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Orlando: A Biography is a fictional biography by Virginia Woolf. The novel follows Orlando, who starts out as a young nobleman during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and follows his love affair with a Russian princess, his ambassadorship in the East, and his spontaneous sex-change and life afterward. Orlando: A Biography Quotes. Virginia Woolf. This Study Guide consists of approximately 39 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Orlando. Print Word PDF. This section contains 532 words.
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Virginia Woolf's Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first lo...more
Published September 28th 2000 by Penguin Classics (first published 1928)
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Matthew WilliamsI thought that Mrs. Dalloway was a little experimental compared to Orlando. Luis is correct, there is some elevated language in Orlando, however the…moreI thought that Mrs. Dalloway was a little experimental compared to Orlando. Luis is correct, there is some elevated language in Orlando, however the structure of Orlando is much more traditional, and as such, I found it to be a more casual read. Orlando at least has chapter breaks, something Mrs. Dalloway lacks. (less)
Matthew WilliamsOrlando is not exactly representative of her body of work. I would actually call Orlando a wild card. I would start with To The Lighthouse or Mrs.…moreOrlando is not exactly representative of her body of work. I would actually call Orlando a wild card. I would start with To The Lighthouse or Mrs. Dalloway if you want to have a general feel for her work. I have an excellent time reading Woolf. Don't let others scare you off. Virginia Woolf is reader-friendly!(less)
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Jun 03, 2010Kelly rated it it was amazing Shelves: 20th-century-early-to-mid, identity-crisis, vita-virginia-violet-and-kindred, examined-lives, fiction, favorites, grande-dames
My mom made me clean my room this weekend. No, not a teenage pain-in-the-ass cleaning of the room, this was THE cleaning of the room. As in, it was finally time to take apart the room I’d had in that house since we moved there somewhere around my thirteenth birthday.
Look you guys, I get it. I’m twenty-four. That’s another one of those Facts of Life that just happens to you, and most people would say I was far past time for this. And you know what? I was doing okay with it. It went slowly, but i...more
Jun 25, 2014Lisa rated it it was amazingLook you guys, I get it. I’m twenty-four. That’s another one of those Facts of Life that just happens to you, and most people would say I was far past time for this. And you know what? I was doing okay with it. It went slowly, but i...more
Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, favorites, virginia-woolf
'I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another.'
Orlando to me is a dream come true in literature. Being able to move in time and space and to change my gender with my moods is a deeply satisfying idea. It is the quintessence of what reading means in my life - the opportunity to leave my own life behind and step into the body and soul of other people, only to move on again when I feel like it. I can be intensely engaged for a week, and then put the adventure safely into my memory and...more
Nov 23, 2017Sean Barrs the Bookdragon rated it really liked itOrlando to me is a dream come true in literature. Being able to move in time and space and to change my gender with my moods is a deeply satisfying idea. It is the quintessence of what reading means in my life - the opportunity to leave my own life behind and step into the body and soul of other people, only to move on again when I feel like it. I can be intensely engaged for a week, and then put the adventure safely into my memory and...more
Shelves: love-and-romance, modernist-movement, 4-star-reads
Woolf did not write this book for her readers; she specifically wrote it for her close “friend” and fellow writer Vita Sackville-West. As such Woolf does things she would not normally do in her writing; it is not at all serious but instead takes on the form of a literary homage, homage to reading and writing. My case in point:
“For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre o...more
“For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre o...more
Apr 30, 2014Renato Magalhães Rocha rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
This was my first time reading Orlando. It was also my second time.
I like to think that everything happens for a reason - not that I believe it was planned or decided by a powerful creature for me - but because the idea that everything effects what surrounds it sounds about right to me. So I see a purpose in this reading experience that Virginia Woolf provided me and take it as an important lesson to carry with me from now on - and how appropriate that it came just at the beginning of a new and...more
I like to think that everything happens for a reason - not that I believe it was planned or decided by a powerful creature for me - but because the idea that everything effects what surrounds it sounds about right to me. So I see a purpose in this reading experience that Virginia Woolf provided me and take it as an important lesson to carry with me from now on - and how appropriate that it came just at the beginning of a new and...more
My second reading of Orlando bore out my overriding impression the first time I read it – that this is a brilliant comic performance until Woolf, before finishing, runs out of steam. Towards the end it becomes apparent she’s no longer in the same spirit with which she began the book. What begins as pure parody ends up a serious attempt to understand her subject. The delicious light skip of her lyrical irony no longer seems at the beck and call of her wit towards the end. You can sense, even see...more
Jul 18, 2018Steven Godin rated it it was amazing
I knew for sure I wasn't expecting anything like 'To the Lighthouse' with Orlando, but what I didn't know is just how much sheer pleasure Orlando would end up giving me, as this went right beyond my expectations, the days reading it seemed invigorated somehow. Woolf has broken with tradition and convention and has set out to explore a kind of fourth dimensional approach to writing. Not that she has abandoned the stream of consciousness method which she used with such conspicuous success in her p...more
Jul 08, 2013Dolors rated it it was amazing · review of another edition Shelves: read-in-2016
Orlando might have been devised as a mere divertimento, as a playful attempt to challenge the established views on sexuality or as a fantastical tale to confront the history of East and West by questioning the boundaries of space and time, but to this reader this novella meant much more. It meant a universe of fluctuating moods, characters and sweeping poetry that gives reason to be through the act of reading.
How to describe the nuanced melody of finely threaded irony prodigiously in tune with t...more
Aug 03, 2008Cecily rated it it was amazingHow to describe the nuanced melody of finely threaded irony prodigiously in tune with t...more
Shelves: sexuality-gender, magical-realism, historical-fict-pre-20th-c, miscellaneous-fiction
Totally new review (replacing ancient, short, less favourable one).
Orlando. or-LAN-do. Wrap your tongue around it, and whisper it. There’s a luscious, syrupy, sensual, mysterious feel. Much like the eponymous hero(ine), and the sumptuously described natural and man-made world Orlando inhabits.
The name conjures cross-dressing disguises in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, a Marmalade Cat, maybe Tilda Swinton or Legolas, and, for Google, theme parks in Florida. If you know the novel’s USP and Greek my...more
Jul 12, 2009Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another editionOrlando. or-LAN-do. Wrap your tongue around it, and whisper it. There’s a luscious, syrupy, sensual, mysterious feel. Much like the eponymous hero(ine), and the sumptuously described natural and man-made world Orlando inhabits.
The name conjures cross-dressing disguises in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, a Marmalade Cat, maybe Tilda Swinton or Legolas, and, for Google, theme parks in Florida. If you know the novel’s USP and Greek my...more
Shelves: novel, classic, fiction, 1001-book, literature, 20th-century
675. Orlando = Orlando: A Biography, Virginia Woolf
Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. A high-spirited romp inspired by the tumultuous family history of Woolf's lover and close friend, the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, it is arguably one of Woolf's most popular novels: a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeti...more
Jun 29, 2013Samadrita rated it it was amazing · review of another editionOrlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. A high-spirited romp inspired by the tumultuous family history of Woolf's lover and close friend, the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, it is arguably one of Woolf's most popular novels: a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeti...more
![Orlando: A Biography Orlando: A Biography](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123759559/196284471.jpg)
Shelves: britain, european-literature, lgbt, satire, timeless-classics, feminism-feminist-undertones, cherished, adoration, avant-garde, autobiographical-biography-memoir
The most prudent way to review a Virginia Woolf book, perhaps, would be to write 'THIS IS STUPENDOUS. GENIUS. AMAZING. WHY HAVEN'T YOU READ THIS YET?' and leave it at that. Because not only does this relieve you of the responsibility of casting about for appropriate words to serenade Woolf but also because you know no review in the world does justice to the sheer magic that she is capable of creating with words.
But since I have a thing for self-flagellation(not really), I wish to undertake preci...more
But since I have a thing for self-flagellation(not really), I wish to undertake preci...more
Jul 04, 2014Michael rated it it was amazing
Published in 1928, toward the end of the most productive stage of Woolf's career as a writer, Orlando doubles as national history and romance: the playful and ironic novel famously centers on the transformation of its protagonist's gender, near the start of the 18th century, but most of the story deals with Orlando's different loves and England's changing social norms over the course of three centuries. The gender change and kaleidoscopic setting afford Woolf the chance to examine themes especia...more
Dec 29, 2010Paul rated it it was amazing
I first read this many years ago; before I knew very much about Virginia Woolf and her relationship with Vita Sackville-West, to whom this is dedicated. The background is vital because it adds so much and because it helps the reader to reach an understanding of Woolf’s generosity. It is as ever, beautifully written and drifts splendidly through the centuries and the key is Vita and their circle.
As Woolf was writing this her affair with Vita was beginning to wane as Vita was moving on to other l...more
Nov 29, 2012Rowena rated it it was amazing · review of another editionAs Woolf was writing this her affair with Vita was beginning to wane as Vita was moving on to other l...more
Shelves: favorites, classics, favourite-authors, readalongs
I absolutely adored this book. The style is definitely different from the other Woolf books I've read so far. What stood out for me was the beautiful use of the language, maybe more than the story. The novel had an almost fairytale-like feel to it, and I was definitely enchanted from the start.
I don't think the following is a spoiler as it is included in the book's blurb : this book is about a 16 year old boy, Orlando, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who one day wakes up to find that he has be...more
I don't think the following is a spoiler as it is included in the book's blurb : this book is about a 16 year old boy, Orlando, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who one day wakes up to find that he has be...more
Sep 27, 2007Paul Bryant rated it really liked it
What's the connection between Virginia Woolf and the Russian mafia? Easy - in 1991 Sally Potter decided to film Orlando, one of the loveliest, most ravishing novels in the English language. Somewheres in the middle of the story there, you have a truly extraordinary sequence about the remarkable Frost Fair of 1654, which was when the River Thames itself froze over and they erected a fair with stalls and games and rides and greased pigs and whatnot on it, a carnival of the utmost brilliancy right...more
Mar 08, 2015Fionnuala added it · review of another edition Shelves: woolf-reviews, review-may-contain-comic-content, woolf-and-related
I like nothing better than when two books I happen to be reading overlap, even if briefly, so I was really pleased when Virginia Woolf’s fictional character, Orlando, suddenly mentioned Jonathan Swift, whose Journal to Stella I’ve been reading recently. Orlando, who in some sections of Woolf’s book uses the title Lady Orlando, has just been receiving a visit from Joseph Addison, Swift’s one-time bosom pal and fellow political essayist, when there's an interruption:
..and when Mr Addison has had...more
..and when Mr Addison has had...more
Orlando was much funnier than I expected, and much less fantastical. Since I was familiar with the plot before beginning the book and had heard much literary criticism concerning the famed transformation, I was expecting the focus to be on gender issues. While these were certainly present, Woolf presents them fairly gently. Orlando is so strongly an individual that his/her sex hardly matters from a readerly standpoint. Indeed, I found it harder to believe that he was a successful ambassador than...more
Apr 20, 2013Edward rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Introduction, by Peter Ackroyd
Introduction, by Margaret Reynolds
List of Illustrations
Preface, by Virginia Woolf
--Orlando
Index
Introduction, by Margaret Reynolds
List of Illustrations
Preface, by Virginia Woolf
--Orlando
Index
Jun 25, 2018Darwin8u rated it really liked it · review of another edition
'The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity.'
- Virginia Woolf, Orlando
A beautiful, poetic look at gender, sex, poetry, time, love, living, etc. This gender-studies masterpiece was inspired by Woolf's reltionship with Vita Sackville-West. According to Vita's son: 'The effect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando, the longest and most charming love letter in literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries...more
- Virginia Woolf, Orlando
A beautiful, poetic look at gender, sex, poetry, time, love, living, etc. This gender-studies masterpiece was inspired by Woolf's reltionship with Vita Sackville-West. According to Vita's son: 'The effect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando, the longest and most charming love letter in literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries...more
Nov 11, 2013Rakhi Dalal rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
As always, Woolf has stunned me with the magic of her prose here. Telling this isn’t important, neither that it is a biography; that it informs us about the affair of Vita and Violet. I guess much has been said about that. When I started reading, I had no idea about the references to people, places, their characters or their lives as are known to be mentioned in this work. In fact, as the novel proceeded from Orlando’s gender change for the first time, I had a notion about the invisible layer of...more
Aug 16, 2010Madeline rated it it was amazing Shelves: the-list, historic-fiction, all-time-favorites
I finished this book about a week ago, and have been trying ever since to figure out how I'm supposed to review it. I honestly can't think of anything to say except this:
Every single emotion I've ever felt and every thought I've ever had, had already been felt and thought and written down by Virginia Woolf decades before I was even born. There is not a single concept or feeling in any of her books that isn't already intimately familiar to me. Reading her books is like having someone look into my...more
Every single emotion I've ever felt and every thought I've ever had, had already been felt and thought and written down by Virginia Woolf decades before I was even born. There is not a single concept or feeling in any of her books that isn't already intimately familiar to me. Reading her books is like having someone look into my...more
My second Virginia Woolf book.
This further improved my understanding of her work.
I loved this one too !
AfterTo the Lighthouseand this one, I have decided to read Mrs. Dalloway in line to reach to a conclusion of my opinion about her books.
Only after completing this third book of her, I'll write detailed reviews on her all three books !
Dec 16, 2016Sidharth Vardhan rated it it was amazing · review of another editionThis further improved my understanding of her work.
I loved this one too !
AfterTo the Lighthouseand this one, I have decided to read Mrs. Dalloway in line to reach to a conclusion of my opinion about her books.
Only after completing this third book of her, I'll write detailed reviews on her all three books !
Shelves: list-redcliffe, magical-realism, english-world, bestest, woman-authors
You know how people say that some books are ahead of their time. I think Woolf's Orlando is a book which probably won't be understood for another decade or so.
The sudden change of Orlando's sex and his several centuries old existence along with/her very easy acceptance of those things rings of magical realism. The fantastic bit that of Orlando's living through several centuries is used to develop the book into what looked like a poem on the spirit of Time. Through different ages, Orlando tastes...more
The sudden change of Orlando's sex and his several centuries old existence along with/her very easy acceptance of those things rings of magical realism. The fantastic bit that of Orlando's living through several centuries is used to develop the book into what looked like a poem on the spirit of Time. Through different ages, Orlando tastes...more
Jun 27, 2010Sarah rated it did not like it
Vita Sackville-West's son may have called Orlando “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature”, but let me tell you: if someone wrote me a love letter like this, their ass would be getting dumped shortly thereafter.
This book was like the song that wouldn't end- it just goes on and on (yet it isn't particularly lengthy) without saying very much of interest. Despite the fact that reading it was a serious chore, for whatever reason I couldn't just give up and toss it aside (much like...more
This book was like the song that wouldn't end- it just goes on and on (yet it isn't particularly lengthy) without saying very much of interest. Despite the fact that reading it was a serious chore, for whatever reason I couldn't just give up and toss it aside (much like...more
Jan 26, 2018James rated it liked it · review of another edition
Having read and not enjoyed or appreciated Virginia Woolf’s ‘To The Lighthouse’ (1927) it was with expectation, due to it’s literary reputation, although some trepidation, due to my experience with ‘Lighthouse’, that I approached the markedly different ‘Orlando – A Biography’ (1928).
The premise of the life of Orlando was always going to be a highly promising one – beginning as it does with Orlando as a boy at the time of Queen Elizabeth I and following his adventures across different lands, and...more
The premise of the life of Orlando was always going to be a highly promising one – beginning as it does with Orlando as a boy at the time of Queen Elizabeth I and following his adventures across different lands, and...more
May 01, 2017Piyangie rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Orlando is a biography written about a fictitious character Orlando which was inspired by Virginia's real life friend and lover Vita Sackville-West. The story spans over 300 years where Orlando's life changes from man to woman, from century to century.
Gender difference is the main focus of the story. Through Orlando's transformation from man to woman, Virginia subtly addresses gender difference or in her view 'gender neutrality'. Virginia believed in gender neutrality affirming that there is a...more
Aug 19, 2011Aubrey rated it it was amazing · review of another editionGender difference is the main focus of the story. Through Orlando's transformation from man to woman, Virginia subtly addresses gender difference or in her view 'gender neutrality'. Virginia believed in gender neutrality affirming that there is a...more
Shelves: rage-against-the-sexuality, antidote-think-twice-all, 5-star, 1-read-on-hand, r-2013, 500-wm-added, reality-check, prose-prose-prose, reviewed, r-goodreads
Let it be known that, despite seeming evidence to the contrary in the form of my reviews, I do indeed have a sense of humor. True, it is a small and desiccated thing, unusual in its feathering and tending towards the qualities of the morbid and the sadistic. However, it delights in incongruity to the extreme, and what makes it laugh will win its love forevermore.
This book could have simply tickled my fancies to the bone and nothing else and would still have won me over in a complete state of ado...more
Jun 17, 2010Ben rated it it was amazingThis book could have simply tickled my fancies to the bone and nothing else and would still have won me over in a complete state of ado...more
Shelves: favorites, good-fiction, like-magic, read-in-2010, transformative-experience, growing-up
But what is the present moment?! What does it involve? More than we know, of course. It involves the self, we know. Is that all we know? Me here, writing on my couch, and you, you there. But there is more! Here in this room there is more! A table, its wood, the details, labored, toiled upon for many hours, furnished from carpenters in years past in the great state of Maryland, land of our Great Queen Mary!; a beer sitting on the table, on a book on the table, sweltering, a Mexican beer!; it sits...more
Mar 16, 2015BrokenTune rated it it was amazing
'Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living? And then what strange powers are these that penetrate our most secret ways and change our most treasured possessions without our willing it ? Had Orlando, worn out by the extremity of his suffering, died for a week, and then come to life again? And if so, of what nature is death and of what nature life? Having waited well over half an hour for an answer to these questions, and none...more
Nov 26, 2018Manuel Antão rated it it was ok
If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.
Biological Constructs: 'Orlando' by Virginia Woolf
(Original Review, 2002-06-18)
I’m probably in a minority, but I find Woolf hugely overrated. A snob in the way that Wilde was a snob before her, sucking up to the wealthy and titled and, like Wilde, happy to be unfaithful if it ingratiated her with the gentry. People go on about ‘a room of one’s own’ but have they read the whole piece? She thought only a few superior personages should be...more
Biological Constructs: 'Orlando' by Virginia Woolf
(Original Review, 2002-06-18)
I’m probably in a minority, but I find Woolf hugely overrated. A snob in the way that Wilde was a snob before her, sucking up to the wealthy and titled and, like Wilde, happy to be unfaithful if it ingratiated her with the gentry. People go on about ‘a room of one’s own’ but have they read the whole piece? She thought only a few superior personages should be...more
Jul 08, 2013Lynne King rated it liked it
UPDATE - The origins of “Orlando” can be seen in the entry in Virginia Woolf’s diary of Tuesday, 20 September 1927:
“One of these days, though, I shall sketch here, like a grand historical picture, the outlines of all my friends. I was thinking of this in bed last night, & for some reason I thought I would begin with a sketch of Gerald Brenan. There may be something in this idea. It might be a way of writing the memoirs of one’s own times during people’s lifetimes. It might be a most amusing...more
“One of these days, though, I shall sketch here, like a grand historical picture, the outlines of all my friends. I was thinking of this in bed last night, & for some reason I thought I would begin with a sketch of Gerald Brenan. There may be something in this idea. It might be a way of writing the memoirs of one’s own times during people’s lifetimes. It might be a most amusing...more
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(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length e...more
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length e...more
More quizzes & trivia...
“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” — 1861 likes
“Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.” — 1327 likes
More quotes…Author | Virginia Woolf |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Publisher | Hogarth Press |
Publication date | 11 October 1928 |
Media type | Hardback |
Pages | 134 |
OCLC | 297407 |
Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. A high-spirited romp inspired by the tumultuous family history of Woolf's lover and close friend the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, it is arguably one of Woolf's most popular novels: a history of English literature in satiric form. 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. Considered a feminist classic, the book has been written about extensively by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender studies.
The novel has been adapted a number of times. In 1989, director Robert Wilson and writer Darryl Pinckney[1] collaborated on a single-actor theatrical production.[2] This had its British premiere at the Edinburgh Festival in 1996, with Miranda Richardson playing the title role;[3][4]Isabelle Huppert performed in the French version, which opened at the Lusanne in 1993.[5] A film adaptation by Sally Potter, simply titled Orlando, was released in 1992, starring Tilda Swinton in the title role. Another stage adaption by Sarah Ruhl premiered in New York City in 2010, and in 2016, composer Peter Aderhold [de] and librettist Sharon L. Joyce premiered an opera based on the work at the Braunschweig State Theater.[6]
Plot[edit]
The eponymous hero is born as a male nobleman in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. He undergoes a mysterious change of sex at the age of about 30 and lives on for more than 300 years into modern times without ageing perceptibly.
As a teenage boy, the handsome Orlando serves as a page at the Elizabethan court and becomes 'favorite' of the elderly queen. After her death he falls deeply in love with Sasha, an elusive and somewhat feral princess in the entourage of the Russian embassy. This episode, of love and ice skating against the background of the celebrated Frost Fair held on the frozen Thames River during the Great Frost of 1608, when 'birds froze in mid air and fell like stones to the ground', inspired some of Virginia Woolf's most bravura writing:
Great statesmen, in their beards and ruffs, despatched affairs of state under the crimson awning of the Royal Pagoda ... Frozen roses fell in showers when the Queen and her ladies walked abroad ... Near London Bridge, where the river had frozen to a depth of some twenty fathoms, a wrecked wherry boat was plainly visible, lying on the bed of the river where it had sunk last autumn, overladen with apples. The old bumboat woman, who was carrying her fruit to market on the Surrey side, sat there in her plaids and farthingales with her lap full of apples, for all the world as if she were about to serve a customer, though a certain blueness about the lips hinted the truth.[7]
The melting of the ice coincides with Sasha's unfaithfulness and sudden departure for Russia. The desolate Orlando returns to writing The Oak Tree, a long poem started and abandoned in his youth. He meets and hospitably entertains an invidious poetaster, Nicholas Greene, who proceeds to find fault with Orlando's writing. Later Orlando feels betrayed on learning that he has been lampooned in one of Greene's subsequent works. A period of contemplating love and life leads Orlando to appreciate the value of his ancestral stately home, which he proceeds to furnish lavishly. There he plays host to the populace.
Ennui sets in and Orlando feels harassed by a persistent suitor, the tall and somewhat androgynous Archduchess Harriet, leading Orlando to look for a way to leave the country. He is appointed by King Charles II as ambassador to Constantinople. Orlando performs his duties well, until a night of civil unrest and murderous riots. He falls asleep for a period of days, and others cannot rouse him. Orlando awakens to find that he has metamorphosed into a woman – the same person, with the same personality and intellect, but in a woman's body. Although the narrator of the novel professes to be disturbed and befuddled by Orlando's change, the fictional Orlando complacently accepts the change. From here on, Orlando's amorous inclinations change frequently although she stays biologically female.
The now Lady Orlando covertly escapes Constantinople in the company of a Gypsy clan. She adopts their way of life until its essential conflict with her upbringing leads her to head home. Only on the ship back to England, with her constraining female clothes and an incident in which a flash of her ankle nearly results in a sailor's falling to his death, does she realise the magnitude of becoming a woman. She concludes it has an overall advantage, declaring 'Praise God I'm a woman!' Back in England, Orlando is hounded again by the archduchess, who now reveals herself to be a man, the Archduke Harry. Orlando evades his marriage proposals. She goes on to switch gender roles, dressing alternately as a man and woman.
Orlando engages energetically with life in the 18th and 19th centuries, holding court with great poets, notably Alexander Pope. Critic Nick Greene, apparently also timeless, reappears and promotes Orlando's writing, promising to help her publish The Oak Tree.
Orlando wins a lawsuit over her property and marries a sea captain, Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine. Like Orlando, he is gender non-conforming, and Orlando attributes the success of their marriage to this similarity. In 1928, she publishes The Oak Tree, centuries after starting it, and wins a prize. In the novel's ending, Orlando's husband flies over the mansion in an aeroplane, which hovers above Orlando until Shelmerdine leaps to the ground. A stray bird flies over his head and Orlando exults, 'It's the goose! The wild goose!' The novel ends the final stroke of midnight on Thursday, Oct. 11, 1928 (the day the novel would be published).
Inspiration[edit]
Woolf and Vita Sackville-West were both members of the Bloomsbury Group, which was known for its liberal views on sexuality. The two began a sexual and romantic relationship that lasted for a decade, and continued as a friendship long after that. Notably, this inspiration is confirmed by Woolf herself, who noted in her diary the idea of Orlando on 5 October 1927: 'And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other'.[8]
Nigel Nicolson, Sackville-West's son, wrote, 'The effect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando, the longest and most charming love letter in literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries, tosses her from one sex to the other, plays with her, dresses her in furs, lace and emeralds, teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her.'[9]:307
Analysis[edit]
In the novel, Woolf satirizes Sackville-West's fascination with the Romany people as it is the Romany caravan in the Balkans that first accepts Orlando as a woman, and it is hinted that it was a spell cast by the Romany witch that Orlando married that caused Orlando's transformation into a woman.[10] The Romany witch is named Rosita Pepita, which was also the name of Sackville-West's grandmother, a Spanish dancer.[11]:64 However, Orlando, regardless of his/her sex, remains an English aristocrat and cannot really adjust to the nomadic lifestyle of the Romany caravan as it wanders across the Balkans and Anatolia, as in real life Sackville-West fantasized about joining a Romany caravan, but did not really wish to give up the settled life of the aristocracy for living in poverty and to be object of popular hatred as the Romany were and are a people who belong nowhere.[10] In the novel, Woolf also satirizes British culture in the sense that 'inversion' as lesbianism was then called was allowed as long as it was presented as a fantastical allegory that was only real in the sense that the book was about Sackville-West, but could not be realistic.[12]:60 Woolf also intended the novel as compensation for the sense of loss often felt by Sackville-West who lost her beloved childhood home Knole which went to a cousin and which she would have inherited if she had been a man; about her need to hide her sexuality and about the unhappy end of her relationship with Violet Trefusis in 1920.[12]:63 Sackville-West in a letter praised Woolf for compensation for her sense of loss, saying: 'I am in no fit state to write to you...I only tell you that I am really shaken, which may seem to you silly and useless, but which is really a greater tribute than pages of calm appreciation...Darling, I don't know and scarcely even like to write how overwhelmed am I, how could you hung so splendid a garment on so poor a peg...Also, you have invented a new form of narcissism-I confess-I am in love with Orlando-this is a complication I had not foreseen'.[12]:63 In the book, Orlando as a woman wins control of her family estate, which bears a close resemblance to Knole, which addressed Sackville-West sense of loss about losing the estate that she had grown up in and deeply loved only because she was a woman.[12]:64 Likewise, Trefusis appears in the novel as the Russian princess Sasha, whom Orlando sincerely loves, but the responsibility for the failure of the relationship rests entirely with her, whereas in real life Sackville-West knew that the story she used as a reason for terminating her relationship with Trefusis, namely she had slept with her husband Major Dennys Trefusis was almost certainly false.[12]:65 The picture of Sackville-West that Woolf presented as her alter-ego Orlando was not completely positive as Woolf felt only contempt for Sackville-West literacy abilities, regarding her as a mediocre writer as she wrote to her husband Leonard Woolf 'she writes with a pen of brass'.[12]:66 The recurring image of the grey goose that Orlando chases after, but never captures over the centuries is an allegory for the ability to write a truly great novel that Sackville-West longed to do, but never managed.[12]:66 Perhaps fortunately for herself, a bewildered Sackville-West never understood what the goose was a symbol of, writing to her husband Harold Nicolson: 'What does the goose stand for? Fame? Love? Death? Marriage?'.[12]:66 For Woolf herself, the book was compensation for a sense of loss.[12]:67 Woolf was often hurt by Sackville-West's promiscuity and unfaithfulness, and Orlando allowed her to have a more idealised version of Sackville-West that would belong to her forever.[12]:67
The American scholar Victoria Smith argued the book is about the impossibility of representing the female experience in its entirety as a recurring theme of the book is Orlando's inability to properly describe emotions, people and even such banal occurrences as a sunset.[12]:59–60; 67–69 Throughout the book, Orlando cannot describe Sasha or nature, the biographer cannot properly write up a description of Orlando, and the love which Orlando feels for Shelmerdine is referred to as undefinable.[12]:68 When Orlando attempts to define love, he says to himself: 'Every single thing, once he tried to dislodge it from his place in his mind, he thus cumbered with other matter like a lump of grass, which after a year at the bottom of the sea, is grown about with bones and dragon-flies, and the tresses of women's hair'.[12]:69 Likewise, when Orlando attempts to simply say the grass is green and the sky is blue, he instead finds himself thinking '...the sky is like the veils over which a thousand Madonnas have their hair fall; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing hairy satyrs for the woods'.[12]:69 Smith maintained whenever Orlando's attempt to say that the sky is blue and the grass is green, instead brings images of women, nature, classical mythology and religion into his mind, thus highlighting Woolf's viewpoint '...that the 'natural'-the grass, the sky-already are encumbered with myths of and representations of women and their sexuality. Finally, the passage ends with precisely the conundrum of language that Woolf highlights: that even through the images used to convey the objects are 'false', the object are nonetheless conveyed.'[12]:69 Smith argued that this rhetorical ambiguity that Woolf used was a commentary on 'the love that dared not speak its name' as the book was meant to celebrate her love for Sackville-West while at the same time disguising it even though the two women were immune from being prosecuted by the authorities (homosexuality, but not lesbianism, was illegal in Britain until 1967).[12]:69 Woolf intended the book to be therapeutic, to address the sense of loss felt by Sackville-West as well as herself, to provide a 'spark' of hope to keep herself from drowning in she called in her diary 'a great sea of melancholy'.[12]:70
Woolf was often critical of British historiography, which at the time was largely concerned with political-military history, which she accused of neglecting the lives of women, which with the exceptions of leaders like Elizabeth I, Anne, and Victoria, were almost totally ignored.[13]:62–63 The novel takes place over several ages of British history, namely the Renaissance, the Restoration, the Enlightenment, the Romantic, the Victorian and the present, and Woolf uses the various ages to mock theories of history.[13]:63 Orlando's biographer says that her style of poetry become less florid as the 17th century went on, which he suggests was because the streets were cleaner and the dishes less showy.[13]:63 Woolf's father, the historian Sir Leslie Stephen, whom she both loved and hated at the same time, had proposed in his book English Literature and Society in the Eighteen Century, a theory that what writers choose to write about reflects contemporary tastes, a 'return to nature' as 'literature must be produced by the class which embodies the really vital and powerful currents of thought which molds society'.[13]:63–64 That Orlando's biographer believes that it was changes in British cuisine and the condition of the countryside that had changed Orlando's style of writing is a reductio ad absurdum of Stephen's theories.[13]:64 Stephen identified various writers, all of them men, as the 'key' figures of an age, whereas his daughter wanted historians to pay attention to women writers that they usually ignored, and the unflattering picture of Pope that Woolf presents is a caricature of her father's theories (Stephen had identified Pope as the 'key' writer of early Georgian England).[13]:64 Likewise, when Orlando was a man, he had no hesitations about showing off his manuscript for The Oak Tree, but as a woman, she constantly hides it when visitors come, as Jane Austen was alleged to do with the manuscripts for her books, which was Woolf's way of satirizing the different behavior expected of male and female writers.[13]:64 Stephen believed that great writers must work in 'the spirit of the age', which led him in his book Hours in the Library to praise Sir Walter Scott as representing the 'spirit' of the Romantic age while Charlotte Brontë was dismissed as a writer because she was out of touch with the 'spirit' of the Victorian age.[13]:65 Woolf satirizes her father's theories as in during the Victorian Age that Orlando marries, changes drastically the quality of her writings, and the very idea of being pregnant makes her ashamed, which so sharply differs from the way that the character had been portrayed before as to imply these changes in her personality are forced as she struggles to conform to the 'spirit' of the Victorian era.[13]:65
At the same time, Woolf, though she was critical of many aspects of British life, felt a deep sense of affinity in her country, where the past seemed to live on in so many ways.[13]:70 Woolf was inspired to write Orlando when Sackville-West took her to Knole, to show her the place where she had grown up, that had belonged to the Sackville family for centuries, and as Sackville-West bitterly noted she would have inherited if only she had been born male.[13]:70 During the course of their visit, a farmer came in with a wagon full of wood to be chopped up to heat Knole, which Sackville-West said had been done for hundreds of years, which gave Woolf the idea of the English past was not dead, but still alive, a theme that is expressed in Orlando by the ageless, timeless nature of the eponymous character.[13]:70 That the 19th century begins with a heavy thunderstorm, and throughout the scenes set in the Victorian age it always seems to be raining, reflected Woolf's view of the Victorian era has a dark one in British history, as it was only with the Edwardian era that sunshine returns to Orlando.[13]:65–66 As part of her attack on Victorian values, Woolf satirized the theories of the influential critic John Ruskin who saw the Renaissance as a period of moral and cultural decline, which he called a 'frost'.[13]:67 On the contrary, Woolf depicted the parts of the book set in the Elizabethan-Jacobean era as one of rebirth and vitality, of a time when 'the moon and stars blazed with the hard fixity of diamonds'.[13]:67 It during this period that Orlando first falls in love with the Russian princess Sasha, which leads to 'the ice turned to wine in his veins, he heard the water flowing and the birds singing'.[13]:68 As an criticism of Ruskin, it was during the Great Frost of 1608 that Orlando first discovers his sexuality with Sasha, turning Ruskin's frost metaphor for the Renaissance on its head.[13]:67
That it was in Constantinople that Orlando become a woman reflects the city's status in the 17th century as a melting pot of cultures with a mixed population of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Sephardic Jews, Circassians, Sudanese, and other peoples from all over the Ottoman Empire, in short a place with no fixed identity that existed half in Europe and half in Asia, making the city the perfect backdrop for Orlando's transformation.[14]:180 Furthermore, Constantinople had been founded by the Greeks as Byzantium in 7th century BC; had become the capital of the Roman empire in 324 AD when the Emperor Constantine the Great renamed the city after himself; for centuries had been seen as a bastion of Christianity against Islam; was taken by the Ottomans in a siege in 1453, becoming the capital of the world's most powerful Muslim empire; and was renamed Istanbul in 1924, making the city itself into a metaphor for shifting identities, whatever they be national, cultural, religious, gender, ethnic or sexual.[14]:180 In the 17th century, Constantinople was Europe's largest city as well as one of the most wealthiest. The American scholar Urmila Seshagiri wrote that the 'fixed British hegemonies' of the early chapters set in London and in the English countryside seem 'fragile' when Orlando is confronted with the vast, teeming, wealthy city of Constantinople with its multi-ethnic, multi-religious population that appears as a far more powerful and greater city than London, which was Woolf's way of undermining the assumption widely held in 1928 Britain that the British empire was the world's greatest empire.[14]:180 Sackville-West had lived in Constantinople in 1912-14 when Nicolson had been the Third Secretary at the British embassy and loved that city, which she viewed as a beautiful city full of diverse cultures and peoples. That Orlando's transformation occurs during the course of anti-Christian riots by the Muslim population of Constantinople is Woolf's attack on British imperialism.[11]:64 By the second half of the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire was in decline while the British empire was on the ascent, which is the precise time that Orlando changes sex.[11]:64 Woolf believed that the 'Eastern Question' as imperial rivalry for control of Constantinople, 'the city of all the world's desire' as it sits at a strategic location where Europe and Asia meet to have been one of the main causes of the First World War, and by dating Orlando's transformation at the moment that the Ottoman Empire began to decline was a political point.[11]:64 One of the main justifications for the British empire was the alleged need to protect white women from being raped by non-white men, and by having Lady Orlando escape from Constantinople without a man to protect her was an attack upon this theory.[11]:64–65
Seshagiri accused Woolf of engaging in 'Orientalism' by having Orlando become a woman in Constantinople, arguing that Orlando's transformation is made dependent upon 'the dual Otherness of race and place', portraying the Ottomans as a strange, exotic people that makes such a strange transformation possible.[14]:182 As part of her accusation of racism against Woolf, Seshagiri argued though Orlando finds acceptance and equality with the Romany caravan, she nonetheless has a vision of the English countryside of 'a great park-like space' in all four seasons of the year while staring at the barren hills of Anatolia and immediately realizes she belongs in England, not in this 'savage land'.[14]:184 Seshagiri argues that because when Orlando arrives in London on a ship, she sees and marvels at all of the architecture built after the Great Fire of 1666 such as St. Paul's, Greenwich Hospital, Westminster Abbey, the Royal Pavilion, and the Houses of Parliament this is meant to show that the British empire is growing in strength and London is in a sense the center of the world, especially when contrasted with the 'savage land' of Anatolia that is barren and devoid of beautiful architecture of London that Orlando has just left.[14]:184 The American Celia Caputi Daileander likewise accused Woolf of racism, noting the novel begins with Orlando beheading a 'Moor' (a term in Elizabethan England that described both Muslims and/or blacks) and causally kicking his head about.[11]:56 Daileander observed that the 'Moor' that Orlando kills is considered so unimportant that Woolf does not even bother to give him a name, though Orlando twice refers to the Moor he beheaded as a nigger later on in the book.[11]:56; 62 At the novel's climax in 1928, when Shelmerdine is flying a plane above the English Channel, Orlando bares her gleaming white breasts, which shine with such brightness in the moonlight as to guide him back to England.[11]:70 The scholar Kathy Philips accused Woolf of racism, arguing that Orlando's white breasts, which shine so brightly, are symbol for the theory that to be white is be beautiful.[11]:70 Dailender disagreed with this interpretation, stating Orlando's skin is more dark than white; argued that it was her pearls, not her breasts were really shining; and noted that there was siren-like the way that Orlando guides Shelmerdine back to England, which was not at all like the 'angel-in-the-house' language associated to glorify femininity and the British Empire.[11]:70
Influence and recognition[edit]
Orlando was a contemporary success, both critically and financially, and guaranteed the Woolfs' financial stability.[15] It was generally viewed not just as high literature, but as a gossipy novel about Sackville-West. However, the New York Times review of the book acknowledged the importance of the work as an experiment into new forms of literature.[16]
The work has been the subject of numerous scholarly writings, including detailed treatment in multiple works on Virginia Woolf.[a] An 'annotated' edition has been published to facilitate critical reading of the text.
The novel's title has also come to stand in some senses for women's writing generally, as one of the most famous works by a woman author that directly treats the subject of gender.[b] For example, a project at the University of Cambridge on the history of women's writing in the British Isles was named after the book.[c]
The skating party on the Thames was featured in Simple Gifts, a Christmas collection of six animated shorts shown on PBS in 1977.
The novel has been adapted for theatre and film. In 1989 the American director Robert Wilson, and writer Darryl Pinckney collaborated on a theatrical production. A British film adaptation was released in 1992, starring Tilda Swinton as Orlando and Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth I.
A second theatre adaptation of Orlando, by Sarah Ruhl, was first presented by the Piven Theatre Workshop in Evanston, Illinois in 1998.[17] The play premiered Off-Broadway in New York in 2010.[18] It subsequently premiered for the Sydney Theatre Company in Australia at the Sydney Opera House starring Jacqueline McKenzie in the title role.[19]
Notes[edit]
- ^See for example, Kelley, Alice van Buren (1973). The Novels of Virginia Woolf: Fact and Vision. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN9780226429854. OCLC794933.
- ^For example: Harpman, Jacqueline (1996). Orlanda: roman. Paris: Éditions Grasset. ISBN9782246532118. OCLC36241484. (published in English in 1999, ISBN9781583220115.)
- ^Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present.
References[edit]
- ^'Darryl Pinckney | United Agents'. www.unitedagents.co.uk. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^'Maria Nadotti on Robert Wilson's Orlando'. Artforum. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^'He's not afraid of Virginia Woolf'. The Telegraph. 16 August 1996. ISSN0307-1235. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^Riding, Alan (19 August 1996). 'Theater Seizes Days or Nights At Edinburgh'. The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^Greetham, David C. (1997). The Margins of the Text. University of Michigan Press. p. 79. ISBN0472106678.
- ^'Orlando, An Opera in Five Centuries, by Aderhold and Joyce'. S. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^Jordison, Sam Jordison (5 December 2011). 'Winter reads: Orlando by Virginia Woolf'. The Guardian. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
- ^Karbo, Karen (27 February 2018). In Praise of Difficult Women: Life Lessons From 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules. Washington, D.C. p. 194. ISBN9781426217951. OCLC1026408838.
- ^Blamires, Harry (1983). A Guide to twentieth century literature in English. London: Methuen. ISBN9780416364507. OCLC9731959.
- ^ abBlair, Kirstie (2004). 'Gypsies and Lesbian Desire: Vita Sackville-West, Violet Trefusis, and Virginia Woolf'. Twentieth Century Literature. 50 (2): 141–166. doi:10.2307/4149276. JSTOR4149276.
- ^ abcdefghijDaileader, Celia R. Caputi (2 May 2013). 'Othello's Sister: Racial Hermaphroditism and Appropriation in Virginia Woolf's Orlando'. Studies in the Novel. 45 (1): 56–79. doi:10.1353/sdn.2013.0007. ISSN1934-1512.
- ^ abcdefghijklmnopqSmith, Victoria L. (14 September 2006). ''Ransacking the Language': Finding the Missing Goods in Virginia Woolf's Orlando'. Journal of Modern Literature. 29 (4): 57–75. doi:10.1353/jml.2006.0050. ISSN1529-1464.
- ^ abcdefghijklmnopqDe Gay, Jane (1 March 2007). 'Virginia Woolf's Feminist Historiography in Orlando'. Critical Survey. 19 (1). doi:10.3167/cs.2007.190107.
- ^ abcdefSeshagiri, Urmila (2010). Race and the Modernist Imagination. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN9780801448218. OCLC320799040.
- ^'Virginia Woolf's Orlando: The Book as Critic'. www.tetterton.net. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
- ^Chase, Cleveland B. (21 October 1928). 'Mrs. Woolf Explores the 'Time' Element in Human Relationships'. The New York Times. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
[O]nce more Mrs. Woolf has broken with tradition and convention and has set out to explore still another fourth dimension of writing.
- ^Hayford, Justin (11 June 1998). 'Orlando'. Chicago Reader. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
- ^'Orlando'. The New York Times
- ^'Orlando'. Sydney Theatre Company. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
External links[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Orlando |
- Orlando: A Biography at Faded Page (Canada)
- Orlando at Project Gutenberg Australia
- Virginia Woolf's Orlando by Ted Gioia (Conceptual Fiction)
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