Desiring Women: The Partnership of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

by Karyn Z. Sproles

On 23 September 1925, Virginia Woolf wrote to Vita Sackville-West: 'if you'll make me up, I'll make you.' In Desiring Women, Karyn Sproles argues that the two writers in fact 'made' each other. Woolf and Sackville-West produced some of the most vibrant and acclaimed work of their respective careers during their passionate affair, and Sproles demonstrates how this body of work was a collaborative project - a partnership - in which they promised to reinvent one another.

Sproles argues that in all they wrote during their affair - essays, criticism, novels, poems, biographies, and personal etters - Woolf and Sackville-West struggled to represent their desire for one another and to resist the social pressures that would deny their passion. At the centre of this literary conversation is Orlando, Woolf's biography of Sackville-West. Sproles restores Orlando to the context of Woolf and Sackville-West's discussion of gender and sexuality and demonstrates its importance in Woolf's oeuvre. Sexy and provocative, Desiring Women re-imagines Woolf and Sackville-West as daring, funny, beautiful, and bent on resisting the repression of women's desires.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Queer, LGBT, Literature

270 pages, Paperback

First published April 29, 2006

Reviews

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love when two artists become one another's muse.

[Paloma Etienne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to say, with all the pain in my heart, that I don't recommend this book. I was very excited and indeed enjoyed the very first part on Vita: her vibrant personality, her affair with Violet Trefusis, her attachment to Knole, and how different she was from the Victorian sexless standard of femininity. I also loved the narration of the exchanges between Sackville-West and Woolf through their letters. It was clear they influenced each other with their writing, and, as Sproles writes: "they made each other".

However, the book drove me up the wall when it went profusely onto Orlando and its rebellion against Victorian biography (the approach of the very own Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf's dad). It kept on repeating the same points over and over again through the course of the book. I realised then that the book must be a collection of essays rather than a solid unified piece.

At the end where Karyn Z. Sproles gives us a description of their relationship is also lovely, although still reeks of academia. I could not take on anymore Lacan and anti-Victorian biography theory.

I was unaware of how academic this book was, but still I was not convinced by it style nor content. Sometimes Sproles went on a free-style writing spree, and that was surprising and very attractive.

Please, join my discussion topic on feminist, psychoanlysis and modernism in the Virginia Woolf reading group at http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

I'd love to read your comments :)

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Academic theory at its best in the world of Sapphic-inspired thinking.

[Rose]

This is the best book I've read about the relationship between Virginia and Vita, and how it influenced Woolf's novels of the 1920s.

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative well-written, apart from being given to hyperbole; i felt I knew the subjects and their work a bit better after, and I would love to read some of Vita Sackville-West's stuff.