Quote:
Originally Posted by astrangerhere
Which does lead me to my next point - wow, did I hate Vita. She was the sort of grasping, materialistic, alcoholic (though everyone in the book seemed to be to some extent) American in every bad sense of the word. It was very easy to see how Dick could prefer a psychedelic drug to his own wife, though it was hard to imagine why he had married her in the first place.
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Vita got a lot of sympathy from me. She's married to a repressed gay man whose most important emotional connection is to his old university friend, their sex life is mostly unsatisfying (unsurprisingly), he's floundering about his future employment, he doesn't especially care for his stepsons. I don't see that she's any more controlling than Magnus, except that she loses to him in the war over Dick.
We also can't ignore the names. I don't disagree that du Maurier was sympathetic especially about Magnus's sexuality, but the names add nuance. Vita is the life-force and Dick is, well, a dick. I don't think we can write off the names, all of which are odd in any context. Magnus isn't a typical Anglo-Saxon name, although it's more popular in Scandinavian countries; Vita is British but unusual in an American, just as Dick would be more usually American.