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VIRGINIA WOOLF'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH VITA SACKVILLE WEST


DO THEY HAVE AN AFFAIR ?

 Does Virginia Woolf has a love affair with her close friend Vita Sackville West? The answer is yes. they have, not from the very first day but with the passage of time. They initially met in year 1922 in a dinner party as both were the members of Bohemian Bloomsbury set (Its a group of people of modern age who live their lives with their own wish, unconventional, usually artistic, lives. They were basically supporters or followers of Bloomsbury Group) and gradually they fell in love, liked each others company, spent quality time together and this love lasted for number of years. Although for vita, Virginia was not her first love. She has had many affairs before meeting her.


WHO WAS VITA SACKVILLE WEST ?

 Vita Sackville West, was an English poet and a successful prolific novelist. Her first love  was Rosamund who was four years elder than her. She wrote for Rosamund in her diary that "I love her so much". Their secret love relationship ended when Vita got married in the year 1913.

She also had an intense affair with Violet Trefusis and she eloped to France with her several times, where Vita used to dressed as a man for the outing. Later the affair ended badly. Vita wrote a letter to her husband Nicolson in the year 1919 i.e. after six years of her marriage explaining why she would not leave Trefuses.

" I never ought to marry you or anybody else; i ought just to have lived with you for as long as you wanted me... I ought never to have married until I was thirty. I really think  that is the best solution for people like me. Women ought to have the freedom the same as the men when they are young. It's a rotten and ridiculous system at present, it's simply cheating one of one's youth. It was all right for the Victorians. But this generation is disregarding, and next will have disregarded, the chrysalis."

(Wikipedia Contributors)

Although, both Vita and Violet were married but they were damn serious for each other consequently they promised  that they will keep distance with their partners and remain faithful for each other. Later their relationship ended badly when Vita came to know that Violet has broken her promise and getting closer to her husband. She was in such an agony that she tried to commit suicide and wrote in her diary  that she "hated myself to the extent of thinking i better vanish from the world forever."

Four years after her breakup with Violet Trefusis, Vita got intensely infatuated with Virginia Woolf who was ten years elder than her. This is the affair for which both Virginia and Vita both majorly remembered. Woolf wrote about her meeting  that :

"Vita shines in the grocer's shop in Sevenoaks...pink growing, grape clustered, pearl hung...There is her maturity and full breastedness; her being so much full in sail on the high tides, where I am coasting down backwaters; her capacity I mean to take the floor in any company, to represent her country, to visit Chatsworth, to control silver, servants, chow dogs, her motherhood... her in short being (what I have never been ) a real woman."

(Brooks)


DO THEIR HUSBANDS KNOW ABOUT IT?

 The interesting part of their love relationship is their husbands i.e. Leonard Woolf and Harold Nicolson knew about their wives illicit relationship. Leonard was ok with it because he knew how important it was for Virginia his to be happy in her life. Whereas Harold does not have any problem because their marriage was an open marriage where both the partners were free to do whatever they want to. Vita once revealed to her husband that :

"I simply adore Virginia Woolf, and so would you. You would fall quite flat before her charm and personality... Mrs Woolf is so simple : she does give the impression of something big. She is utterly unaffected : there are no outward adornments - she dresses quite atrociously. At first you think she is plain, then a sort of spiritual beauty imposes itself on you, and you find a fascination in watching her. She was smarter last night, that is to say, the woolen orange stockings were replaced by yellow silk ones, but she still wore the pumps. She is both detached and human, silent till she wants to say something,  and then says it supremely well."

On which her husband said Woolf is quite older, Vita adds with a sort of wistful giddiness:

"I have rarely taken such a fancy to anyone,  and i think she likes me. At least,  she asked me to Richmond where she lives. Darling, i have quite lost my heart."


VIRGINIA'S SISTER VANESSA'S REACTION ?
"Virginia Woolf with Sisters 2 " (CC BY 2.0) by Juliejordanscott 
Later Virginia revealed about her relationship to her sister Vanessa in the year 1928. Again the interesting part, in spite of giving disapproval, she was curious to know.

In the year, 1926 when Vita was on a trip to Persia,  Virginia wrote a love letter to her.

"Look here Vita - throw over your man,  and we will go to Hampton and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and i will tell you all the things i have in my head, millions, myriads - they won't stir by day, only by dark on the river . Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come."


DEDICATED ORLANDO 

 In the year 1927, Virginia wrote a novel called Orlando on their love relationship to which Vita's son Nigel Nicholson, once referred to Orlando as "the longest and most charming love letter in the literature. "

Eventually their love relationship ended in the year 1927 and  they remained friends till their deaths.

Bibliography:
  • Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice.''Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville West :  A Love Affair''. Blog post. The Virginia Woolf Blog. WordPress, 14 March, 2012. Web. 14 March, 2017.
  • Wikipedia Contributors. ''Vita Sackville - West'' Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 21 May. 2017. Web. 25 May. 2017.




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