Orlando
Author: Virginia Woolf
Published by: Penguin Modern Classics
Pages: 225
Format: Paperback
My Rating: ★★★★
Author: Virginia Woolf
Published by: Penguin Modern Classics
Pages: 225
Format: Paperback
My Rating: ★★★★
Written for Virginia Woolf’s friend, the charismatic, bisexual writer Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a playful mock ‘biography’ of a chameleon-like historical figure who changes sex and identity at will.
First masculine, then feminine, Orlando begins life as a young sixteenth-century nobleman, then gallops through the centuries to end up as a woman writer in Virginia Woolf’s own time.
First masculine, then feminine, Orlando begins life as a young sixteenth-century nobleman, then gallops through the centuries to end up as a woman writer in Virginia Woolf’s own time.
My thoughts:
Orlando is a witty and entertaining little book; a real pleasure to read.
The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history.
This captivating story opens with the protagonist, Orlando, a young noble boy, pretending to chop off the heads of Moors, just like his father and grandfather have done. He is too young to fight, but he longs to go on adventures around the world like his family. Young Orlando goes out into the woods to write poetry and falls asleep. He is awakened by trumpets sounding that the Queen Elizabeth has arrived.
Orlando runs to his house to get ready. When the Queen sees him, she is impressed by his youth and innocence. Two years later, she sends for him to come to her court. There, she makes him Steward, Treasurer, and her lover, giving him all the wealth and status, he could want. But when she sees Orlando kissing a young girl, she becomes furious and smashes her mirror with a sword.
For a while, Orlando takes to spending time with people of a "low kind." He frequents pubs and has his way with many young women. When he grows tired of this lifestyle, he heads back to the Court, this time under King James I. He dates many pretty and wealthy women, and becomes engaged to Euphrosyne, a woman of incredibly high birth and connections.
At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakens from a trance to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. She is not surprised, and it does not take her long to get used to her new body.
As a subplot, Virginia dwells on the changes of literature and artists over the span of 400 years. Orlando could not publish his work in the early centuries, but the social changes and the difference of style and forms of literature over the years allow for once unpublished work to be finally published.
The story spans from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century, and the author describes in detail the change of the role of men and women. She specifically refers to nineteenth-century British society and its role of women.
Gender difference is the main focus of the story. Through Orlando's transformation from male to female, Virginia subtly exposes the gender difference or in her view "gender neutrality". Virginia believed in gender neutrality, affirming that there is a male and female side in every human being irrespective of sex, and varying in degree. When Orlando wakes up as a woman, she feels no difference or any awkwardness; but, when she finally must confront society as a woman, Orlando understands there is a difference in self, at least outwardly.
At the end of the book and now transported to 1928, on a drive home from the store Orlando thinks about all the different selves that compose her. She calls for the one that is the real Orlando, and soon realises that it is all of them.
Virginia Woolf's pioneering novel is written with unique style and a wonderful sense of fantasy. Orlando is a fascinating and engaging read. I now look forward to reading much more of Woolf’s work.
Overall reaction: