All Passion Spent

All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West is a delightful and introspective novel about societal expectations of women versus their personal desires. As a young woman, Lady Slane was expected to be a dutiful wife of a future politician and, hence, abandoned her dreams of being an artist. After the death of her husband 70 years later, she steps away from the expectations of her children and ventures out to finally experience life as an independent woman. All Passion Spent introduces us to a few heart-warming characters and provides a lesson that life should be about the “coulds” not the “shoulds,” and most importantly, to lead life with your heart. This was my first Vita Sackville-West novel, and I found her writing style show more absolutely lovely. While a contemporary of the more modernist Bloomsbury writers, she wrote in a more traditional style with lush, flowing narratives. Vita Sackville-West didn’t consider herself a feminist, but All Passion Spent certainly carries themes of autonomy and self-determination of women. “Achievement was good, but the spirit was better.” Vita may have been best known for her relationship with Virginia Woolf and as muse for Woolf's novel Orlando, but she was also a prolific novelist, nature writer, biographer, and poet. Certainly one of my favorite early 20th century British personalities. Now a favorite author. show less

All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West is a delightful and introspective novel about societal expectations of women versus their personal desires. As a young woman, Lady Slane was expected to be a dutiful wife of a future politician and, hence, abandoned her dreams of being an artist. After the death of her husband 70 years later, she steps away from the expectations of her children and ventures out to finally experience life as an independent woman. All Passion Spent introduces us to a few heart-warming characters and provides a lesson that life should be about the “coulds” not the “shoulds,” and most importantly, to lead life with your heart. This was my first Vita Sackville-West novel, and I found her writing style show more absolutely lovely. While a contemporary of the more modernist Bloomsbury writers, she wrote in a more traditional style with lush, flowing narratives. Vita Sackville-West didn’t consider herself a feminist, but All Passion Spent certainly carries themes of autonomy and self-determination of women. “Achievement was good, but the spirit was better.” Vita may have been best known for her relationship with Virginia Woolf and as muse for Woolf's novel Orlando, but she was also a prolific novelist, nature writer, biographer, and poet. Certainly one of my favorite early 20th century British personalities. Now a favorite author. show less

All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West; (5*)

What a beautifully written novel!
"All Passion Spent" is about a woman in her late eighties whose husband has just passed away and who finds herself suddenly with the freedom to do as she likes with the remainder of her life. Up until now, she has lived for her husband and her six children.
The children expect her to sell her home, which she does, and share the remaining years she has with them; rotating months between their homes. But Lady Slane has a very different idea for the years she has left. She wants to live very privately in the countryside with her one devoted servant and far from all of her family. She yearns for peace and quiet. So ignoring all of their demands upon her, she show more does exactly that.
Not a lot happens in this novel, but it is not what happens that invades the mind and spirit of the one reading it. It is the getting there, the prose, the language of the book that is taken into one's heart, treasured and held there that matters. This is simply a beautiful story and one I won't forget for a long time. show less

Little old lady tries, at last, to make her own life after a lifetime of looking after other people's interests and especially her children. Of course, this only rings true if you are from the class of the little old lady or the author - exactly how much 'looking-after' does the Vicereine of India do? She is once described as arranging flowers though - onerous duties indeed. So here we have a deluded, very wealthy old bat who buys a house in Hampstead and has only one servant in order that she may fulfil her childhood ambition of being an artist, although she's never even produced a drawing and never will. She is courted by a very wealthy old man who once fell in love with her (when she was arranging flowers) who pops off leaving her show more his priceless collection of gewgaws instead of the museums and art galleries who are panting for such marvellous freebies to own for themselves.

So what does she do, well she gives away all the money and collections not because she is charitable old bat and doesn't need funds anyway, no, she does it because she is a real bitch, no matter how softly-spoken, so she can dispossess her rapacious children.

Eventually, persuaded by the maid and her lawyer, she does feel guilty about such a thing, but there you go, the wages of sin and all that. Eventually she pops off too and that's that.

Good read, well-written, set in a time and by an author who could not imagine anything much outside her realm of extreme privilege and where poor was only being able to afford a tiny house in a very posh area with only one servant. show less

About Love, Sacrifice, and Redemption

Upon reflection, Vita Sackville-West seems the perfect person to write the story of a highborn woman who subordinates her life fully to the needs of her husband, the demands of his public office, and to motherhood, because she lived her life in nearly complete opposite fashion. While her diplomat husband Harold Nicolson toiled in offices in Europe and the Middle East, she maintained their residence in England, occasionally visiting him and writing of her journey, as in . Lady Deborah Slane only discovers the independence VSW maintained after the death of her husband, Henry Holland, as she casts back upon her life in Part Two, the beautiful and thoughtful heart of the novel. And why did Lady Slane show more sacrifice her ambition to live her life as a painter? For the same reason VSW gave up her famously scandalous affair with Violet Trefusis:

"All the parts of her that were not Henry Holland's had pulled in opposition, yet by this single giant of love they had all been pulled over, as the weaker team in a tug-of-war. Her ambitions, her secret existence, all had given way. She had loved him so much that even her resentment was subdued. She could not grudge him ever the sacrifice he had imposed upon her."

Part Two is where VSW displays her strongly feminist (though she would vigorously object to the word, preferring human rights) viewpoint, particularly in Lady Slane's recollection of her internal struggle over the meaning of her impending marriage to Henry. Betty Friedan gave it a name in 1963: The Feminine Mystique.

Part One of the novel in three parts sets the scene. Upon the death of Henry, the Holland children, all in their 60s, and none, with the exceptions of muddling, sweet Edith and solitary Kay, a man who collects astrolabes and such, present themselves as very likable. They conspire a plan spun from their own needs to care for their mother. Then Lady Slane shocks them with her announcement she will take a house in Hampstead, an expression of unexpected independence that most of them see as a bit of senility. As VSW tells it:

"Herbert, Carrie, Charles, and William decided that their mother must be mad. They took a step forward, and from having always thought her simple, decided that old age had definitely affected her brain. Her madness, however, was taking a harmless and even convenient form. William might be thinking rather regretfully of the lost subsidy to his house-books, Carrie and Herbert might remain still a little dubious about the eyes of the world, but, on the whole, it was a relief to find their mother settling her own affairs. Kay gazed inquiringly at his mother. He had taken her so much for granted--her gentleness, her unselfishness, her impersonal activities--and now, for the first time in his life, it was becoming apparent to Kay that people could still hold surprises up their sleeves, however long one had known them. Edith alone frolicked in her mind. She thought her mother not mad, but most conspicuously sane."

After Lady Slane moves, we meet people, in addition to her equally elderly maid Genoux, we do like, namely Mr. Bucktrout, the friendly and caring landlord, and the tradesman of varied skills, Mr. Gosheron, two gentlemen who take a greater interest in her well being than her children. Later, VSW introduces Mr. FitzGeorge, the remarkably reclusive millionaire collector of invaluable art purchased at bargain basement prices, what gratifies him most in life. Each of these individuals enriches Lady Slane's last months. And it is Mr. FitzGeorge who empowers Lady Slane to truly stun her children.

Part Three expands upon her relationship with Mr. FitzGeorge, who met her in India when she was Vicereine. She had forgotten him, simply another of the many faces that passed before her during her years with Henry. She, however, forever captivated him. As the months pass, Mr. FitzGeorge explains himself and makes cogent observations about her life and, really, about the lives of many talented women, two of which will give the flavor of his thinking, doubtless the mirror image of VSW's. He says:

"Face it, Lady Slane. Your children, your husband, your splendour, were nothing but obstacles that kept you from yourself. They were what you chose to substitute for your real vocation." To which, upon consideration, she agrees. He follows with: "According to his [Henry] lights, he gave you all you could desire. He merely killed you, that's all. Men do kill women. Most women enjoy being killed; so I am told. Being a woman, I daresay that even you took a certain pleasure in the process."

In the end, Mr. FitzGeorge provides her with something of a second chance. He enables her to upend the selfish plans of her children, delight Edith and Genoux, and allow her great-granddaughter, Deborah, to escape an ordained marriage to pursue her creative dreams, as Lady Slane could and did not.

Highly recommended for its graceful beauty, insights into love and personal independence, and its forward-looking viewpoint. show less

When 90-year-old Lord Slane dies, his six children and their spouses come to the home of their mother and condescendingly pat her hand while they plan her future. Ah, but Lady Slane has already made a different plan -- a plan of independence and solitude that she’s been dreaming of through the decades that she devoted to her husband, children and public service.

If you like English-literature classics (including Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own), you’ll like this 1931 novella. If you like quiet stories about aging (for example, Taylor’s Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont and Pym’s Quartet in Autumn), you’ll like it. It called to my mind Kate Chopin’s short-short work, “The Story of an Hour” which captures in a brilliant flash show more the devastation of going-along vs pursuing one’s own interests. This novella captures it also, though the extended rumination dulls it a little.

(Review based on a copy of the book provided by the publisher.) show less

An elderly woman’s husband dies, and her six children (in their 60’s themselves) debate what is to be done with her. They get a surprise when she makes decisions for herself, counter to their wishes, and we readers later get a surprise as she reminisces over her life and find out what her interests really were, long ago. While ostensibly she led a fulfilling, successful life by traveling the world, raising a family, and appearing in society’s eye, we find out how she really felt about it, and in a nuanced way. There are few absolutes, like most lives.

This is a landmark book in feminist literature, with a clear message of the hypocrisy and unfairness of women having to subjugate their desires (and lives!) in marriage to men, who show more went merrily on as before with complete freedom.

However, the book is also empowering to the elderly, showing that it’s never too late to take control of one’s life - and given that there are only so many years of it, one really should, regardless of the opinions of others. (“Compromise is the very breath of negation.”) Sackville-West was 39 when she wrote it, but somehow channeled great wisdom and the perspective of one who learned from living a full life.

Lastly, she empowers those who are unconventional, those who don’t want to fit the mold society makes for them. The others on the road ‘more travelled’ cannot know what it’s like for artists or eccentrics, and while they are ‘not practical’, their lives are meaningful nonetheless, and there is a place in the world for them too, for they “act as a leaven”, and, “as the present-day became history, the poets and the prophets counted for more than the conquerors.”

Authenticity is what matters, both in relating to others, and most importantly, to oneself.

Quotes:
On life, and whether one is “happy”:
“Absurd of ask of those, had she been happy or unhappy? It seemed merely as though someone were asking a question about someone that was not herself, clothing the question in a word that bore no relation to the shifting, elusive, iridescent play of life; trying to do something impossible, in fact, like compressing the waters of a lake into a tight, hard ball. Life was that lake, thought Lady Slane, sitting under the warm south wall amid the smell of the peaches; a lake offering its even surface to many reflections, gilded by the sun, silvered by the moon, darkened by a cloud, roughened by a ripple; but level always, a plane, keeping its bounds, not to be rolled up into a tight, hard ball, small enough to be held in the hand, which was what people were trying to do when they asked if one’s life had been happy or unhappy.”

On solitude:
“All he asked was to be let alone; he had no desire to interfere in the workings of the world; he simply wanted to live withdrawn into his chosen world, absorbed in his possessions and their beauty. That was his form of spirituality, his form of contemplation. Thus the loneliness of his death held not pathos, since it was in accordance with what he had chosen.” show less