How Orlando Changed

People don’t really change, or do they? The answer to that question depends on the definition of “really.” The books Orlando by Virginia Woolf and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides investigate how much people change over the course of time, if humans “really” change or not. Orlando by Virginia Woolf is a fictional biography in about someone named Orlando and how Orlando changes over the span of over three hundred years. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is about the young intersex man named Cal and his journey which traces back to his grandmother’s generation. Orlando’s life is filled with romances, adventures into the unknown, and self discovery, and so is Cal’s. Both Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, and Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, focus on change.

Orlando introduces the protagonist, Orlando, before she changes from a man into a woman; Middlesex is about the intersex man, Cal, and his journey to discovering that he truly is a man despite having been raised as a girl. It is evident that the importance of change is a common theme between the two novels, and both Virginia Woolf and Jeffrey Eugenides use classic literary symbols like colors, seasons, and elements to strengthen this theme. Woolf and Eugenides also utilize the concept of rebirth during times of significant change. Both Orlando by Virginia Woolf and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides develop, through use of symbolic colors, symbolic elements, seasons, and rebirth, the argument that the world and the individual compliment each other in terms of evolving: regardless how stationary the world may seem, it’s always changing, and regardless how changed a person may seem, that person only has one true self.
Orlando and Middlesex utilize the symbolism that comes with colors. Each color has its own connotations, and bring about a different kind of change. Some colors are often symbols of changes to come. In Orlando, Woolf often mentions the color green: “The green arras with the hunters on it moved perpetually” (Woolf 12) and “The person, whatever the name or sex, was about middle eight, very slenderly fashioned, and dressed entirely in…velvet, trimmed with some unfamiliar greenish coloured fur” (28). The author mentioning the color green doesn’t necessarily mean that the color green is symbolic, but the author’s use of the color green does. Green is associated with fresh, new things and both of these instances are strongly associated with change. In the first quote I provided, the color green is associated with the tapestry that is constantly moving, for the wind is always pushing on it: in other words, it’s always changing. The second quote I cited was during the moments when Orlando first saw Sasha, Orlando’s first true love who ends up changing Orlando’s life dramatically. Woolf then uses the symbolism behind the color green to hint at the importance of the character, Nick Greene. Nick Greene was a poet that Orlando (when she was a young man) looked up to. Orlando wrote for Nick Greene, sacrificing some of his integrity to do so. Orlando lost lots of himself, changing for Mr. Greene. But in the process, he begins to find himself, and understand who he truly is. In Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides, uses the color red to emphasize both sin and passion, as red is the color of blushing and the color associated with the devil. Before Eleutherios (Lefty), the brother of Desdemona (Cal’s grandmother), leaves for the city, Desdemona notes that he had a “red pocket handkerchief that matched his red necktie” and that she began to feel “funny inside" (Eugenides 23). This quote is in the beginning of Lefty’s quest to the city, the city in which he passionately sins, not only by purchasing the time of a prostitute, but also by addressing the prostitute, named Irini, as Desdemona. This marks the beginning of the incestuous relationship between Desdemona and Lefty which Cal associates with his (Cal’s) intersexuality, thus demonstrating the changing type of relationship between Desdemona and Lefty while leading the readers to understanding who Cal is and why Cal is that way. In both Orlando and Middlesex, colors can highlight significant changes, but can also emphasis the importance of constant truths.
The elements water and fire are used to draw attention to change. In Orlando, as Orlando waits for his (for he is not yet a woman) first love, Sasha, on the night they plan to wait for each other “he was struck in the face by a blow, soft, yet heavy, on the side of his cheek…these were raindrops falling…they fell slowly deliberately, one by one” (44). However, as the night goes on, the weather changes from a rain to a flood, and “where… a whole gay city had stood on its pavement was now a race of turbulent yellow waters” (46). This flooding is a physical representation of Orlando’s mental state. At the beginning, a few droplets of rain, of doubt, begin to trickle onto him, but he just brushes them off. After time, however, a few drops becomes a flood, and a suspicion becomes a truth. His illusion that he would end up with Sasha in a happily-ever-after situation, literally, washes away, and his illusion that he is currently living as his true self washes away with it. The topic of water appeared in Middlesex in a more spiritual setting. When Cal is being baptized, he “had indeed been reborn: as a fountain. From between [his] cherubic legs a stream of crystalline liquid shot into the air…it struck Father Mike right in the middle of the face” (221-22). This “reverse baptism” alarms Desdemona because she sees what the reader sees: a sign that Cal won’t fit in properly. Desdemona is the most suspicious of this because Desdemona is afraid that her relatives will be mutated due to the incest she had with her brother, and she’s right. Although Cal is not the monster she feared, Cal doesn’t fit in with the binary, and the “reverse baptism” reminds the readers why. Desdemona’s image of Cal washes away, and in its place lies a reminder of her sins. A different element that is used in the texts is fire. Fire is one of the quickest forms of change; it brings destruction and from the land it destroys, rises something completely different. During the third chapter of Orlando, occurs the most important change in Orlando’s life: the change from male to female. As Orlando undergoes this change, a revolution is also occurring, and fires follow. These fires (which are mentioned several times) metaphorically destroy the old Orlando and bring about the new. In Middlesex, Desdemona and Lefty are refugees when the fires begins to recreate their lives. As Desdemona opens her eyes to the city she was taking shelter in, “she sees not one fire but many. There are twenty orange dots on the hill above. And they have an unnatural persistence, these fires” (55). These fires set by the Turkish people destroy not only the old town of Desdemona and Lefty, but the place they go to for shelter. The fires force them to abandon their old lives and venture into a completely different environment: the United States of America where they will get to experience a different kind of freedom and get to have a fresh start. These elements, water and fire, bring about dramatic changes and reveal hidden truths about characters that the readers, and sometimes other characters, would otherwise not understand.
In real life seasons bring change in the environment, but in the novels, seasons bring change to the lives of the characters. In Orlando, Orlando believes that he has finally found who would make the perfect wife for him, but just as he believes that, the “Great Frost” begins. With this “Great Frost” comes a woman named Sasha. He suddenly realizes that the woman he has been pursuing bores him, and his attentions shift to Sasha, and Orlando suddenly “longed to hurl himself through the summer air” (28). Summer is associated with passion and young adulthood; the use of summer allows for the reader to imagine the emotions that Orlando begins to experience, and empathize with how he hasn’t felt this before. This allows the readers to feel the full power of Orlando’s emotions towards Sasha and understand her importance in the narrative. This is especially effective because, as the readers know, it isn’t summer. His association between Sasha and summer is only an illusion, for really he is still deep into winter, and Sasha will not be around for when summer really does arrive. The depths of winter in Middlesex are just as bleak as those in Orlando. Lefty, trapped in unfortunate financial circumstances, turns to his landlord, Jimmy Zizmo, who brings alcohol into the United States from Canada during the prohibition. Jimmy’s wife, Lina just delivered a child, a sign that spring is arriving. However instead of being overjoyed, Jimmy has suspicions about the father of child, a harsh reminder that the freshness of spring has not yet come. While Jimmy and Lefty are driving to Canada to retrieve some alcohol, Jimmy accuses Lefty of impregnating Lina. The two had already been treading on thin ice, but this distraction caused Jimmy to drive through it, and die while Lefty escaped. In both Middlesex and Orlando, the authors contrasted the unforgiving winter with the brighter, more positive seasons, summer and spring. This puts more emphasis on the true seasons of summer and spring. Orlando, after being rejected by his first love, after being rejected by the poet he longs to impress, begins to focus more on himself. When goes and states “I’ll write, from this day forward, to please myself” (76), he learns to focus less on the approval of others and more on himself. On the very next page, Orlando’s eyes begin to become more aware of the beauty It looked like a town rather than a house, but a town built…by a single architect with one idea in his head” (77). At last, after the false summer that Sasha brought, spring has finally arrived, and Orlando experiences the new growth that it brings. In one specific summer, Cal is filled with passion. This is the summer that Cal shares intimacy with a girl that he refers to as “Obscure Object.” He shares his feelings, he acts on his feelings, and she returns them in subtle ways that only fuel his lust for her. It is then that Cal kisses his first true object of affection, and he savors it: “The Object’s anguished lips met mine, and there was a sweet taste and a taste of salt” (394). Only after seeing the disappointment characters experience from false hope, do the readers understand the true beauty of the spring and summer seasons and how they can contribute to understanding how important moments of a character’s life can shape them.
Rebirth, as used in these texts, almost always occurs during the darkest of times, the times when you think it’s not possible to to rebound from.

One Saturday, Orlando, after the night that his first love had left him and after a disgraced dismissal from the royal court, “failed to rise at his usual hour…he did not wake, take food, or show any sign of life for seven whole days. On the seventh day he woke…but what was strange was that… he appeared to have an imperfect collection of his past life” (50). Orlando appears to be dead, but is reborn seven days later with a much more sound mind and with his negative memories erased from his mind. This rebirth allows him to focus on himself, which rekindles his love of poetry which he had as a young boy which then leads to a journey of self discovery. The world changes around him as he’s stuck in a coma-like trance, and then he goes out to search for himself. Meanwhile, in Middlesex, Desdemona begins to work at a temple, and through an air vent she begins listening to the voice of an Islamic preacher whose name is “Minister Fard,” but whose face she doesn’t get to see until he reveals himself to her. Once he does, she processes the familiar face, and grows angry with the man she sees in front of him. She shouts at him and he

replies:
“‘You!’
‘Who else?’
She stares, wide-eyed. ‘We thought you died, Jimmy! In the car. In the lake.’
‘Jimmy did.’” (163)
Jimmy was the landlord that accused Lefty of sleeping with Lina, Jimmy’s wife; when Lefty fled the scene because he felt unsafe, Jimmy’s vehicle went through the ice, and Lefty assumed he died. To an extent, Jimmy did die, but not in the way that Lefty had assumed. Jimmy physically lived, but that brush with death changed him, and he found something in himself he didn’t see before. He pledged loyalty and responsibility to his community, and he dedicated his life to bettering it from then on. In Middlesex, Jimmy found his truth, but in order to find his, Orlando needed to be reborn once more. Though Orlando’s attempts to discover himself back at home, when a woman begins to pursue him, he flees to Constantinople, not knowing how to cope. Later in Constantinople, he falls into another trance. This trance lasts longer than the last, and during this trance he sees three ladies, Lady of Purity, Lady of Chastity, and Lady of Modesty. They dance about, as if performing a ritual, but the women are sent away by trumpets that blare “The Truth and nothing but the Truth” (101). Upon hearing this truth, “Orlando woke… and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess—he was a woman” (102). Orlando’s rebirth allows him to be traded in for her, as he changes into a woman. Orlando has changed into a new self, but Orlando’s personality has not really changed, only her gender identity. For her true self gained this new identity while still keeping the rest of her true to her past. She retained her memories; she retained her wisdom. She simply gets to view the world from a completely different perspective in order complete her quest to find who she truly is. Cal from Middlesex also has to be reborn in order to find his true self. After seeing an intimate exchange between the Object and Cal, the Object’s brother threateningly tells Cal to leave, but Cal, infuriated, fights back. Cal ends up being chased the the Object’s brother, and not looking where he is going he hits the tire of a tractor head on. Cal was sent to the hospital as soon as possible; that is where he is reborn:
“They took hold of my underpants. They tugged them down. The elastic caught on my skin, then gave.
The doctor bent closer, mumbling to himself. The intern, rather unprofessionally, raised one hand to her throat and then pretended to fix her collar.
Chekhov was right. If there’s a gun on the wall, it’s got to go off.” (395-96)
The gun does in fact go off, and it is discovered that Cal is intersexual. There is an explanation for Cal’s “abnormal” feelings, and Cal can finally act on them. A new door opens up for Cal to discover his true self, which is what rebirth is about. Rebirth is about new opportunities and second chances, what follows rebirth is self discovery; that’s why rebirth is such an effective tool when writing about change.