''Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson'' is the 1973 biography of writer and gardener
Vita Sackville-West
Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH (née Sackville-West; 9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and garden designer.
Sackville-West was a successful novelist, poet and journalist, as wel ...
compiled by her son
Nigel Nicolson
Nigel Nicolson (19 January 1917 – 23 September 2004) was an English writer, publisher and politician.
Early life and education
Nicolson was the second son of writers Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West; he had an elder brother Ben ...
from her journals and letters.
Synopsis
The book relates to Sackville-West's complicated marriage to writer and politician
Harold Nicolson. Two chapters are written by Sackville-West. They are centred on herself and her passion for
Violet Trefusis
Violet Trefusis (''née'' Keppel; 6 June 1894 – 29 February 1972) was an English socialite and author. She is chiefly remembered for her lengthy affair with the writer Vita Sackville-West that both women continued after their respective marria ...
for whom she abandoned Harold Nicolson, Vita's
bisexual husband and her two children, Nigel and
Ben.
Three chapters were written by her son Nigel Nicolson. They present the sexual and emotional life secrets of his mother: "I did not know Violet. I met her only twice, and by then she had become a galleon, no longer the pinnace of her youth, and I did not recognize in her sails the high wind which had swept my mother away
€¦ I did not know that Vita could love like this, had loved like this, because she would not speak of it to her son. Now that I know everything I love her more, as my father did, because she was tempted, because she was weak. She was a rebel, she was Julian
ita’s alter ego and though she did not know it, she fought for more than Violet. She fought for the right to love, men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women. For this she was prepared to give up everything. Yes, she may have been mad, as she later said, but it was a magnificent folly. She may have been cruel, but it was a cruelty on a heroic scale. How can I despise the violence of such passion?"
Sackville-West writes mostly about herself and her emotions. Nicolson writes about his father and the love between him and Vita, that grew more and more important for them as their life progressed, and was the base to which each of them returned after Vita's strong passions for other people, including the famous
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
and Harold's adventures with men. Nicolson stresses the liberal nature of Vita's and Harold's views and actions about marriage and sexuality in the early years of the 20th century, but also brings forward Vita's intense snobbery and coldness about the lower social classes.
Film and television adaptations
*
1990 mini-series adapted by
Penelope Mortimer
Penelope Ruth Mortimer (née Fletcher; 19 September 1918 – 19 October 1999) was a Welsh-born English journalist, biographer, and novelist. Her semi-autobiographical novel ''The Pumpkin Eater'' (1962) was made into a The Pumpkin Eater, 1964 fil ...
for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
television in 1991.