May 10, 2025
“He – for there could be no doubt about his sex…” So
begins Viginia Woolf’s
Orlando, a 1928 novel rendered in the form of a fictional
biography. At first the
book begins in a conventional-enough way, and while the “biographer”
breaks the fourth wall on occasion that seems fitting for the late
sixteenth century timeframe that begins our story.
Slowly, though, we get hints of the fantastical.
Orlando’s house is impossibly large, a virtual city with 365
bedrooms, 100 occupants, and a 15-mile fence.
Major emotional trauma is met with 7-day sleeps. As Orlando
matures from the 16-year-old we meet to an 18-year-old given important
governmental offices by the Queen, to the young man appointed
Ambassador to Constantinople, we sense that time is moving faster than
Orlando is aging.
And then the novel reaches what I call its WTF
moment: Orlando has
transitioned from man to woman.
This is not your ordinary biography.
Over the course of about 350 years, Orlando ages 20 years, from
16 to 36. She is
essentially immortal. And
she is not alone, as the author and literary critic Nicholas Greene
also ages along a similar trajectory.
What could all this mean?
It seems to me that Orlando and Greene are immortal
because they represent not people but the two ideas Woolf is
exploring: gender and
literature and their changing roles in society.
In this sense Woolf is bringing together her two passions into
one book: feminism and
literary theory, both topics she wrote extensively on.
As a female author in a world still dominated by male literary
views, Woolf was very purposely looking at the role of gender in
living and writing. By
telescoping by a century here and there, Woolf compares her modern
world with Elizabethan and Victorian era ideas and culture.
What is the role of clothing – is it a product of
internalized gender expectations, or a means of controlling them?
We see Orlando the young man drawn to Russian and Turkish
fashion, where men’s and women’s clothing effectively disguise sex.
What have the changing views of love, marriage, and family
meant for the different roles of men and women?
Elizabethan marriage was a financial arrangement, with affairs
providing for love.
Victorian marriage was chaste except for damp fecundity.
And what of modern love?
As for literature, is it actually changing while Orlando edits
her poem
The Oak Tree for over 300 years,
or are we stuck in Nick Greene’s idea of good literature: copying the
style of the past generation of masters since all current writers
suck. Throughout, Woolf
masterfully skewers male pandering and hypocrisy towards women through
the eyes of a truly unique character:
a woman who once was a man.
But the level of these ideas is not the only
important level on which we can read
Orlando, since Woolf also brought her third passion into
the novel: Vita
Sackville-West, Woolf’s close friend and lover.
Vita is literally the model for Orlando, since every photograph
of Orlando in the book is a photo of her.
The Sackville family is also the model for most of the
historical events that take place.
Orlando the young man hews closely to the life of Thomas
Sackville. Vita
Sackville-West as a young bride went to Constantinople with her
diplomat husband. Vita’s
grandmother was a Spanish dancer named Pepita.
Like Woolf, Vita was bisexual and described herself
as oscillating between feminine and masculine selves.
She was also an accomplished poet and novelist whose works
significantly outsold those of Virginia Woolf.
Orlando has been described as an extended love letter to
Vita.
So how to read
Orlando?
As a weird but fun story?
As a retelling of the history and life of Vita Sackville-West?
As criticism of the changing ideas of gender and literature
across many centuries? Of
course, the answer is yes.
Chris Mack is a writer in Austin, Texas.
Copyright 2025, Chris Mack.
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