Customer Reviews

Painted Shadow

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This is a superb study of the frustration that a bad marriage can wreak on two (mostly) admirable individuals: Vivienne Haig, sexually hungry and emotionally fragile, and Thomas Stearns Eliot, a homosexual who blithely imagined that marriage would cure him. The chafing these two endured makes for painful reading, though the author tells her story with such dispassion and aplomb that she mitigates their pain. Each marital partner damaged the other: for instance, whereas Vivienne openly slept with Bertrand Russell, Eliot openly sought "German Jack" as his lover. Everyone around them was disappointed and dismayed--increasingly so. Only when the two partners worked together on literary projects did their troubled marriage blossom. But when Eliot ran away from Vivienne in 1926 and then for years cruelly evaded her, she fell apart; and after she apparently threatened to expose his sexual preference, Eliot had her committed from 1938 till she died in 1947. This biography tells what the film TOM AND VIV omits: the sexual hostility that fueled their marriage. Highly recommended.

The early twentieth century, particularly between the wars, will no doubt come to be seen as a Renaissance of the modern era in all departments of thought and human activity. Consequently, it is of some interest to view it from the perspective of a Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, and it is this view that is presented to us through the eyes of T. S. Eliots wife.
Unfortunately, we are no longer in that renaissance, but in a time of disillusionment and dissolution. All the great symbols are worn away, and what remains of major themes is turned into soap opera. The main thrust of this book is to paint a sinister portrait of Eliot and Bertrand Russell, and to create a victim out of the Muse and the power behind the intellectual throne of the day. There are interesting episodes here, which barely throw a small light on the minds of the major players, and it is difficult to believe that it was as incestuous and claustrophobic a community as painted here.
The interpretation of T. S. Eliots poetry is decidedly suspect. For instance, the hidden laughter of children, so important an image in the Quartets as symbolic of the timeless, is taken here to be derived from mocking laughter. It is often second-rate analysis or just plain muddled or wrong.
In order to paint a picture of the forgotten heroine, it is necessary to demote the status of the work to make her image stand out. This is achieved superficially by reducing the motivation of the work to the lowest common denominator, as though it may be derived from some form of closet homosexuality. This is to misunderstand the work as well as the symbolic significance of sexuality. That, unfortunately, is only to be expected these days. The painted picture of the spurned wife is indeed constructed by the author, who depicts her as one blown by the winds of fate in some tragic hurricane, passively standing by as she is robbed of her light that is fed on by others, and without which the poetry and the plays would not have been forthcoming.
Much that is written here is already well-known and has appeared elsewhere. This book, however, hardly emulates or enlightens, and reads more like a re-working to support the rather suspect thesis of the spurned Muse. T. S. Eliot was no saint and was well aware of his failures, condemned by his own words to move from wrong to wrong. This kind of biography sheds little light on those times and judges too harshly and too quickly, as though our hindsight alone is proof of our enlightenment. On the contrary, it is the hallmark of dogmatic thinking which we have moved into, and unfortunately, such tabloid journalese is what passes for erudition these days. I expect it will sell very well.

This author is so deep into tittle-tattle that she forgets to write about her subject. A judicious editing would have helped this dreary bio immensely.