MiniReview: "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf

 

What is it? (I have a sneaking suspicion I’ve heard of it!)

It’s a novel by English writer Virginia Woolf, first published in 1928.

 

What’s it about? (I think I was supposed to read it in high school, but I didn’t.)

It’s a fictional biography of Orlando, a personage of aristocratic origins, covering the years from the late 16th century up to 1928.

 

That’s a good long life!

Yeah, Orlando is a young man at the beginning and ages very slowly, and then seems to stick at about age thirty-five for centuries.

 

My heavens. That’s all very weird, but not exactly queer.

Well, the queer thing is, sometime in the late 17th century, when Orlando is serving as the British ambassador in Constantinople, he falls very ill, loses consciousness for a while, and when he recovers—he’s a woman.

 

Ah!!! Interesting. She didn’t even have to transition?

No, it’s all very mysterious, as the biography (this is a fictional bio, remember) makes clear, wrapped in the mists of time. Ultimately, though, Virginia Woolf is evoking not so much a trans-gender situation as a non-binary one. As she says at one point: “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 the very opposite of what it is above.”

 

Cool. Bravo, Virginia Woolf, for writing that in 1928!!

It’s a very cool book. Being the super-smart writer she is, Woolf goes way beyond just talking about the gender binary; ultimately, the book questions that very notion of an individual identity, and the deceptive nature of time. Towards the end of the novel, she questions, “How many different people are there not ... all having lodgment at one time or another in the human spirit? Some say two thousand and fifty-two.”

 

So maybe queer folk are just people who are more aware than most of their complexity, and give expression to it?

Hey, I like that.

 

Stars?

It’s gotta be three. Writing in 1928, before things got so complicated, Virginia Woolf was able to talk about gender non-conformity in a metaphysical way, raising all kinds of fascinating questions. Ultimately, the book is just a joy to read, and (I hope) reread.