"Orlando"

Paper Summary:

This paper gives an indepth analysis of the character Orlando in Virginia Woolf's novel of the same name. It explores this fantastical, amusing hero-ine and describes him as one of the most unique characters in the history of fiction. The paper describes how Orlando observes none of the boundaries of sex and age: a young boy/man and poet, Orlando is only sixteen on page one and all of thirty-six at the end of the novel, even though he has lived through four centuries and undergone a sex change into a woman halfway through the book. The paper shows how Orlando is also endowed with charm, aristocratic lineage and wealth and thus Woolf concentrates solely on the issues of gender, apart from age, status, and poverty. The paper explores how Orlando lives through the centuries, defies all labels, loves and dallies with both women and men. Orlando is impossible to define by any of our most cherished notions of sex, gender and identity.

From the Paper:

"This novel makes us playfully question the whole notion of stable gender identity. In every person we meet, vacillation between male and female keeps occurring. Orlando is in part a comic novel, one that keeps us laughing over gender mixups. When Orlando first undergoes a sex change and arrives home a woman, his housekeeper keeps gasping, "Milord! Milady! Milady! Milord!" (p. 169).
At the same time, Orlando asks very real and difficult questions about gender. For instance, the 19th century biographical style was dominated by male authors, and women in the Victorian era tended to write poetry or novels. Biographies were, like all things male, meant to be action oriented. "Where there is blood there is life?" and the proper subject of biography is life itself, and blood, whether in wars or conflicts. Women are not the proper subject of biography and history, if they don't do something important enoughsuch as killing why should they be written about? A woman's name appears in the news three times in her life: birth, wedding, and death."

More papers on "Orlando":

• Essay # 89399 : "Orlando's Theory"
• Essay # 72446 : "Orlando Magic Tickets"
• Book Review # 122396 : "Women in 'The Aeneid' and 'Orlando Furioso'"

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