SparkNotes: Orlando: Key Facts Key Facts Study Questions and Essay Topics full title · Orlando: a Biography author · Virginia Woolf genre · Fictional biography language · English time and place written · Woolf wrote Orlando from her home in London, 1927–1928, between To the Lighthouse and The Waves date of first publication · October 11, 1928, the date given in the last line of the novel publisher · Hogarth Press narrator · Third-person, omniscient narrator; an unreliable "biographer" who changes style and tone to suit the changes of Orlando's life climax · The climax occurs when Orlando finds herself in the present day, 1928, and she is forced to acknowledge her own nature as a multitude of selves and experiences within one person.

protagonist · Orlando setting (time) · 1588 to 1928 setting (place) · Mostly in England (London and Kent), but 1660–1685 are spent on an excursion to Constantinople and the hills of Turkey point of view · Third-person omniscient; the narrator or "biographer" knows what each of the characters are thinking and inserts her own explanations into the text falling action · Orlando, having found love, now finds life in the present moment; standing by her oak tree, she looks over her manor and welcomes back her husband Shel. tense · Immediate past, real-time narration foreshadowing · Orlando's poem foreshadows that she will end up back at her oak tree; the appearance of Archduchess Harriet foreshadows that he will me a man; Orlando's troubles with the gypsies foreshadow that she will return to England. tone · Detached, philosophic, and poetic; although she attempts to include dates and facts making the book a real 'biography,' the narrator's work ends up as poetry.

themes · Sex and gender, the differences between men and women; the quality of history; the 'spirit of the age;' time; interconnectedness; truth, fact, and poetry motifs · Poetry, dates, clothing, sex changes symbols · The oak tree, the clock, Orlando's manor house, clouds More Help Orlando : a biography (Book, 1928) [WorldCat.org] by Virginia Woolf. Abstract: "Virginia Woolf's exuberant 'biography' tells the story of the cross-dressing, sex-changing Orlando who begins life as a young noble in the sixteenth century and moves through numerous historical and geographical worlds to finish as a modern woman writer in the 1920s. The book is in part a happy tribute to the 'life' that her love for Vita Sackville-West had breathed into Virginia Woolf's own day-to-day existence; it is also Woolf's light-hearted and light-handed teasing out of the assumptions that lie behind the normal conventions for writing about a fictional or historical life. In this novel, Virginia Woolf plays loose and fast: Orlando uncovers a literary and sexual revolution overnight."--Jacket. Reviews Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers.

Be the first. Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Be the first. Tags Add tags for "Orlando : a biography". Be the first. Similar Items schema:datePublished "1928" ; schema:description ""Virginia Woolf's exuberant 'biography' tells the story of the cross-dressing, sex-changing Orlando who begins life as a young noble in the sixteenth century and moves through numerous historical and geographical worlds to finish as a modern woman writer in the 1920s. The book is in part a happy tribute to the 'life' that her love for Vita Sackville-West had breathed into Virginia Woolf's own day-to-day existence; it is also Woolf's light-hearted and light-handed teasing out of the assumptions that lie behind the normal conventions for writing about a fictional or historical life. In this novel, Virginia Woolf plays loose and fast: Orlando uncovers a literary and sexual revolution overnight."--Jacket."@ en ; Orlando: A Biography - Virginia Woolf - Google Books Orlando: A Biography 56 Reviews With an Introduction and Notes by Merry M. Pawlowski, Professor and Chair, Department of English, California State University, Bakersfield.

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 love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Costantinople, awakes to find that he is a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women. What people are saying - Write a review User ratings LibraryThing Review User Review - Michael.Xolotl - LibraryThing The writing is beautiful. Woolf tosses off historical generalizations and profound insights about life as effortlessly as I just took a swig of coffee.

I usually hate attempts at profundity, although ... Read full review LibraryThing Review User Review - gbill - LibraryThing It’s a mistake to reduce this book, as Vita Sackville-West’s son did, to ‘the longest and most charming love letter in literature’. I hate that characterization. While clearly inspired (and dedicated ... Read full review Selected pages View all » Common terms and phrases All Book Search results &raquo; About the author (1995) Virginia Woolf was born in London, England on January 25, 1882. She was the daughter of the prominent literary critic Leslie Stephen. Her early education was obtained at home through her parents and governesses. After death of her father in 1904, her family moved to Bloomsbury, where they formed the nucleus of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of philosophers, writers, and artists. During her lifetime, she wrote both fiction and non-fiction works. Her novels included Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and Between the Acts.

Her non-fiction books included The Common Reader, A Room of One's Own, Three Guineas, The Captain's Death Bed and Other Essays, and The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. Having had periods of depression throughout her life and fearing a final mental breakdown from which she might not recover, Woolf drowned herself on March 28, 1941 at the age of 59. Her husband published part of her farewell letter to deny that she had taken her life because she could not face the terrible times of war. Orlando: A Biography eBook: Virginia Woolf: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store By EA Solinas on 12 January 2015 Format: Kindle Edition No lover in the world ever wrote a valentine more exquisite than Virginia Woolf's tribute to her lover Vita Sackville-West. That tribute was "Orlando: A Biography," a magical-realism tale about a perpetually youthful, charming hero/ine who traverses three centuries and both genders -- and Woolf's writing reaches a new peak as she explores the hauntingly sensuous world of Orlando.

It's one of those rare novels that transcends the time in which it was written, even as its hero/ine transcends gender. Orlando was born a young aristocratic man in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. When the dying monarch visited his home, the charming young lord became her new court favorite (and briefly lover). His passionate, curious personality attracted many other women over the years -- until he fell in love with Sasha, a mercurial but faithless Russian princess (supposedly based on Sackville-West's ex-girlfriend Violet Trefusis). Bereft of true love, he devoted himself to poetry and entertainment. But then he's assigned to be an ambassador to Constantinople, and something strange and inexplicable happens. While a bloody revolution rages all around Orlando, he sleeps for a full week... and wakes newly metamorphosed into a woman, who cannot be expected to fight. With the same mind and soul but a female body, Orlando sets out on a new life -- and discovers that women aren't quite as different from men as she once thought.

"Orlando: A Biography" is a very weird book, and was even more so when it was written since "magical realism" didn't exist as a literary style in 1928. Virginia Woolf makes no explanations about Orlando's immortality or unexpected gender switch. Read more › Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback... Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again By Belinda TOP 1000 REVIEWER on 19 October 2015 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase Not my favourite Woolf by any stretch of the imagination. I felt it to be too self-congratulatory and had some questionable issues to do with race. Though she is doing clever things with time and character, and the section when Orlando changes gender is phenomenal, there was just too much about this book that I couldn't enjoy. Easily my least favourite Woolf thus far... and this is coming from a Woolf scholar! Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback... Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, we failed to record your vote.

Please try again Lecture 4 Lecture 4: Orlando "To give a truthful account of London society at that or indeed at any other time, is beyond the powers of the biographer or the historian. Only those who have little need of the truth, and no respect for it ï¿½ the poets and the novelists ï¿½ can be trusted to do it, for this is one of the cases where truth does not exist." (Orlando 192) Note: Woolfï¿½s next novel after Mrs. Dalloway was To the Lighthouse, but we are studying Orlando first because of the London setting and because we will visit Vita Sackville-Westï¿½s homes before we go to Cornwall, where To the Lighthouse is set. See the Woolf seminar Orlando web pages for a plot outline and basic orientation to the novel, including a PowerPoint presentation about Vita Sackville-West, who inspired the novel. All scholarly articles cited in this lecture are in the Works Cited on the Orlando FAQ page .

Basic Orientation to the Novel Orlando (1928) is a comic novel, written in the form of a biography of an English aristocrat born in the 16th century, who lives into the 20th century, and miraculously changes from a man to a woman along the way. The book was inspired by Woolfï¿½s friend Vita Sackville-West and tells the story of her aristocratic family, including several photographs of Vita herself (see key to the illustrations ). That Woolf was able to bring this off successfully is demonstrated by the fact that it was a huge popular success, tripling her book sales and giving her a sense of financial security. The book is unlike any other Woolf novel and has received far less scholarly attention than favorites like Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. Scholars treat it less seriously in part because contemporary reviewers, and even Woolf herself, treated it as a joke, calling it "a high-brow lark" (Arnold Bennett) or "a very pleasant trifle" (J.C. Squier).

Woolf wrote it very quickly, and said of it in her diary ï¿½it is all a joke; & yet gay & quick reading I think; a writers holiday" (Diary, vol. 3, March 18, 1928, p 177). Yet Leonard Woolf, the critic Woolf trusted most, did not treat it lightly: L[eonard] takes Orlando more seriously than I had expected. Thinks it in some ways better than the Lighthouse: about more interesting things, and with more attachment to life and larger. The truth is I expect I began it as a joke and went on with it seriously. Hence it lacks some unity. He says it is very original. Anyhow Iï¿½m glad to be quit this time of writing ï¿½a novelï¿½: and hope never to be accused of it again. (Diary, vol. 3, May 31, 1928, p 185) Certainly comedy is often a vehicle for serious themes, especially difficult themes like androgyny, sexual orientation, and the oppression of women.

All of these are themes Woolf would treat somewhat more directly in A Room of Oneï¿½s Own, which she began as a series of lectures about the time Orlando was published. Vita Sackville-West It is impossible to talk about Orlando without bringing in Vita Sackville-West, Woolfï¿½s great friend and (for a short time) lover, whose family history provides the substance of the tale. Vita was an aristocrat, ten years younger than Woolf, and notorious for a well-publicized affair (1918-20) with Violet Trefusis, the daughter of Edward VIIï¿½s mistress Alice Keppel. Vita was herself a writer, and the Hogarth Press did well by publishing 13 of her books, including three books of poetry, seven novels, some travel books, and two biographies. They first met at a dinner party in 1922, and their relationship was most intense between 1925 and 1928, the period when Woolf was writing To the Lighthouse.

Frank Baldanza traces the parallels between Vita and Orlando through reference to Vitaï¿½s Knole and the Sackvilles, which Woolf exaggerates at will. Woolf freely mixes Vita with her ancestors, including such of Vitaï¿½s traits as love of animals and nature, desire for solitude, and her long periods of melancholy in which she would go to bed for days or weeks. Here are a few of the facts of Vitaï¿½s life and ancestry that appear in Orlando: ï¿½ Elizabeth I gave Knole the 16th century Thomas Sackville, co-author of Gorboduc, the 1st English tragedy. He was Elizabeth Iï¿½s cousin, and Vitaï¿½s ancestor. ï¿½ The chapter in which Orlando decides to furnish Knole includes lists of items bought that resemble the many lists in Vitaï¿½s book about Knole (see Orlando p 109) ï¿½ Orlandoï¿½s sexual adventures resemble various Sackvilles, including Vita. Also Vita is androgynous looking and her affair with Violet Trefusis is the basis of the Sasha episode.

During that affair, Vita sometimes dressed as a man. ï¿½ Some of the Sackvilles had been ambassadors and Vita had just returned from Persia, where her husband Harold Nicolson had been on the diplomatic staff. Woolf had herself been to Constantinople, where Orlando goes as ambassador in what seems to be the 17th century, when Constantinople was the capital of the Ottoman Empire. (Constantinople was originally the Greek city Byzantium, the center of the Greek world. The Roman emperor Constantine I renamed it when he made it the capital of the Roman Empire in 330 AD. The Byzantine empire fell to the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, becoming part of what is now Turkey. Europeans continued to call it Constantinople well into the 20th century, though it had also been known as Istanbul since the Turks took it.) ï¿½ Vitaï¿½s literary aspirations resemble Orlandoï¿½s, and Vita had won a prize for a poem called ï¿½The Landï¿½ (cf. Orlandoï¿½s ï¿½The Oak Treeï¿½).

ï¿½ Vitaï¿½s family scandal is telescoped into the episode with the gypsies after Orlando leaves Constantinople (the Orlandoï¿½s lawsuit brought by the sons of Rosina Pepita is at the beginning of chapter 4). Vitaï¿½s grandfather, Lord Sackville, had five children by a Spanish gypsy who already had a husband, so Sackvilleï¿½s children with her were considered illegitimate, and his sons were not allowed to inherit Knole. Lord Sackvilleï¿½s daughter, Vitaï¿½s mother, married the heir (his brotherï¿½s son, her first cousin), which is how Vita came to be the heir of the wrong sex, as her mother had been. Vitaï¿½s father had no sons, and because Knole was entailed on a male heir, Vita could not inherit it when her father died in 1928. In Orlando, Woolf works it so that Orlando does get to keep the estate, when the court finds for her and she is in ï¿½undisturbed possession of her titles, her house, and her estate . . .

infinitely noble again [but because of the lawsuits] she was also excessively poorï¿½ (255). The impoverishment of the estate through lawsuits (all those illegitimate sons) is about what happened to Knole, which has been owned by the National Trust since 1947. Still, in giving Knole back to Vita (through Orlando) and in her portrayal of that lively character, the novel is what Vitaï¿½s son Nigel Nicolson calls ï¿½the 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, and ends by photographing her in the mud at Long Barn, with dogs, awaiting Virginiaï¿½s arrival next dayï¿½ (Portrait of a Marriage 225) The friendship between Virginia and Vita is not in any conventional sense a lesbian relationship, and it is hard for us to understand.

What might be called their ï¿½affairï¿½ lasted less than two years and was substantially over when Woolf was writing Orlando, but their friendship lasted throughout Woolfï¿½s life. Here is how Nigel Nicolson describes it: Her [Virginiaï¿½s] friendship was the most important fact in Vitaï¿½s life, except Harold, just as Vitaï¿½s was the most important in Virginiaï¿½s, except Leonard, and perhaps her sister Vanessa. . . . Their marriages were alike in the freedom they allowed each other, in the invincibility of their love, in its intellectual, spiritual and nonphysical base, in the eagerness of all four of them to savor life, challenge convention, work hard, play dangerously with the emotions--and in their solicitude for each other. . . . There was no jealousy between the Woolfs and the Nicolsons, because they had arrived independently at the same definition of ï¿½trust.ï¿½ (Portrait of a Marriage 225) Joanne Trautmann (The Jessamy Brides: The Friendship of Virginia Woolf and V.

Sackville-West) prefers to read the book, not so much as a biography of Vita as ï¿½the symbolic story of the friendship between its author and the most important member of her audience, V. Sackville-West, to whom the book is dedicatedï¿½ (85). She notes Woolfï¿½s appreciative remarks about another biographer, written at the same time: ï¿½he has devised a method of writing about people and about himself as though they were at once real and imaginaryï¿½ (qtd. 86, from ï¿½The New Biography,ï¿½ the biographer is Harold Nicolson, Vitaï¿½s husband). Trautmann argues that Woolf also addresses some of the real problems of biography here, such as she mentioned in a letter to Vita: ï¿½Do we then know nobody? Only our own version of them, which as likely as not, are emanations from ourselves.ï¿½ (Letters, vol.

3, #1622, March 2, 1926) Trautmann also suggests that Woolfï¿½s making a work of art from her beloved friend Vita was akin to Lily Briscoe creating her friend Mrs. Ramsay in a painting (Lily: ï¿½Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one?ï¿½) and that after writing Orlando, she ï¿½had an even more profound understanding of friendshipsï¿½ which she uses in The Waves, wherein ï¿½Bernard and his friends reflect images of each otherï¿½ (Trautmann 84). Bernardï¿½s relationship to Percival (opposites) is like Virginiaï¿½s to Vita. Themes The two things that most interest me in Orlando are her views on writing and literature (the novel provides a brief history of English literature) and her analysis of gender issues, especially androgyny and gender-bending. Ideas About Writing and Literature.

Woolf began Orlando when she was in the middle of a project that became "Phases of Fiction." An analysis of various fiction writers in terms of her own theory of fiction, ï¿½Phases of Fictionï¿½ was eventually published in the American periodical Bookman in 1929, and later reprinted in the posthumous essay collection Granite and Rainbow (1958). Much of what Woolf writes about Orlando and writing reflects her own views on writing, such as the need to write only to please oneself (which VW did from age 40), and the view that one must lead a contemplative life to be a serious writer. Orlandoï¿½s attempts to be a writer, through four centuries, parody the writing life and in particular make fun of dilettantism (Nick Greeneï¿½s attitude toward the awful poems Orlando wrote in the 16th century). Woolf's narrative voice here, which imitates the scholarly tones of the Victorian man of letters, pokes fun at scholarly approaches to literature and the writing life.

Meanwhile, she depicts the poet as "a rather fat, rather shabby man," in Orlando's kitchen (p 21, see also 79, 164), finally identified as possibly "Sh--p--re" (313), suggesting that great writing goes on behind the scenes in some mysterious way. As she says in A Room of One's Own, "great writers are continuing presences" (113). Lesbian Identity, Androgyny and Gender-Bending. Mark Hussey and others trace the original conception for Orlando to a diary entry for ï¿½The Jessamy Bridesï¿½ (Diary, March 14, 1927), based on the Ladies of Llangollen, a famous pair of 18th century English aristocratic women who eloped with each other to Wales. Despite the fact that Woolf wrote Orlando for and about a woman she was in love with, womenï¿½s romantic relationships with each other do not seem to me a significant theme in this novel. Some scholars would disagree, notably Leslie K.

Hankins, who links the novel to the Radclyffe Hall obscenity trial in November 1928, around the time Orlando was published. Woolf was among many writers prepared to defend Hallï¿½s novel The Well of Loneliness, which was about lesbian relationships. Hall lost the case and her book was banned in England. It has since become a classic of lesbian literature, though it paints a rather dismal view of lesbian life, emphasizing exaggerated role-playing. (Hall herself dressed in menï¿½s clothes and preferred to be called ï¿½John.ï¿½) Hall was not an especially good writer, but the book broke barriers that opened doors for more direct literary treatment of lesbian relationships. Woolf herself tends to depict lesbians much more indirectly, sometimes rather negatively (consider Miss Kilman in Mrs. Dalloway), and she doesnï¿½t seem to me to have viewed herself as a lesbian at all. She knew many homosexuals, but they were mostly men (her husband Leonard and Vanessaï¿½s husband Clive Bell were almost the only Bloomsbury men who were entirely heterosexual).

To her credit, Woolf was willing to risk being thought a ï¿½Sapphistï¿½ (her term) when she published A Room of Oneï¿½s Own , though the manuscripts of that book show that she considerably toned down the Chloe and Olivia passages. Still Orlando has come to be regarded as another classic of lesbian literature, and this is a topic of some interest. The topic that I believe interested Woolf more than lesbian identity was androgyny. Androgyny is the mixing of traits associated with both men and women. Woolf was attracted to the notion of an androgynous mind in writing and believed that the greatest writers wrote ï¿½man-womanlyï¿½ or ï¿½woman-manly,ï¿½ as she puts it in A Room of Oneï¿½s Own (chapter 6, p 98).

There the metaphor she uses is of a man and woman getting into a taxicab: ï¿½The sight of the two people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me also ask whether there are two sexes in the mind corresponding to the two sexes in the body, and whether they also require to be united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness. . . . The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating. . . . It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its facultiesï¿½ (AROO 98). This view has caused no end of argument among feminist critics. Many argue that Woolf is attempting to transcend gender, thus creating a neutral ground that ultimately defaults to male in androcentric society, i.e., neither sex = the dominant sex. This same view holds that, e.g., todayï¿½s Gender Studies programs are taking the ï¿½womenï¿½ out of Womenï¿½s Studies. In Orlando, fictional characters allow Woolf to explore these issues more creatively and imaginatively than in straight argumentation.

Orlando physically changes from a man to a woman (for unknown reasons, over night, in his sleep), and directly comments that nothing else has changed about herself, although, as she soon learns, a great deal changes for her materially. Is s/he a man or a woman? Is one better or worse than the other? Yes, no, both. I like Pamela Caughieï¿½s interpretation of Woolfï¿½s attitude toward androgyny. Cauphie argues that for Woolf androgyny is a "refusal to choose," not a unification of identities: "not a freedom from the tyranny of sex . . . so much as a freedom from the tyranny of reference" (486). Caughie relates the dilemma to the 18th century ideas about whether thought and form should be separated (Samuel Johnson) or are inseparable (Pope), both of which are essentialist positions.

Here is how identity and language line up: a garment for thought (can separate content from form) ï¿½rhetoric makes the thoughtï¿½ (Caughie)ï¿½form and content are inseparable Caughie argues that Woolf's position is anti-essentialist: "what matters is not the nature of the sign, the transsexual, but its position and function within a particular discourse." Woolf's androgyne does not transcend gender so much as she plays with it, breaking down conventional oppositions and converting it into a matter of dynamic role-playing.

For Woolf, "androgyny in Orlando is not so much a psychosexual category as a rhetorical strategy." Shifting and blurring gender, genre, literary periods and stylesï¿½all this disrupts meaning and calls attention to how much meaning depends on context: assumptions, expectations, historical time, e.g., unkind in Chaucerï¿½s day meant ï¿½unnatural.ï¿½) Caughie argues that Woolfï¿½s answer to these oppositions and ambiguities is not a synthesis or resolution, emphatically not a ï¿½unified self,ï¿½ but rather ï¿½a way to remain suspended between opposed beliefsï¿½ (Caughie 486).

[See also Keats, ï¿½negative capabilityï¿½ ï¿½when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reasonï¿½ (letter to his brothers 21 Dec 1817)] To illustrate Woolfï¿½s refusal to choose, Caughie uses a passage from Orlando that takes three different positions on the relationship of clothing to gender: [Clothes create gender] ï¿½Thus, there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking. . . . Had they [a man and a woman] worn the same clothes, it is possible that their outlook might have been the same, too. [Clothes mark gender, an essentialist view] That is the view of some philosophers and wise ones, but on the whole, we incline to another. The difference between the sexes is, happily, one of great profundity. [Clothes mask gender (still assumes essential gender beneath] Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep beneath.

It was a change in Orlando herself that dictated her choice of a womanï¿½s dress and of a womanï¿½s sex. . . . For here again, we come to a dilemma. Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above.ï¿½ (chapter 4, pp 188-89, my emphasis) Cauphie sees three metaphors at play in the book: ï¿½ androgyny ï¿½ ambiguous male/female ï¿½ transvestism - clothing ï¿½ transexualism - ??literalist? She doesnï¿½t elaborate on this. These represent three different ways of talking about identity. Any language we use is already bound up in expectations about gender and identity. We are used to thinking of things in dichotomies (e.g., light/dark, good/evil), which is not bad in itself except as it leads to privileging one over the other.

What Woolf is resisting with the androgynous Orlando is the privileging. She wants to draw our attention to multiplicity and to the way we make meaning. The metaphor Woolf uses for Orlandoï¿½s identity here is of waiter holding a stack of plates, each plate being an identity or role we play (see p 308). No plate is in and of itself better than another, though there position in the stack differs, and the taller the stack, the harder it is to balance. London Orlando begins in the countryside, at Orlandoï¿½s ancestral estate, modeled on Vitaï¿½s family home Knole, which we will visit on day 4. We arenï¿½t told the exact location (or name) of Orlandoï¿½s estate, but Knole is in Kent, just south of London. The Sasha episode takes place near London, on the frozen Thames. Woolf does almost as much with English weather as with English literature. I wondered if the frozen Thames was just her imagination.

Turns out the Thames used to freeze over quite regularly, as reported on this website about Englandï¿½s longest river ( In the 17th and 18th century, during winter freezes, a rare treat was the Frost Fairs, held on the river with ox roasting barbecues, stalls, fairground amusements and performing animals. . . . The winter of 1813-14 saw the greatest frost fair, with a grand mall running from Blackfriars Bridge and named ï¿½City Road.ï¿½ It was the last. Though fun for many, the freezing of the Thames was a tragedy for boat skippers who could not move, nor could they leave their precious cargoes to find other work. The replacement of the old London Bridge in 1831 meant that the river flowed faster and no longer froze sufficiently to bear public events. After the Constantinople episode (chapter 3), Orlando returns to 18th century London, where most of the rest of the book takes place.

Jean Moorcroft Wilson points out how Woolf uses the changing London architecture to denote the passage of time, as when Orlando sails down the Thames for the first time since the 17th century, and the boatman describes the skyline (Tower, St. Paulï¿½s, etc.). She also notes how Elizabeth taverns become 18th century coffee houses, then Victorian restaurants, and how Orlando finds modern Londonï¿½s streets louder, more crowded, and darker than those of the past. In lecture 2, I commented on how for Woolf London was so much a city of great writers, whose presence she seems to feel in the very streets. Orlando makes that feeling material, as Orlando hobnobs with Addison, Pope, and Swiftï¿½and then goes slumming with prostitutes. Wilson believes that this reflects Woolfï¿½s own attitude toward London and Londonersï¿½that she preferred the artists and intellectuals, or the working classes, to the socialites of Mayfair, Westminster, Kensington, and Chelsea.

Revolutionized Biography Of The Virginia Woolf English Literature Essay Revolutionized Biography Of The Virginia Woolf English Literature Essay Published: Last Edited: 23rd March, 2015 This essay has been submitted by a student. This is not an example of the work written by our professional essay writers. Although the author herself called the novel a biography it is not quite true. Being a modernist, Woolf broke the conventions of writing fiction and non-fiction in an exuberant way, parodying a series of genres including the traditional Victorian biographies that emphasize facts and truth in their subjects' lives.

Conrad Aiken says: "There is thus an important element of 'spoof' in Orlando: Mrs Woolf apparently wants us to know that she does not herself take the thing with the least seriousness-that she is pulling legs, keeping her tongue in her cheek, and winking, now and then, a quite shameless and enormous wink." [ 3 ] Earlier I stated that though its title suggests a biography, it is in fact a semi-biographical novel set in England (except for - if we consider that the novel begins during the reign of Elizabeth I and ends in 1928 - a fairly short period which the protagonist spends as an ambassador in Constantinople and then as a woman with the Gypsy clan). It is captivating even if one does not know about the background but I am convinced that it can be - to some extent - read as a roman à clef; in other words as faction, that is, a novel describing real life behind a facade of fiction.

As Woolf herself said: â€žEvery secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works" therefore it is not only an inspiring literary work but probably the author's most accessible piece of art as well. Consequently, it is of great importance to me to reveal the connection between her personal life and the novel. I have another reason to dig deep into Woolf's biography - for which the reader may have to excuse me -: sheer curiosity of the life of such an extraordinary mind. Orlando was half based on the life of Vita Sackville-West [ 4 ] , a fellow English author and poet with whom Woolf met through the Bloomsbury Group [ 5 ] . As a triumph to this affair and the influence Sackville-West had on her life, Woolf presented her with the novel. As Sackville-West's son, Nigel Nicolson said, Orlando is "the longest and most charming love-letter in literature".

In the novel Vita appears as Orlando (she was shifting between ever so many roles just like the protagonist), 'The Oak Tree' a poem written by Orlando referring to Sackville-West's award-winning poem 'The Land'; and Orlando's affair with Princess Sacha representing the relationship with Violet Trefusis [ 6 ] which had the most lasting effect on Sackville-West's personal life. My idea is that Orlando is a revolutional experiment not only in a literary but in a figurative way as well, that is, to pick a human being and let this entity experience life wholly, as it is, to find its meaning but without the "side effects" of one's gender or the social conventions of one's generation by liberating it from the restraints of time and sex. By these so-called side effects I mean that throughout history (and even nowadays) men and women were treated in a very different way therefore it wouldn't be half as interesting as it is if Orlando's sex would not change.

When switching from male to female Orlando experienced both manly and womanly virtues, in other words: to see things from two very different angles, two angles that are both present in everyone, suggesting that male and female roles are not biological, but societal. Also, through his life we can trace how the meanings of masculinity and femininity had altered. Woolf said: â€žIf we compare the picture of Orlando as a man with that of Orlando as a woman we shall see that though both are undoubtably one and the same person, there are certain changes. The man has his hand free to seize his sword, the woman must use hers to keep the satins from slipping from her shoulders. The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of suspicion." She makes another statement on the topic: â€žDifferent though the sexes are, they inter-mix.

In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above." There are two perfect examples in the novel of the quote above: one is the first line in which Woolf writes â€žHe - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters."; and also when returning to England, Orlando learns that Archduchess Harriet is really a man: Archduke Harry. Although the change is different from Orlando's as the Archduke had always been a man, still he deceived Orlando with his appearance, that is, only the clothes kept the female likeness and underneath the sex was quite the opposite. Let me now share a personal experience on the topic: in 1992 there was a movie shot based on the novel, directed by Sally Potter and it starred artists such as Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane and Charlotte Valandrey. Queen Elizabeth's role was played by Quentin Crisp of whom I'd never heard until then.

At first I found the name Quentin a bit strange for a woman but I watched the movie several times and I was content with that she really did look like an old woman. A few weeks later it occurred to me that I know nothing about her and when I looked her up on Wikipedia to my awful surprise I realized that she is actually a man. By keeping the promise he made as a young man and living for over 300 years Orlando experiences the conventions - some as a man, some as a woman - of each century and of several cultures and so he - or she for that matter - is not under the influence of just one period of history but as he is introduced into each new age, he tries to fit into his new environment which after some time becomes oppressive to him, growing tired of changing himself to fit those around him and finally, when - as a female in the twentieth century - reaches maturity by becoming an independent mind, she resists conforming to society.

As Orlando himself says: â€žSome we know to be dead even though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through all the forms of life; other are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six." In my opinion the wonderful thing about this literary experiment is that, so to speak, Woolf gave Orlando a chance "to look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last, to love it for what it is, and then to put it away" and not many authors grant their protagonists such gift. Although everything is going through essential changes there is something that remains a solid point throughout the novel: Orlando's affection for poetry and his own poem, The Oak Tree which is a record of his internal life and maturation - as Orlando's life is the record of the maturation of England. Sources: Woolf, V. (1992). Orlando, Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0-19-953659-7 Cuddon, J.A. (1999).

Dictionary of Literary Terms & Theory, Penguin Books ISBN-13: 978-0-140-51363-9 James, William (1890). The Principles of Psychology. Retrieved January 6, 2010 from Lavender, C. (1997). Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928): On Gender Bending. Retrieved November 27, 2009 from Tetterton, K. (1995). Virginia Woolf's Orlando: The Book as Critic. Retrieved November 29, 2009 from Virginia Woolf quotes. Retrieved January 5, 2010 from What exactly is Modernism in literature? in The AnswerBank: art & literature. Retrieved January 6, 2010 from SparkNotes: Orlando. Retrieved November 17, 2009 from goodreads: Quotes by Virginia Woolf. Retrieved November 29, 2009 from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Virginia Woolf. Retrieved November 29, 2009 from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Vita Sackville-West.

Retrieved November 29, 2009 from Orlando: A Biography Orlando: A Biography Förlag: Anncona Media Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published in 1928. A high-spirited romp inspired by the tumultuous family history of Woolf's partner, the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, it is arguably one of Woolf's most popular and accessible 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. Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, 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 essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Orlando: A Biography | The Book Dumpling Orlando: A Biography Tweet The inimitable Virginia Woolf wrote this classic novel in 1928: Orlando is a young man born into Elizabethan England who eventually transforms into a woman. He navigates both sexes throughout the 20th century in this wonderful exploration of gender identity and love. Great for: • Readers unfamiliar with Virginia Woolf • Anyone interested in a genre-bending novel (literally). • Those who enjoy creative plotlines combined with high-brow writing If you liked the book, rent the movie(s): Orlando New titles are added on a continuous basis. To recommend or suggest a book, please email me Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published.

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Question: Which English author wrote the 1928 novel ‘Orlando: A Biography’?
Answer: Virginia Woolf