All Passion Spent (VMC)

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Her husband was a peer and former Prime Minister and Viceroy of India -- a very eminent career during which his wife had devoted herself totally to him and this lifestyle and to her 6 children.

For a short while we view this scene through the eyes of Edith, the youngest, who may have been an interesting character in her own right, but this is almost the last we see of her.

Her husband having just passed away, she’s already well into in her eighties but determined to live out her remaining days to their fullest. FitzGeorge wander Hampstead: “Thus they revived memories of Constable, and even visited Keats’ house, that little white box of strain and tragedy marooned among the dark green laurels. By coincidence, the next book I started reading was also a 1930s discussion about women working or not working, so I have framed my review as a comparison with All Passion Spent. I’d read lots of it, at university, but I didn’t really have a language to talk about it though I must have written essays about it or I wouldn’t have passed with high distinctions. And so they put another set of expectations in train, believing their dutiful mother will see the merits of the plan.

I’m sure there are many widowed elderly ladies whose families think they know best and ride roughshod over their mother’s own wishes. The poet, novelist, and gardener Vita Sackville-West was not yet forty when she wrote her novel, All Passion Spent, published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press in 1931 and reissued by Virago in 1983. For me the key point is that landscape art such as Constable’s provides a way for Lady Slane to think about her past.

Part 1 concludes with Lady Slane's developing friendships with her aged landlord Mr Bucktrout and his equally aged handyman Mr Gosheron. By joining TV Guide, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. The early scene where her children discuss their mother and plan her future reminded me a little about the King Lear daughters deciding how their father will spend so many months with each of them. The story starts off with the death of Lady Slane's husband, whose imposing career had made him a very public and respected figure.

Lady Slane's youngest daughter (60), undisciplined and easily flustered, to her siblings' amusement and distaste. Lady Slane discovers that relinquishing the fortune has permitted Deborah, her great-granddaughter, to break off her engagement and pursue music, Deborah taking the path that Lady Slane herself could not. The novel ends with Lady Slane’s death, but that is in no way a tragedy, merely an inevitable ending which is kinder than it might have been, and happier than Lady Slane had once anticipated it might be.Right at the end, and it’s a bit neat, her great grand-daughter Deborah, engaged to a Duke, bursts in, lays her head on Lady Slane’s knee and sobs that she has broken the engagement and is going to be a pianist. From the original review of All Passion Spent in the Indianapolis Star-Sun, November, 1931: Here is a winter’s tale that must not be spoiled for the reader by too much criticism or fanfare, both of which often prejudice a prospective reader before the book is opened. Her long life, when put together as a remembered whole, provides a model for those who are willing to assess their lives honestly and imaginatively. She has been the dutiful wife of a "great man" in public life, Viceroy of India and a member of the House of Lords.