Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Where to Start?

Virginia Woolf chose to start with a teenage Orlando hacking at a decapitated head in an attic adorned with slain “pagans." Despite being rather "full on," I forgot about this introduction, and not merely due to the sludge of events that followed. But because the action, in retrospect, seems out of character. Such violence contradicts the Orlando I came to know. Orlando the poet - besotted with nature and books. Orlando the gypsy. Orlando the man turned women. Violence for violence sake has been alloted as a “masculine” characteristic and therefore fails to foreshadow the defining moment in the plot; when Orlando swaps gender. I tend to put much stock into introductions - as a foundation of a book’s theme, and thus, carefully crafted by the author.

One theory suggests this introduction tied Orlando to Othello - a Shakespeare play about a dark-skinned man whose marriage incites a storm of envy. Ultimately, Othello’s enemies convince him to smother his wife, the much desired Desmonda, on the charge of adultery . The play teems with racism - with Othello seen, due to his race, as a beast of whom must be manipulated, and then quashed. Virginia Woolf, conversely, focuses on gender, but her continued allusions to Othello cement the simple concept that people are treated differently according to appearance. Desmonda is a defining image in Othello - the image of her, stifled, in bed inscribed in the audience’s mind. A silenced women . Similar , perhaps, to the silence that, in Woolf’s time, “became” a woman

My idea is that such an introduction severs ties with history. The head was slung to the ceiling by his father, or grandfather, and Orlando brought it to the ground. He breaks away from family legacy - from time, and what is expected of a young Englishmen in such a period. The narrative , after all, is untethered. Drifting Through time, place, and gender. A reader must be able to give in and go with the flow.

This, however, was a feat in itself. The plot swells under detail after detail - event after event. Orlando hacks at a corpse, writes poetry, takes a turn about a garden, captures the attention of Queen Elizabeth I, falls in love with a Russian princess who later deserts him, refurbishes his estate, moves to India as an ambassador, becomes a woman, joins the gypsies, returns to England, struggles to reclaim her property, publishes a poem, marries a man who is actually a woman, has a child, catapults to the twentieth century as a famous writer. Such a list, as Virgnia Woolf herself noted when enumerating Orlando’s daily routine, is tedious - and thus I shall stop here.

There are two images, amongst a sea of detail, that solidified in my mind - and remain, weeks after finishing Orlando, gleaming.

The first contains that of Orlando - flinging himself on the root of an oak tree he terms “the spine of the earth”. This fragment is less an image, than a feeling that pierces me with a kind of familiarity that . As a “critical feminst essay,” Orlando seems like it could be bogged down by philosophers - and gauzy ideas arrayed in a delicate web difficult to maneuver . Yet the book feels tangible to me. Full of heavy things; description, images, each bloated with significance. Orlando, himself, seems somewhat materialistic. He pours his wealth into decorating his home - of which, at the time, only he and his servants occupied. He has a noted reaction when objects leave his person - such us in the case of a self authored poem, of which he (or she at this point) bore in his dress. When the weight of these papers was removed, he felt a “hole.” Orlando also fastens meaning to his/her attire - in the sense that what he wears determines his gender, social status, and, in the case of a wedding ring, who he is tied te. These superficial element influence how he/she is treated. I think this alludes to a major theme of Orlando - the art of biography. When recording someone else’s life, a biographer gleans information from the tangible remains of someone - diaries, letters, etc - and, although these may exist in the manifold, can never access their subjects thoughts. This leads me to the second image that juts out - inexplicably - in my memory. An old woman crooking her finger in a teacup to test the temperature. This may appear to be insignificant . Orlando witnessed this woman in a play - of which he declared to embody life. These facts, in the book, took a sentence to relay out of thousands. However, this struck me in the sense that life, as suggested by Virginia Woolf, is composed of such mundane, and infistimal moments. Events of which biographers, like herself, cannot possibly record in full - as they leave no record behind, accept in a general way. We can assume that Orlando tested the temperature of his tea, but this fact was never recorded - and thus, can never be attributed to a specific person. The only thing we can declare with certainty is that somewhere, sometime, a nameless woman dipped her finger into her tea.

I think now is the time to acknowledge why Orlando was declared a book to “place beneath your pillow and sleep on.” Orlando is transgender. The book was published in 1928 (miraculously passing pre-publishing censorship) yet presents an idea that we tend to think as newly devised - and thus hot to handle. However, gender fluidity always existed - though only recently acquired a name . Simone Du Beavour, in 1943, stated that ‘one does not become, n. Orlando does not become a woman in tandem with his body’s shift in sex. The transformation is gradual - guided by society. He accidentally lets his ankle show in public - almost precipitating the death of a sailor. And so he/she learns to cover up. To spend long hours preening in the mirror. To hide his poetry. He became a woman.

Virginia Woolf likes to contorts time - in this particular book, I think her contortions show Orlando as an old soul. His final identity (we assume) is that of a twentieth century writer speeding along the streets of London - an image that, alone, presents a whole score of implications. But the purpose of the book was for us, the readers, to understand who this woman really was - composed, as she was, of a wealthy teen boy from the courts of Queen Elizbeth the 1st, an ambassador, a gypsy, a nineteenth century woman rejecting marriage . This book was based on the life Vita Sackville-West - a bisexual poet and Virginia’s alleged lover. . I imagine her, although not magically transported from the sixteenth century, to have nevertheless been an “old soul,” as well as gender fluid. Like Orlando, she was passionate about poetry and nature, lived in a sprawling state she, as a woman, could never inherit - and is remembered today as a muse. I think “Orlando” was an attempt to capture Vita in a tangible format.. To undertake the impossible task of archiving all her quirks, and folliobles - explaining, in a more literal way, who she was, as someone not quite tied to her gender or era.. The theme of belonging runs throughout the novel. Orlando, as women, must be “owned’ by someone - or, more aptly, a husband. This rule being established by Orlando’s society -of which attempts to cajoles her into chains (or a wedding ring - though there wasn’t much of a difference.) Similar to how a biographer tends to want to own his or her subject. Orlando, unlike any other characters I have encountered in literature, does not belong to the author. He/she/they is untethered. And I am thrilled to have glimpsed, at the very least, a fragment of this immense personality.