Journal of Language Sciences & Linguistics. Vol., 3 (3), 49-52, 2015
Available online at http://www.jlsljournal.com
ISSN 2148-0672 ©2015
The Study of Gender in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
Monireh Farzi Shoub¹, Behzad Pourgharib²*
1Assistant Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Golestan University, Golestan, Iran
2
Assistant Professor, Department of English Literature, Golestan University, Golestan, Iran
*
Corresponding Author: Behzad Pourgharib
ABSTRACT: The paper maintains that the implicit reader of Orlando-as demonstrated in the novel - is a
feminist one, as well as it discovers the possibility of this implicit feminist reader being a female. The causes as
to why this could be are lengthily examined by investigating the main character Orlando as he metamorphoses
from an English nobleman into a grown woman. To support the thesis, the essay looks both into reader response
criticism and feminist criticism to clarify what an implied reader actually is. The similarities between Orlando
and A Room of One’s Own are also touched upon as these suggest that the implied reader is a feminist. The
paper then takes a closer look at the narrator of the novel and what this narrator suggests about the identity of
the implied reader of the novel. In addition to this it is also concluded that s/he controls the reader’s perception
of Orlando’s gender in the novel, and that this also echoes the ideals presented in A Room of One’s Own.
Keywords: Gender, Feminisms, Virginia Woolf, Orlando.
INTRODUCTION
Any attempt to reconsider and revalue the works of Virginia Woolf runs the danger of raking up many
contentious issues such as sexuality, gender roles, androgyny and lesbianism which she herself would have
preferred to have remained fairly confused about. The need for a revaluation of her works arises from a radical
shift in the understanding of her personality brought about by a reconceptualization of the basic issues and
ideas that shaped her life. Invention of theories about Woolf’s lack of commitment to women’s causes and her
ambiguous stand towards sexual difference has made it difficult for feminists to theorize conclusively about her
in unambiguous terms. It must also be emphasized at this point that the ambivalent nature of Woolf’s attitude to
feminist’s activism has thwarted many feminists from being able to connect to her.
Woolf’s homoerotic passions began to be aroused in her forties, making it difficult for her to accept this
change in her sexual orientation with a fair degree of ease and composure. In spite of her attraction for
individuals of her own sex she was deeply reluctant to consider herself a lesbian. A lack of allegiance to
Sapphism did not have so much to do with either her fear of social stigma or self- deceptive belief in the
superiority of hetero-sexuality as it had to do with the persistence of unclear thoughts and attitude to
homosexuality.
Orlando (1928) in which Woolf’s affair with Vita Sackville-West finds expression, appears to have been
informed by the failure of and the ensuing disappointment caused by this homoerotic relationship. Woolf
however drops no hints as to the cause of her disappointment about Sapphism: whether it should be merely
attributed to the failure of her affair with Vita or to its inability to meet her expectations. Jean O Love says:
Virginia Woolf’s disappointment however, may have had deeper roots. It may have arisen from the fact that the
experience had done little to develop the sexual aspects of her personality or to clarify her understanding of
herself.
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J. Lang. Sci. Ling. Vol., 3 (3), 49-52, 2015
This disenchantment with a particular individual, fortunately, does not seem to lead to the denial of a new
perception made available to her by her reinvented sexuality. Woolf rather goes on to broaden her understanding
in the form of androgyny, which has engaged the attention of many brands of feminism. Contrary to Woolf’s
own confession that Orlando was “an escapade” from the tyranny of her earlier works, its writing seems to have
been prompted by a strong desire to draw a logical conclusion to her stifling infatuation for Vita. Vita’s
aristocratic standing and her affair with Wellesly rankled Woolf beyond any hope of consolation. It dawned
upon her that Vita’s life was primarily characterized by promiscuity, which Woolf seemed to believe was the
basic hallmark of Sapphism and, therefore, continued to disassociate her from the movement. She had to do
something very radical that would enable her gain a moral victory and help her to emotionally withdraw from
her oppressive affair. Orlando was a result of this attempt to give vent to her emotional disturbance that finally
paved the way for the emergence of the concept of androgyny. Jean O Love argues:
The novel Orlando which emerged (from this relationship) also marked the turning of another corner in their
relationship. It proved to be the means whereby Virginia achieved greater detachment from Vita, although
paradoxically at the time she wrote it her novel was an excuse to be with Vita, to photograph, study, and think
about her.
The character of Orlando, modelled after the bisexual Vita, has his/her life spanning over three hundred
years in the middle of which a transsexual change occurs. Lord Orlando’s transformation comes about when he
is an “Ambassador Extraordinary to Constantinople”; a change she hardly becomes aware of till she takes notice
of the significance of her outfit. This change throws Orlando into different degrees of confused states as to her
sexual orientation and her passion for the opposite sex. The transsexual change of Orlando seems to betray
ambiguous views of the narrator with regard to the different sexes’ relation to the world and their sexual
identities. The narrator of the novel says:
The difference between sexes is one of great profundity. Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep
beneath. It was a change in Orlando herself that dictated her choice of a woman’s dress and of a woman’s sex.
The same narrator who seems to be arguing about the unalterable essence of both the sexes and their
mutual exclusiveness in the above lines goes on, after a few lines to declare the amorphousness and the
potentiality for interchangeability between the opposite sexes. The narrator further says:
Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes
place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is very
opposite of what it is above.
1920’s was the decade when Woolf attempted to devote herself to feminist activities which seemed
relevant to her times. In her attempt to conceptualize feminism from her own perspective she used the notion of
androgyny as its central idea. Woolf was not certainly unmindful of the criticism leveled against her for her
inadequate support to and the absence of involvement in feminist activism. Many of her convictions did not run
parallel to that of her contemporary feminist activists. Her notion and understanding of feminism was much
more complex than many of her contemporaries were capable of comprehending and, moreover, it was
completely conditioned by her irrepressible infatuation for Vita. On the other hand, Vita with an aristocratic
background and an ever-widening circle of time-tested Sapphics, found it increasingly impossible to remain
faithful to Woolf. Woolf, who never, ceased to feel revolted at the habitual perfidy of Vita, expected the
devotion and faith of matrimonial proportions from her partner.
The bitter lesson she learnt from her emotionally turbulent homoerotic relationship was that one could be a
lesbian without being a feminist. It has often been argued that Orlando was basically meant to teach a lesson to
Vita about the basic principles of feminism. There are no clear answers to the question whether she succeeded
in her attempt, but the kind of self-realization that descends on Orlando at the end of the book, appears to have
continuously evaded Vita.
The concept of androgyny that emerged out of this relationship is attempted to be explored in Orlando by
questioning the basic idea of the fixity of sexuality. Woolf time and again comes back to the idea of
androgynous body and mind in her works. Her description of androgynous mind is often wrapped in so many
abstract concepts as to mean virtually nothing. Virginia Woolf explains:
(P ) erhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine.
Explaining Coleridge’s idea of androgynous mind she divests it of all sexual qualities. Woolf argues that he
meant:
(P) erhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment;
that it is natural, creative, incandescent and undivided.
Orlando’s persistent transvestism is a clear indication of her bisexed body. Though this concept of
androgynous body is exciting and erotic, politically the idea seems to be a lot less revolutionary than Woolf
must have originally thought. It even seems to be intent upon defeating a strong political message meant to be
conveyed by the politics of difference and unsentimental lesbianism.
This concept of undecided and undecidable gender and sexuality has always given creeps to the advocates
of humanism. Elaine Showalter, from her well-entrenched humanist position, accuses Woolf of taking flights
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into androgyny when faced with hard choices. She argues that Woolf’s writings do not and cannot have any
political significance as they seem to be removed from the world of writer’s personal experiences. The absence
of the integrated and indivisible subjectivity in the works of Woolf is what Showalter finds demoralizing and
politically unproductive. The elusiveness of gender identity and subjectivity one finds in the works of Woolf is
at odds with Showalter’s humanist feminism’s project and vision. Toril Moi in her Sexual/ Textual /Politics
writes about this position of Showlter’s and Marcia Holly’s, who too takes the similar stand:
What feminists such as Showalter and Holly fail to grasp is that the traditional humanism they represent is in
effect part of patriarchal ideology. At its center is seamlessly unified self-either individual or collective - which
is commonly called ‘Man’? As Luce Irigaray or Helene Cixous would argue, this integrated self is in fact a
phallic self, constructed on the model of the self-contained, powerful phallus. Gloriously autonomous, it
banishes from itself all conflict, contradiction and ambiguity.
In her eagerness to rescue Woolf from the traditional humanists and Marxists, Moi blissfully falls into the
trap laid by post-Freudian (Lacanian) psychoanalytical and postmodernist feminisms. Using Julia Kristeva’s
theoretical position that deconstructs the opposition between masculinity and femininity and challenges the
notion of identity, Moi goes on to defend the concept of androgyny. And for Moi all advocates of androgyny are
natural feminists and Woolf, as such, was proven one. This spirited defence of Woolf as a feminist seems to be
prompted by an awareness of the presence of a strong criticism that she did precious little to advance the cause
of both feminist theory and praxis.
The question of androgyny, central to any revaluation of Woolf and her works, is much harder to grapple
with than either humanist feminists or postmodernist ones would have us believe. K.K. Ruthvens describes:
(A)ndrogyny is merely the ‘sexist myth in disguise’, because what it turns out involve in practice is not some
pure equilibrium of the sexes on the far side of gender discrimination, but the annexation of the female by the
male in order to make the male more versatile and therefore more powerful.
Many complications arise in understanding Woolf, her concept of androgyny and her feminism for
postmodernist feminism has tried to appropriate her works to promote its own theoretical positions. It has often
valorized Woolf’s lack of feminist theoretical stand and activism. Its celebration of indeterminacy of Woolf’s
subjectivity and sexuality is in tandem with its idealized notion of the decentered subject. Postmodernism and
feminist postmodernism which have always been undecided and uncertain about their ideological allegiances
and political objectives, tend to nurture a culture of political inactivism, having successfully eliminated the agent
of political change. In its madness to overthrow all metanarratives postmodernism has attempted to render all
political movements ineffective and all ideologies inadequate. Feminism as a political movement has come to
devalue and discredit itself in its association with certain forms of postmodernism. Miranda Fricker puts it in
perspective:
Feminism’s concern with difference is driven by a political commitment to robust critical thought and indeed to
political action; whereas the distinctively postmodernist concern with the fragmentation of social identity
primarily speaks to the quite general theoretical commitment to the ‘big-bang logic of expansion’. This is how
the familiar yet resolved question is raised as to whether postmodernism possesses the epistemological resources
to fuel genuinely critical thought. If not, it courts conservatism.
Orlando, however to put the issue in context, should be read as a literary work meant to subvert the
traditionally prescribed gender roles. Despite her advocacy of androgynous mind Woolf believes in writing from
one’s own experiences gained through one’s physicality. The book is intended to insist on the need for
transcending the conventional gender roles but not sexuality. Orlando, contrary to her androgynous nature
gradually gravitates towards a more and more well-defined female identity. Her preferences, choices and tastes
are deeply suggestive of the fact that she wants to remain and be treated as a woman.
It is necessary to see most of Woolf’s responses to her contemporary social situations in their historical
context without emptying them of their contextual--content something which postmodernism is good at
accomplishing. Woolf’s involvement in women’s suffrage movement for a brief period, for instance, was a form
of ‘social feminism’ which finds its expression in her works including Orlando. The significance of the date on
which Orlando ends is unlikely to be lost on the reader: The day on which the universal suffrage was accepted in
England.
The feminist politics of Woolf revolves around the principle of difference which is radically different from
the one attributed to her by postmodernist feminist. Laura Marcus elaborates:
‘Social feminism’ is predicated on assumptions about differences between men and women, and on the belief
that women’s values and skills, whether innate or culturally constructed, are excluded in male-dominated
societies. It calls for a new understanding and valorization of specifically female values, and is to be contrasted
with an ‘equal rights’ feminism, which campaigns for equal access to civic and social rights and structures
enjoyed by men. The contrast is often framed as a distinction between a feminism of equality and one of
difference.
Some of the positions taken by Woolf appear, in retrospect, to be her instinctive reactions to immediate
situations and her promotion of androgyny was one such contingent position triggered by her homoerotic
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passions. In her attempt to rationalize her homoeroticism and lesbian desire towards Vita in particular, she
conceptualized the notion of androgyny. Orlando is one of such attempts where Woolf introduces the notion of
androgyny in an effort to legitimate her passion for Vita, being aware of homophobia of her times. Jean O Love
concludes:
In a decisive way, then, the venture into eroticism had ended with Orlando and in a sense the book became
a requiem mass for that part of Virginia’s life. Her venturing in art, perhaps inspired by that spirit of
experimentation she had undergone in life, continued to engage her and led to greater creations.
Although there is a certain degree of truth in Toril Moi’s contention that Woolf’s aesthetics has yet to be
constructed, the suggestion that it is possible to do so with the help of postmodernism and post-structuralism is
an insidious one. It has become increasingly clear over the years that the trust reposed in these two theories`
ability to redeem the glory of many lost and marginalized writers has proved to be a misplaced one. Whatever
radicalism one finds in Woolf and her works stems directly from her passion for life in its raw and unrefined
form, and her unorthodox lifestyle. It is a grave mistake to assume that any ground-breaking notion of
subjectivity or sexuality can allow a more revolutionary re-interpretation of her works.
CONCLUSION
At last, this paper argues that Woof took a relatively longer time to come to grips with her own sexuality.
She hardly owed any allegiance to Sophism. Her involvement in homoerotic relationships helped Woolf broaden
her understanding of androgyny. Orlando was an attempt on her part to overcome the emotional turmoil
resulting from the estrangement from Vita. A good number of feminists have found it difficult to associate
themselves with ideological stands taken by Woolf. Many such feminists are driven by humanist, modernist and
even postmodernist theoretical projects that prevent a clear perception of Woolf’s positions. The principal of
difference found in Woolf’s works is at odds with the one advocated by postmodernism. The belief that
postmodern theories of subjectivity can shed light on Woolf’s works is a misplaced one. The radicalism
prevalent in her works is a result of her unorthodox lifestyle. It does not stem from the attempts at
reinterpretations made by postmodernist feminists. Postmodernism, non-committal political attitudes, has tried
to appropriate all radical writer in vain.
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Fricker M, 2000. Feminism in Epistemology. Pluralism without Postmodernism: Feminism in Philosophy.
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Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity. Ralpha Freedman (Ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Revaluation and Continuity. Ralpha Freedman (Ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press, 205.
Marcus L, 2000. Woolf’s Feminism and Feminism’s Woolf: The Cambridge companion to Virginia Woolf. Sue
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Moi T, 2002. Sexual/ Textual Politics .London and New York: Routledge.
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