Lesson 15

1. Lesson 15 No Signpost in the Sea

2. Questions: What is the general function of a “signposts”? What is the special feature of a sea? What can you predict about the implication of the title of the text?

3. No Signpost in the Seaby Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West • Questions for further discussion: • Suppose if one has been informed that one’s days in the world are numbered, what do you think one may choose to do as the best option?

4. About the author: • Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville West (1892—1962): an English poet and novelist • Sackville-West, Vita (Victoria Mary Sackville-West), 1892–1962, English writer; wife of Sir Harold Nicolson and granddaughter of the 2d Baron Sackville. Both she and Nicolson were members of the Bloomsbury group

5. Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West Her poems in The Land (1926), Selected Poems (1941), and The Garden (1946) won praise, but she is better known for her novels, The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931). Among her other works are Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), about her family's past, and her charming fictional portrait of her grandmother, Pepita (1937)

6. Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West Vita Sackville-West (March 9, 1892 – June 2, 1962) was an English poet, novelist and gardener. Her long narrative poem, The Land, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She won it again, the only writer to do so, in 1933 with her Collected Poems. She helped create her own gardens in Sissinghurst, Kent which provide the backdrop to Sissinghurst Castle. She was famous for her exuberant aristocratic life, her strong marriage, and her passionate affairs with women.

7. Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West • Early life • Sackville-West was born at Knole House in Kent, and her first love affair was with this ancient and huge house; because she was a woman, she could not inherit it, and this affected the rest of her life. She was the daughter of the 3rd Baron Sackville and his wife Victoria Sackville-West. She was christened "Victoria Mary Sackville-West" but was known as "Vita" throughout her life.

8. Personal life, marriage and bisexuality In 1913, she married Harold Nicolson, at different times a diplomat, journalist, broadcaster, Member of Parliament, author of biographies and novels, and, crucially, a fellow bisexual in favour of what would now be called an open marriage. Both she and her husband had several consecutive same-sex relations outside their marriage, as was common among the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists to which they belonged.

9. Affair with Violet Trefusis The affair that had the deepest and most lasting effect on Vita's personal life was that with novelist Violet Trefusis, daughter to courtesanAlice Keppel. By the time both Vita’s sons were out of diapers, Vita and Violet had eloped several times from 1918 on, mostly to France, where Vita would dress as a young man when they went out. The affair eventually ended badly, with Trefusis pursuing Sackville-West to great lengths, until Sackville-West's affairs with other women finally took there toll, but Trefusis refused to give up.

10. Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West Also, the two women had made a bond to remain exclusive to one another, meaning that although both women were married, neither could engage in sexual relations with their husband. Sackville-West received word that allegedly Trefusis had been involved sexually with her (Trefusis') husband, indicating she had broken their bond, prompting her to end the affair. Despite the poor ending, the two women were devoted to one another, and deeply in love.

11. Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West Sackville-West wrote an autobiographical account about this period, which was later edited and published by her son Nigel Nicolson as Portrait of a Marriage. Nigel had to perform some heavy explaining of his choice of title, given that it was, in fact, the portrait of an extra-marital affair. The piece aired in a three-part Masterpiece Theatre series July 19 through Aug. 2 1992. [1]

12. Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West Vita's novel Challenge also bears witness of this affair: Vita and Violet had started writing this book as a collaborative endea- vour, the male character's name, Julian, being Vita's nickname while passing as a man. Vita's mother, Lady Sackville, found the portrayal obvious enough to insist the novel not be published in England. Nigel (1973, p. 194),

13. Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West however, praises Vita: "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… How could she regret that the knowledge of it should now reach the ears of a new generation, one so infinitely more compassionate than her own?"

14. Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West • Affair with Virginia Woolf The affair for which Sackville-West is most remembered was with the prominent writer Virginia Woolf in the late 1920s. In conse- quence, Woolf wrote one of her most famous novels, Orlando, which Nigel Nicolson called "the longest and most charming love-letter in literature". Unusually, Orlando's moment of conception was "captured on film" so to speak.

15. Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West As excerpted from her diary posthumously by her husband Leonard Woolf, for an entry dated October 5th 1927, Virginia 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. Sackville-West • In 1931 Sackville-West became involved in an affair with journalist Evelyn Irons, who worked for the Daily Mail as a fashion correspondent. [2] • These affairs, and others not listed here, were, however, no impediment to a true closeness between Sackville-West and her husband, which appears from their nearly daily correspondence (also published later by their son Nigel), and from an interview they gave for BBC radio after World War II. They were truly devoted to each other, and Nicolson gave up his diplomatic career partly so that he could live with Vita in England, uninterrupted by long solitary postings to missions abroad.

17. Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West Well known writings • Front dustjacket of "The Land", designed by George Plank. • The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. This novel was faithfully dramatized by the BBC in 1986 starring Dame Wendy Hiller

18. Sackville-West Sackville-West's science-fantasy Grand Canyon (1942) is a "cautionary tale" (as she termed it) about a Nazi invasion of an unprepared United States. The book takes an unsuspected twist, however, that makes it something more than a typical invasion yarn.

19. Sackville-West • In 1946 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. The following year she began a weekly column in the Observer called In your Garden. In 1948 she became a founder member of the National Trust's garden committee. • Sissinghurst Castle is now owned by the National Trust. Sissinghurst Castle Garden is the most visited garden in England.

20. Sackville-West • "Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong." [3] • “The Land” (1926) helped her to gain the initial recognition in the field of literary works, through which she was award Hawthorndon Prize and was praised as one of the most beautiful bucolics in English literature.

21. Sackville-West • Her poetry is traditional in form, reminiscent of the work of the English nature poets of the age of romanticism. • Sackville-West drew on her background for the setting of “The Edwardians (1930), the story of a young aristocrat who, while enjoying the privileges of his position, is nonetheless tempted to rebel and be free of the tradition he find himself confined to.

22. Sackville-West • “All Passion Spent”, which she composed, resembles ”The Edwardians” in its description of the conflict between the heroine’s secret desire to be an artist and the 19th-century tradition that decreed her as a self-effacing wife. • A prolific writer, Sackville-West is the author of 15 novels, as well as biographies and travel books.

23. About the novel “No Signposts in the Sea” • Edmund Carr: an influential political columnist and bachelor who had devoted all of his time to the career, having little time to entertain himself before he decided to take the voyage abroad. It should be stressed that Sackville-West drew on her background for the setting of the “Edwardians”(1930), the story tinged with an undercurrent of sadness, are nonetheless idyllic.

24. No Signposts in the Sea The release from pressure; the lackadaisical rhythms of ship life; the shifting panorama of magnificent skies and sea, of enticing, passing shores and the infrequent ports-of-call; his growing knowledge of Laura the widow—all these combine to give Carr an unfamiliar peace and a profound change in perspective.

25. No Signposts in the Sea b) Laura: a widow and an acquaintance of Edmund Carr’s, who could be considered as the incarnation of Vita Mary Sackville-West. Her qualities, her intelligence and warmth stiffened by a deep reserve, have struck him as uncommon; he decides to be abroad with her.

26. No Signposts in the Sea c) Colonel: an Empire builder, who tended to appear quite knowledgeable which was the result of his frequent travels worldwide, who often tried to put right what Edmund Carr was commenting on the natural surroundings, say, the seas, the mountains, to name just a few.

27. Questions for predictions: • What is the ultimate purpose of the author to have three main characters in the novel? • What can you imagine the theme of the story would be by considering the personal background of “Edmund Carr’s, Laura’s and Colonel’s? • What is the implication of the title now after the introduction?

28. Power, prestige, practicality • the former watchwords of Edmund Carr’s—lost their ring. Illusion, while he had abhorred, and personal entertainment he had not had time for, and the natural world, un-invaded by civilization, begin to seem transcendent. • Carr’s growing love for Laura, despite his self-acknowledgement that she must be unattainable for him (who looked like a delicate and beautiful flower waiting for some venturesome man to climb to the peak of the mountain to pick it up), shatters this ever-expanding felicity as the voyage went on.

29. Power, prestige, practicality • A handsome, pompous and sometime obstinate yet unpredictably engaging Colonel form a three, a kind of ‘Triangle Relation’ among the Three. • Edmund Carr is catapulted willy-nilly into the all-too-human ignominy of jealousy, despair, meanness, and outbursts of disappointment against his “rival”.

30. Questions for further consideration on the part of students while reading: • 1.What was the emotional reaction to the abrupt change for Edmund Carr himself when he realized the sudden change of the way of life? Can you find any example to illustrate or explain this kind of sudden change? 2. What did the author imply by mentioning the concept of “hard materialist”?

31. 3.Why did the author refer to the natural scenery from time to time? Was it just a matter of coincidence or a deliberate arrangement? • 4. What is the implication of depicting two kinds of the description of two kinds of natural scenery: the vast expanse of desert where nothing could escape from the view of the people and the steep cliffs where there were beautiful flowers or plantations were growing without being disturbed or even damaged?

32. Referents used in the text: young moon, virgin, flying fish, precipitous bluffs, sandy beach, cliffs, islands, moonlings, calf-love, seabirds, albatross

33. 1.I have never had much of an eye... I have never paid much attention to nor have ever had a keen appreciation of the clothes of women. have an eye for: to have the ability to see, judge and understand clearly; to have a keen appreciation of something have an eye to something: to have as one's aim or purpose have eyes only for: to desire or be interested in have set eyes on: to see, look at

34. 2. in the evening she wears soft rich colors... • colors: metonymy: clothes of these colors; • rich colors: deep intense colors such as "dark red, olive green and midnight blue;

35. rich • a rich banquet • rich wine • rich odors • rich soil • rich soil • a rich mine • a rich prize • a country rich her natural resources • a rich harvest (bumper)

36. 3. beguile oneself: cause time to pass without being noticed • kill one's time • idle away one's time • while away one's time 4. who is not too offensively an Empire-builder,... • What is the implication of this statement?