Vanessa and Virginia

Posted on | March 13, 2010 | 11 Comments

The Not the TV Book Group brought to my attention the novel Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers, published by Two Ravens Press, so thank you to them and to Simon of Stuck-in-a-Book who reviewed it back in 2008.  The short novel was far denser than I expected and to begin with I read it slowly, too slowly to participate in the discussion last weekend.

There are some books that I read for entertainment and others for education, some for both and this was one of those books.  I had expectations of the subject matter teaching and engaging me simultaneously and these were met. Before going into this novel I knew a lot about Virginia Woolf but little of her sister, Vanessa Bell.  Overshadowed by her more critically-acclaimed writer sister, Vanessa Bell, an artist, lived in the shadow of her sister’s talent and success; posthumously she is overshadowed by Woolf’s work reputation and her infamous suicide. Vanessa and Virginia interestingly gives us Vanessa’s story, which isn’t immediately obvious as the assumption is that it will be a narrative given from the perspective of Virginia, the more famous sister. I learned more about the Bloomsbury Group, or those members immediately surrounding Bell, than I had previously and was provided with more insight into the bohemian lifestyle of Modernist artists who lived in opposition to societal convention.

In addition to the historical context, we are given an invaluable insight into the tragic life of Vanessa Bell. Through my knowledge of Virginia Woolf I knew that the sisters were touched by a lot of death in their young  lives with the loss of their mother; half-sister, Stella; father; brother, Thoby; all in close succession.  Vanessa and Virginia covers these events in the early narrative but Vanessa’s own life, with Virginia in periphery, contained its own share of personal tragedy with a miscarriage and the death of her oldest son, Julian, in the Spanish Civil War; additionally there were the losses of Roger Fry, close friend, Bloomsbury Group member and former lover, and Lytton Strachey, another set member and cousin to the Stephen sisters (their maiden names).  Of course, the shadow of another great loss, the suicide of her younger sister, Billy (Vanessa’s pet-name for Virginia), exists in the novel from the outset; with the novel comes a certain degree of reader expectation, early on the denouement of Virginia Woolf’s suicide is mentioned and is only to be expected in the closing pages.

With every shadow, however, comes light and the former does not exist without the latter.  The relationship between the sisters is shown in stark relief with its closeness, at times suffocating, and its petty and more insidious rivalries.  There is a definite conflict and inextricable attachment between the sisters and this is evoked in the novel’s tenses: the narration is told in the first-person, narrated by Vanessa who is writing her story, and Virginia is always referred to as “you”, the addressee; what is interesting is that Vanessa is writing, where that was the art excelled by at her sister and in her absence she takes up her pen to express herself and tell her own story.  Sellers is an expert in the life and work of Virginia Woolf but does not portray her in that sympathetic a light but a shadow over Vanessa’s life. Vanessa’s marriage to Clive Bell began to break down when she gave birth to their first child; Clive was jealous of the attention given to baby Julian, as was Virginia, and the two developed a bond that grew into an inappropriate affection that was never physically acted upon. Sellers’ illuminating fictionalisation of Bell and Woolf does place Bell in the role of tragic victim who had her own inner demons and neuroses similar to those of her sister’s; she suffered from her own mental breakdowns and even had her own suicide attempt subsequently making a pact with Virginia never to repeat it, a promise that later came back to haunt her when she hinted at rescinding it.

The novel mainly concerns -following vignettes covering the formative years and early tragedies- the idyllic life Vanessa lived at Charleston, a farmhouse in East Sussex, with her sometimes-lover and life companion, the artist Duncan Grant. Vanessa and Clive remained married and they, Duncan, and the children lived a bohemian existence, which, for a period of time, included Duncan’s lover, Bunny; Bunny is also known as David Garnett (a writer, some of whose work I reviewed last year) who later married Angelica, Vanessa’s illegitimate daughter with Duncan. The lifestyle that Vanessa lived, specifically its damaging effect on her daughter who married the ex-lover of her biological father, was an element that I found disturbing but it was not a creation of Sellers, but a relay of fact.  Sellers’ account intrigued me to learn more detail about the relationship between Vanessa, Clive and Duncan and I went on to read the chapter of Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages in Literary London 1910-1939 by Katie Roiphe dedicated to their menage. The additional information illuminated me further and sated some of my curiosity; Roiphe describes a drugged-like innocence to the Bell children’s childhood that reminded me of the bohemian childhood of the Wellwoods depicted by A. S. Byatt in The Children’s Book (reviewed here) and I wonder whether Byatt was attempting to recreate the damaging and incestuous undertone of the Bloomsbury Group in the children and adults she created.

As I was reading Vanessa and Virginia I continually examined my response to it and my pleasure in identifying the allusions and nods to Virginia Woolf’s work, especially on the back of recently reading To the Lighthouse for Woolf in Winter, that are cleverly and subtly done and at other times obviously; I was very aware that reading this novel as somebody unaware of Woolf’s work and legacy, the same level of understanding and appreciation would be severely lacking. I often thought that perhaps the novel would only be of interest to fans and academics or Woolf, Bell or both, and doesn’t work as a piece of fiction own its own but as a study of art with biographical element and imagined experience.  I was also conscious of the fact that other readers would view Sellers’ interpretation of the life of Vanessa Bell and her interior monologue as a literary conceit; I found it a bold but interesting premise but then I do find Virginia Woolf and all that relates to her fascinating.; ultimately though Vanessa and Virginia is a literary interpretation of events and where Sellers may envisage certain discussions  (e.g. the one below, middle quote, which I’m not sure is real) that impose meaning on art and life, it is a vision of what could have been rather than what occurred, although the body of the novel itself is meticulously researched and realised. Where I believed that my own experience in reading the book was somewhat lacking was in my poor knowledge of Vanessa Bell’s artwork; there are several passages devoted to the creation of numerous paintings, describing this, and perhaps if I had known the paintings being referred to then I would have understood the detail more.  Somebody with an appreciation of art and knowledge of Bell’s paintings as well as an interest in Virginia Woolf’s writing would gain more from this novel.  Despite this reservation, Vanessa and Virginia taught me a lot, it engaged me and I found it beautifully written; it was hauntingly evocative of a emotionally-charged sibling relationship and an invaluable insight into the life of Vanessa Bell.

Some favourite passages:

You were the one with words.  You were the one who knew how to take an event and describe it so that its essence was revealed.  I do not have your talents.  If you were here you would know how to tell this tale.  You would find a way of penetrating to the truth and enclosing what you found in words of such poetry that one’s heart would sing, even as it wept.

‘So if you weren’t thinking about a particular seascape, what did you intend this mark to be here?’ You draw your finger along a straight black line down the centre of the tile. ‘I had assumed it was a lighthouse.’

I look at the line. I remember painting it, sensing that the swirl of blues required an anchoring point.

‘I’m not sure I meant anything in particular by it, though of course I’ve no objection to you seeing it as a lighthouse.’

It is your gardener who telephones.  I hear his voice as if from a great distance.  I replace the receiver and stare at the jug of flowers on the hall table.  I do not know what to do with these words.  They ricochet round my head, yet they make no sense. Things are slipping away from me: the hall table and all the objects on it are careering out of reach.  I lean back against the wall to steady myself.  I see you standing on the river bank, casting about for stones to fill your pockets.  I feel the paralysing cold as you wade in, the weight of your wet clothes as you force yourself forward.  The water is in my mouth, my lungs, as the river drags us under.  This time I cannot escape.  The darkness has engulfed the picture.  I have no will to defeat it.

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