Virginia Woolf's Orlando

Orlando: a Biography

Bo Garfinkel

Many people have wondered what it would be like to wake up as a member of the opposite sex. In Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography, the handsome noble Orlando experiences this phenomenon first hand. Orlando must navigate his way through life as a woman in a time when class standing and gender dictated one’s existence. Orlando is ostracized from his society and loses his status due to both his unwillingness to conform and his gender change. Woolf uses Orlando’s alienation in order to elucidate the overly confining nature of society’s stifling class system and the hypocrisy of its gender roles. Orlando’s unconventional behavior results in his isolation from his high social class, illustrating the exclusion

Not happy in London anymore, they agree to run away together to leave their elite pasts behind. When the night comes, Orlando waits for his love only to see her boat retreating down the Thames back to Russia. Sasha serves as a metaphor for someone overbound by the rules of society. Rather than break the rules to be happy, Sasha instead retreats to the comfort and familiarity of her life as an elite. The failure of Orlando and Sasha’s attempt to flee from their responsibilities parallels the difficulty in casting off the burden of the elite. Orlando and Sasha did not choose their birth, but nonetheless they do not have the luxury of choosing the lifestyle that they want. Rather, the emphasis English society places on the importance of class roles restrains the two. Sasha returns to Russia, a place where “sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden, and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them” (30). Orlando’s attempt to flee is just like Russia- something that was never meant to be finished. In the end, Orlando loses nearly everything, alienated from society because he chose not to conform to its rigid class

Once Orlando returns to the world of civility, boarding a ship to London in her new dress, she reflects upon the duties of a woman. She remembers that, as a man, she thought women were to be “exquisitely apparelled” but also “chaste year in and year out” (251). This upsets her as she is overwhelmed by the large effort she will have to put into her appearance only to get no reward. Orlando’s dilemma has been one that women have always faced: the balance of sexuality and modesty. Her society places heavy emphasis on marriage, wherein daughters vainly alter their appearance in hopes that they will use their beauty to attract a man of status. Consequently, they must also show modesty, not making a man want them too much, in order to preserve their image of purity. After losing her ability to be sexual, Orlando realizes that she faces many problems that she didn’t have as a man. In coming home after a long trip, Orlando returns to countless lawsuits because her sons are fighting for a property she can no longer own. Although Orlando “remained precisely as [she] had been” (220), her memories and ability the exact same, society deems her incapable of owning property. Orlando’s society would rather take everything from her than admit that her sex changed very little else about her ability and personality.