Summary

Evelyn, aged thirty-nine, is an attractive widow living an irreproachable life. Then she meets Miles, fifteen years her junior, and falls passionately in love. But both lovers have strong personalities and passion does not equal happiness.

Character Dynamics

Evelyn, deeply jealous and conventional, is shocked at her lover's casual ways and his insistence on working all day. Miles’s love for Evelyn is real but he cannot devote himself wholly to her whims.

Context

Vita Sackville-West collides attitudes to work, sex, and society in the changing world of the early 1930s.