Talk:Vita Sackville-West

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ] (If you rated the article, please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
	This article is supported by the Arts and Entertainment work group.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject LGBT studies, which tries to ensure comprehensive and factual coverage of all LGBT related issues on Wikipedia. For more information, or to get involved, visit the project page.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Vita Sackville-West article. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers.	Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Be welcoming	Article policies No original research Neutral point of view Verifiability

Contents 1 Lesbian & bisexual 2 Tolkien Reference 3 Virginia Woolf's Autobiography 4 More literary description, less gossip 5 Discussion of Vita in article on Violet Trefusis 6 Major edits in order

[edit] Lesbian & bisexual

Reverted this anon edit, which removed the 'Lesbian writers' category with justification 'cannot be lesbian and bisexual at the same time'.

Points against that:

• The categories don't claim it was at the same time; VSW's orientation might have shifted during her life.
• Both 'lesbian' and 'bisexual' have several different usages, and some of these do in fact overlap; see fuzziness at Sexual_orientation#Classification_and_boundaries. VSW falls into the overlap; while she married a man and had a child, she seems to have been predominantly oriented towards women after that.
• Presumably as a result of the above, both these categories are defined on a "notable writers who identify, or who have been identified, as X" basis. Googling shows plenty of examples of VSW being identified as a lesbian, and quite a few more of her being identified as a bisexual (in fact, narrowing the search to '+"vita sackville-west" +"X writer"' produces a lot more support for 'lesbian' than 'bisexual'.) She clearly fits the definitions offered for both categories; if those definitions are faulty, that should be resolved on their Talk pages rather than here.

--Calair 22:14, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tolkien Reference

"The Hobbit" page seems to claim that the Sackville Baggins functioned as a "comical allusion to Vita Sackville-West, who had been involved in a sensational court case over an English estate in the decade before The Hobbit was written."

There is no back link here.

I just got here from the Hobbit article and wanted to know more about the "sensational court case". To my dismay this article has no mention of the case, and is instead filled to the brim with gosip about the author's sexuality. Yes, her sexuality is an important part of her life, but she is famous as an author, not as a lesbian. How about some more weight given to her works, rather than her romances. L0b0t 13:45, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Virginia Woolf's Autobiography

Also, I've read Virginia Woolf's autobiography "A Writer's Diary" and I don't recall a reference to Vita S-W among the socialites she mentions, though I was mostly concerned with her writing of "The Waves". If Vita is mentioned there, would it be worth noting here?

I found my copy and checked the index. Vita hedges, Vita praises, present company included all writers suck, Vita is Sappho, Vita gets a sex change, and Vita snaps Virginia out of one of her fits. The quote concerning Orlando might be suitable for inclusion in the main text.

She's mentioned as Sackville-West in an entry from 4 June 1923 about a walk around a garden.

1 June 1925 she records that "Vita was a little doubtful" about the fate of either/both of "Mrs Daloway" | "The Common Reader" both recently published.

11 May 1927 she reports that "Vita praises" her recently published "To the Lighthouse".

In the next published entry 18 June 1927 she reports meeting Vita at the Hawthornden as a "horrid showup" of "chattering writers" whose "business of writing became infinitely distasteful".

30 June 1927 she reports that she was "smoking a cigar" and that Vita (with H[arold] sleeping curled up with his head on Vita's knee) "looked like Sappho by Leighton, alseep; ..." (more index citations follow nearby, some skipped).

5 October 1927 she records "And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called "Orlando": Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other.

16 February 1930 she reports that in the aftermath of finishing "The Waves" that again "Once or twice I have felt that odd whirr of wings in the head" and that she doubts she can "write to any purpose" as "A cloud swims in my head." ... "Something happens in my mind. It refuses to go on registering." ... "Then something springs. Two nights ago Vita was here; and when she went I began to feel the quality of the evening - how it was spring coming; ..."

[edit] More literary description, less gossip

Sackville-West is more important for her writing than for her lifestyle. I think that the description of her writing should be expanded. For instance, it is unfair that her most important novel, The Edwardians is only mentioned in a single phrase while the article goes on paragraph after paragraph about the author's lesbian affairs.--19 June 06

Here here. All of the Bloomsbury group articles suffer from the same speculation about sexuality, affairs and marriages, based on salacious gossip, to the extent of overlooking the literary and artistic work which made the individuals noteworthy. Yallery Brown 21:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

with that in mind I had to remove the following as it is unecessary, salacious and irrelevant. I can't think of any heterosexual relationship being described in this way Ophelia105 18:53, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Both Trefusis and Sackville-West are described as being attractive women, with Sackville-West being the dominant of the two.

[edit] Discussion of Vita in article on Violet Trefusis

The relationship between Vita and Violet Trefusis is also discussed in the article about Trefusis. However, some passages seem to have not entirely neutral wording, especially this one:

An essential difference between Mrs Keppel and Vita seems to be that Mrs Keppel made a trade of never distressing her lovers (and their marriages), thus advancing her family socially and financially, while Vita caused broken hearts more than once: for her marriage was rather the refuge she could always come back to after periods of abandonment.

To me, this wording seems to be somewhat judgemental. Also, it is common sense not to attribute the "fault" for the end of a relationship between adults to only one person. Could someone with deeper knowledge on both women address this issue, and describe exactly what happenend without any judgement ?

By the way, on an earlier paragraph in that article, Trefusis is reported to show traits of lesbianism. Wouldn't it be more correct to say that she was bisexual ?

kind regards,

Joise (from the German WP)

[edit] Major edits in order

I am a graduate student in English who has written an MA dissertation on Vita Sackville-West and Violet Trefusis, and I see several major issues with this article which I would like (if there are no serious objects) to address through edits. First of all, I agree that the information on Sackville-West's literary works needs to be expanded (though I have no particular objection to the "gossip", since VSW's social life certainly impacted her work). For one thing, the bibliography mentions no works written after the mid-40s -- VSW continued writing until her death in 1962.

Secondly, there are fairly serious errors (on both this page and the article on Trefusis) in the description of this very important episode in VSW's life. For instance, the affair did not begin until 1918, when both women were in their late 20s; it did not end because VSW was seeing other women; et cetera. I am basing this on repeated readings of texts such as Nigel Nicolson's Portrait of a Marriage, Trefusis' letters to VSW, the various biographies of VSW and Trefusis, Virginia Woolf's collected Diary and Correspondance, and so forth. I feel this section needs significant rewriting but did not want to move ahead on that without posting.

Thirdly, there are also misleading statements about the affair with Woolf. This affair had lasting repercussions in the lives of both VSW and Woolf and as such deserves (IMHO) serious treatment. Evelyn Irons is mentioned as another liason, which seems fine, but Mary Campbell (wife of poet Roy Campbell really should be discussed, since VSW's liason with her significantly impacted the lives of both Woolf and R. Campbell (among others).

I don't want to spam further - but I wanted to post in case anyone had objections to my correcting/expanding the article. Always already 22:43, 2 November 2006

That would be great. One thing you'd need to be careful of is previously-unpublished synthesis or interpretation (even if those are built on published sources) - see WP:OR for discussion of this - but attention and expansion by knowledgeable people is very welcome. Wikipedia:Citing_sources#How_to_cite_sources and Wikipedia:Citation templates might be useful to you here. --Calair 00:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)