now . . .

[kore]

Yeah, especially in a marriage that long and complicated. With two highly creative people! Quite a success from that view.

Actually I was wrong, I looked it up and Lyndall Gordon says Leonard and Eliot exchanged about 30 letters and lunched weekly while Eliot was asking Leonard's advice (so many people asked Leonard for advice), partly because of his experience with a Mad Wife who Wanted to Write all the time, and Leonard gave him the name of Henry Head, "a peculiar choice since Virginia had attempted suicide immediately after a consultation with him." Argh, Leonard. She got the same rest cure Charlotte Perkins Gilman had to endure. Vivienne also got the rest cure, altho a big difference in her marriage was most of Eliot's friends saw him as the vulnerable ill one.

[chelseagirl]

Leonard could definitely be clueless and insensitive.

Eliot . . . his poetry, or much of it, still sings for me, but I kind of want to know less about him.

[selenak]

I can't think of a reason why Eileen Atkins, who wrote the stage play this is based on, would want to vilify Leonard. Neither husband had any objections to the Virginia/Vita relationship, and if you do need a villain for the audience to boo at, there's always Vita's mother.

[chelseagirl]

In that case . . . I saw the play decades ago. And no, it doesn't.

I've read a fair bit of the scholarship -- did my M.A. thesis on Woolf and considered her for my doctorate but went another way. And yes, there's quite a bit of villainizing.

[kore]

....hunh, yeah, she was an aristocrat, not a socialite. Maybe the Bright Young Things of the London 20s would have been considered socialites, but most of them were writers too (Mitfords, Waugh, &c &c). I guess I think of socialites more as Sloane Rangers, or the Vanderbilts and Astors and the whole Capote "Swans" crew in NYC. I like how her blue plaque says "Writer and Gardener."

FLAPPER, whut. I think the closest Bloomsbury ever got to flapper types were girls like Carrington and maybe Lydia Lopokova, but they were both deeply artistic. "Socialite" just so misses the point for women like Lady Brett and Ottoline Morell, altho their backgrounds were so different from Virginia's.

[selenak]

Yes, exactly. It's just sloppy research - or no research at all.