Orlando: A Biography

Lightness Is All

I read Virginia Wolff's 1928 novel "Orlando" and was provoked enough by the book to discuss it with other readers and reviewers and with fellow-participants in an online class which touches upon the relationship between literature and morality. It is a sign that the book succeeded for me at an important level that I read it slowly, thought about it, and sought out the views of other good readers.

Wolff's novel purports to be a biography and is recounted in the third person by the unnamed biographer. The novel begins in the 16th century among the high aristocracy and royalty of Elizabethan England. Orlando is a 16 year old boy, the inheritor of title and great wealth, a lover of solitude, and a reader and a writer of ambitious plays and poems. Besides her Elizabethan drama, Orlando is writing a more personal extensive poem titled simply "The Oak Tree" which Orlando carries and works on throughout the novel. When the novel ends on October 11, 1928. Orlando is a 36 year old woman, a wife and a new mother whose husband is off at sea. The change of gender occurs rather matter of factly when Orlando is thirty and living in the eighteenth century.

This fanciful story is told with painstakingly accurate depictions of England over four centuries together with depictions of many other places Orlando visits during his travels. The depictions capture both the natural world as well as human places and many people. With the wonderfully detailed descriptions, however, the focus is on Orlando's inner life. Orlando, and Orlando's mysterious biographer reflect a great deal on poetry and literature and its importance. As Orlando passes through the centuries he meets many famous English poets, essayists and novels. He learns much about literature and learns as well that these beautiful shapers of language are only human. Orlando reflects upon her/his culture and country, on religion, and on the elusive character of personal identity with its many layers. In other words, Orlando has strong intellectual and philosophical interests. Perhaps most tellingly for the reader, Orlando reflects on sexuality. As a man, he combined his love of poetry and solitude with a young man's lust and passion. When he changes gender he remembers his life as a man. He sees a fluidity in gender identity in himself and other he hadn't noticed before. He is attracted to women, as he was when he was a man but also becomes attracted to men. Orlando reflects upon the harshness, confining character, and lack of emotional, sexual, and intellectual outlets available to herself and to other women in, say, Victorian England. She is upset in seeing herself solely in serving men and in sexual terms as available to men. None of these views of gender will likely come as a surprise to the contemporary reader.

Some readers might see "Orlando" as a predecessor of contemporary feminism. Most of the views of gender suggested at some point or another in the book are urged passionately in countries including the United States where these views are not shared by all and help lead to polarization. But I think it a mistake to see "Orlando" in this way and as a work of topical or social criticism or commentary.

This book has a lightness of touch over its 400 years and throughout the life of its mysterious protagonist. Its lightness and its playfullness are best reflected in its lengthy involved sentences and in its subjectivity and its bravura writing style. The long time frame of the book, Orlando's change in gender and in perspectives, and changes in social mores take the book beyond topicality. The book is broad in its reflections on life, the nature of literature, its attractions and pitfalls, religion, identity and --- sexuality. There are many frustrating passages in the book, especially in the latter sections, and many beautiful passages. Here for example is an unavoidably extended passage with provocative thoughts on both religion and literature. It appears in the book shortly after Orlando's transformation to womanhood.

"In the Queen's prayer book, along with the blood-stain, was also a lock of hair and a crumb of pastry: Orlando now added to these keepsakes a flake of tobacco, and so, reading and smoking, was moved by the humane jumble of them all -- the hair, the pastry, the blood-stain, the tobacco -- to such a mood of contemplation as gave her a reverent air suitable in the circumstances, though she had, it is said, no traffic with the usual God. Nothing, however, can be more arrogant, though nothing is commoner than to assume that of Gods there is only one, and of religions none but the speaker's. Orlando, it seemed, had a faith of her own. With all the religious ardour in the world, she now reflected upon her sins and imperfections that had crept into her spiritual state. The letter S, she reflected, is the serpent in the Poet's Eden. Do what she would there were still too many of these sinful reptiles in the first stanzas of 'The Oak Tree'. But 'S" was nothing, in her opinion compared with the termination 'ing'. The present participle is the Devil himself,she thought (now that we are in the place for believing in Devils). To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet, she concluded, for as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely than lust or gunpowder. The poet's then in the highest office of all, she continued. His words reach where others fall short."

I don't understand "Orlando" as a work of veiled social or gender criticism. The book has a playfulness and a sense of being beyond any historical moment that takes it beyond topical or historical discussion. It exists for itself in the joy and lightness of thought which manages as well to be provocative. The book shows a spirit of reflection, imagination, and play and encourages such a spirit of reflection, imagination and play in the reader. I was glad for the opportunity to read and think about "Orlando" at last.

Robin Friedman