Orlando: A Biography
Transgendered protagonist. Magical realism.
. Highly Recommended.
January 26, 2010 | Revid 461 < prev | next >
Orlando was a precocious boy during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was possessed of a poet's soul and a nobleman's bloodline and his seeming innocence and fair looks charmed the Queen. She called him to her service and made him her lover and confidant.
When King James took the British Throne, Orlando stayed in London as a courtier. Orlando fell in love with an androgynous Russian Princess who betrayed him for a sailor. Heartbroken, Orlando returned to his country estate to write poetry.
His was the age of Shakespeare, Marlow and Donne. Orlando longed to be recognized among such great men and invited the poet Nicholas Greene to his estate. Nick Greene made the most of Orlando's hospitality but mocked the young lord in verse upon returning to London.
His poetic ambitions shattered and his heart turned from love, Orlando accepted a diplomatic mission to Constantinople. His accomplishments in Turkey earned Orlando a dukedom. On the eve of his promotion, revolution flared in the streets of Constantinople. Orlando retired to his room and fell into a seven-day coma. When Orlando awoke, he was a woman.
Orlando fled Turkey with a clan of wild gypsies, but her orthodox upbringing was at odds with their nomadic ways and she returned to England.
Once more in London, Orlando found herself the subject of a lawsuit for control of her inheritance. "The first charge was that she was dead and therefore could not hold any property whatsoever—the second that she was a woman which amounts to much the same thing."
Orlando established herself in the salons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She loved both men and women, often escaping high society to dress as a roué and court the ladies of the night.
After some three hundred years, Orlando again encountered Nick Greene, now aged into a knightly gentleman. Nick read Orlando's epic poem and swore to publish it to good reviews.
Her dreams of literary notability fulfilled, Orlando returned to her estate and married a sea captain. She bore a son and lived happily until 1928 when she acknowledged the complexity of her life and her own mortality.
I have been hesitant to read the works of Virginia Woolf. Honestly, I'm disturbed by her suicide in 1941. I've long wondered how a person with such a strong feminist voice could kill herself. To me, this seems the exact opposite of her life's work. I was afraid Woolf's prose would be sad and dark—the product of a troubled mind. But a friend urged me to try Orlando, so I picked up a copy.
The plot was simple and the tone of the novel was whimsical. Orlando was likeable as both man and woman and his/her struggle to create poetry was recognizable to any writer who has ever tried to make words into art.
I did find the novel intelligent and witty. Perhaps too intelligent, as I missed most of the references. Woolf refers to historical figures and makes literary allusions on nearly every page. I had to frequently consult Google to understand them. After I finished, I must admit I read notes by folks far more educated in order to "get" this book.
Basically, Orlando is an inside joke. Being an outsider born forty-five years later, I didn't get the joke until it was laid out for me. Virginia Woolf wrote this book for her lover, Vita Sackville-West. Orlando is Vita. The biography of Orlando is a tribute to West, and Orlando is written as male in the first part of the novel to sanitize West's passionate love affairs with women (lesbianism being scandalous at the time).
So once I understood the joke, Orlando was brilliant. But I disagree with the notes on Wikipedia that claim Orlando to be the most accessible of Woolf's novels. I didn't find Orlando accessible. But then, I haven't read any of Woolf's other work.
For all the whimsy in the prose, I did think Orlando a little high-handed and pretentious. But I still highly recommend this novel as a piece of classic feminist literature and a part of our collective queer history.
For having read Virginia Woolf, I am a bit more educated today than I was yesterday.
Now may I read something escapist with a dragon in it?
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