“He- for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it...”
…So begins “Orlando,” Virginia Woolf’s fanciful exploration of gender, fact and fiction, art, the ways they go together, and, more importantly, the ways in which their definitions constantly change. The novel is a homage to the novelist and poet Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf’s close friend and intermittent lover. Woolf set out to create a character who would capture Sackville-West’s spirit outside of gender and time period contexts; her aristocratic pride in lineage, her androgynous personality, and her peculiar imagination, which Woolf referred to as Vita’s “dark, dusky attic of a mind.” The result is Orlando, a character who, like Sackville-West herself, defies the limitations of gender and time in pursuit of unfettered artistic freedom.
At the start of the novel, Orlando is a young nobleman, the special pet of Queen Elizabeth I, and an aspiring poet, working on what is to be his magnum opus, “The Oak Tree.” After a doomed relationship with a capricious Muscovite princess, the heartbroken Orlando leaves England as an ambassador, falls into a strange trance, is visited by the spirits of Purity, Chastity, and Modesty, and awakens- as a woman. The rest of the novel follows the struggles of the Lady Orlando as she explores the meaning of love, marriage, motherhood, and what it means to be a woman and an artist. The novel ends in the 1920’s with the completion of “The Oak Tree,” a poem that traces her emotional growth over the course of 400 years. Yes, Orlando, in addition to spontaneously changing genders, is also immortal.
Written as a mock-biography, Virginia Woolf’s voice takes on the form of a biographer who is by turns charmed, exasperated, confused, and indifferent to her subject. The tone is one of mock seriousness, as Virginia Woolf playfully teases the reader, and even occasionally makes fun of her own writing style. What sets this apart from Woolf’s other works is that she intended it to be accessible and lighthearted. The novel is full of Woolf’s dry humor and sharp wit, making it, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. She also eschews the common practice of validating her fantastical premises- of making them believable within the context of the novel. Instead, Woolf parades the fact that the novel is fantastical and illogical, and that’s part of book’s charm. Orlando wakes up as a woman, shrugs, and goes about her business. Nobody seems to notice or care that she has been alive for centuries. More than a traditional fantasy novel, “Orlando” seems to anticipate the arrival Magic Realism, which wouldn’t officially appear for another 30 years. Her prose is almost superhuman in its flawlessness. Taken alone, each sentence is a painstakingly crafted work of art. Taken as a whole, her command of the English language is simply mind-blowing. The prose is dense and often very complex, but Woolf’s humor keeps it from becoming intimidating.
The complexity of the novel isn’t confined to the writing alone. The concepts she presents are equally challenging, not least of all because the novel uses so many paradoxes. Each symbol contains multiple, often contradictory meanings. She does this not to confuse the reader, but to make a very specific point. “Orlando” is essentially about the character as a writer, and the changes that must occur within him/her in order for Orlando to become a truly great poet. To be a true artist, Woolf contends, one has to be open to the multiplicity of life and art, and not attempt to limit things to one set definition. This explains the often paradoxical imagery and symbolism. More importantly, it manifests itself in Orlando herself, who, instead of being held static by the standards of an immutable gender and time period, fluidly moves from gender to gender, and from age to age. It shows Orlando’s progression as a man who takes definitions very seriously- from his highly disciplined poetry to his views of himself as an Elizbethan aristocrat to his traditional codes of appropriate gender conduct- to a woman who, after 400 years of living and learning, realizes that definitions can never accurately define the complexities of language and experience, and so they simply become limitations. In order for Orlando to grow as an artist, she must not attempt to define language, time period, and gender rigidly, but allow them to be the fluid, paradoxical things that they inherently are. And as Orlando grows spiritually, so does her art, the evidence of which is her masterpiece about an oak tree- something that, like Orlando, forever grows and changes. And with all of this comes a strong feminist slant- Woolf sees sexual roles as purely societal creations-, as well as a defiance of all societal and artistic definitions and limitations. It’s seen as a book about gender and societal roles, but essentially it is a book about how the true artist must, one by one, reject formal roles in favor of a more natural code of logic, and very often, absence of logic. This is, in a sense, Virginia’s “How-to” for would-be artists.
A lot of people have a hard time getting into this book because of its complex imagery and dense writing style. I highly recommend reading “Orlando” and Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” at the same time, as companion pieces. Written around the same time as “Orlando,” “Room” was originally written as a lecture on Women and Writing that was given at a women’s college. The book is a relatively short, enjoyable collection of essays that further explain Woolf’s ideas on women artists, and her theory on the spiritual (not necessarily sexual) androgyny of the creative mind- a theory put to work very obviously in “Orlando.” The book explains in plain English what Orlando represents symbolically- “Room” is like “Orlando” Cliff Notes without the cheating.
Funny and thought-provoking, this is a great book for anyone who likes books that make them think and laugh at the same time. Fantasy lovers who, like myself, are initially drawn to the novel’s element of whimsy wont be disappointed either. I expected a fun story, and I got one- and much much more. “Orlando” succeeds on every possible level.
There’s also a movie version of “Orlando” by Sally Potter. It’s more of an interpretation of the book than a literal page-to-screen adaptation. Potter’s version concentrates on the gender-bending aspects of the novel, the transgender implications ect. It’s a great movie, but I think that it really should be viewed as a separate work.
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