Masterpiece Theater

Dame Wendy Hiller delivers a delicately nuanced performance in Vita Sackville-West’s classic story of emerging feminist identity in post-Victorian England. "When can one please oneself if not in old age?" asks 85-year-old Lady Slane (Hiller), who frees herself from society’s expectations upon the death of her politically prominent husband. To the shock of her children, who seem more concerned with the disposition of the estate than with their mother’s happiness, the widow retreats to a cottage in the Hampstead countryside to rediscover herself.

Dame Wendy Hiller delivers a delicately nuanced performance in Vita Sackville-West’s classic story of emerging feminist identity in post-Victorian England. "When can one please oneself if not in old age?" asks 85-year-old Lady Slane (Hiller), who frees herself from society’s expectations upon the death of her politically prominent husband. To the shock of her children, who seem more concerned with the disposition of the estate than with their mother’s happiness, the widow retreats to a cottage in the Hampstead countryside to rediscover herself.

Dame Wendy Hiller delivers a delicately nuanced performance in Vita Sackville-West’s classic story of emerging feminist identity in post-Victorian England. "When can one please oneself if not in old age?" asks 85-year-old Lady Slane (Hiller), who frees herself from society’s expectations upon the death of her politically prominent husband. To the shock of her children, who seem more concerned with the disposition of the estate than with their mother’s happiness, the widow retreats to a cottage in the Hampstead countryside to rediscover herself.