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Hmm... it's so easy to say something and realise later how misleading it can be. I did like Vita and boys as characters in the book - in that I thought they were good/effective characters, and could have been even better if given a bit more leg room. However I am much more ambivalent about Vita as a person.
I can see why she was bossy, she felt as if she needed to be. It's possible this had a negative effect - making Dick even more ineffectual - but that isn't likely to change way Vita behaves.
That she expressed some homophobia is not unrealistic, and perhaps has secondary causes in this case. She probably is quite jealous of the relationship between Magnus and Dick, it is easy to see this extending into homophobia however she may have felt originally. I can see the furniture rearrangement as being another way in which Vita tries to exert her possession of Dick by taking control of his surroundings. ... So I find her quite understandable, and someone that I even came to feel considerable sympathy for - none of which means I would have chosen to marry her.
I am not inclined to think that Dick felt he had anything to prove as regards his heterosexuality; he and Magnus had been close friends since childhood, and had there been anything sexual in it I think it would have expressed itself by now. No, I felt as if the friendship was what it appeared - which still didn't make it easy for Vita to accept.
I think that by the time we (the readers) appear on the scene, Dick is already out-of-sorts. He's made his first trip, he's feeling pressure about the New York job offer etc.. So by the time we meet him he's already disrupted and this is what I use to explain why his relationship with Vita seems a mismatch. We see a few glimpses of how things may have been before, but for the most part he is too distracted by the time we arrive to be much use to anyone.
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