Thinking Activity : Orlando : A biography

 

                                  ORLANDO : A BIOGRAPHY 

                                                         -  VIRGINIA WOOLF

                         

                           Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. 

Orlando is the sixth major novel of Virginia Woolf. It is fantastic historical biography .The novel was conceived as a "writer's holiday" from more structured and demanding novels. Woolf allowed neither time nor gender to constrain her writing. The protagonist, Orlando, ages only thirty-six years and changes gender from man to woman. This pseudo-biography satirizes more traditional Victorian biographies that emphasize facts and truth in their subjects' lives. Although Orlando may have been intended to be a satire or a holiday, it touches on important issues of gender, self-knowledge, and truth with Virginia Woolf's signature poetic style.

       -: Thinking Activity on Orlando : A Biography :- 

    

   1.   How you look on Metamorphosis, and space of desire in Orlando and " The third space" how it's define or narrate in Orlando?

                             In the western culture throughout centuries Romantic love stories that have been written to portray the love desire as being a part of the grief horizon. The moment two lovers fall in love, the Eros becomes marked by a sense of loss. The relationship between a man and a woman is not possible, because a love story begins when one of the lovers disappears or when unpredictable circumstances separate them.

Badiou, who asks himself, what is it that art preserves of love, concludes it is trying to convince us that a presuming relationship dismisses a non-relationship. Art, or more precisely literature tells us that love is in hands of decay, because in a love (non)relationship one+one dissolves a Two. In this case One as such takes his vengeance upon Two.

Let us now continue with the interpretation of Let us now continue with the interpretation of Virginia Wolf's Orlando. We will analyze three love relationships Orlando gets involved in throughout different time periods in his/her life and the concept of romantic love, which Virginia Wolf dissects and parodizes in her literary work. The author mentions romantic love twice and both times she makes allusions to Platos androgynies. Plato describes androgynies as beings that had four arms and the same number of legs, and had two identical faces on a circular neck and one head that supported the two positioning faces and four ears and two pubic parts.

 Androgynies were both male and female in one and as such represented perfect beings even Gods were jealous of. Because their abilities made them conceited, Zeus decided to split them into two parts. After their (human) nature was split in two, it tried to come back together, because each half craved its other half.Plato used the concept of androgynies in order to illustrate his concept of Eros. The author says that in a love relationship, the individual longs to reach fusion of two entities into an accordant, harmonious whole.

Fusional love we have borrowed this notion from Badiou will be equated with romantic love as we continue. Plato influenced many writers with his concept of fusible love, even Freud, who believed that there is something in the very nature of libido that acts as an impediment in a love relationship, each individual supposedly strives towards creating one out of two or more in a wish to awaken that which has been oppressed or lost, the Oneness.

On the basis of my reading , I can say that this biography is all about imagination and speculation also. Orlando , who is a man and at the middle of the story he turns into body of woman till the end of the story. It looks like a imagination. speculation are also there . Let's look on the theme of imagination and speculation which are carefully represented in the story.

One of the most important themes in Orlando is the connection between fact and imagination. In Woolf's review of Harold Nicholson's Some People, she opened with this analogy: "if we think of truth as something of granite-like solidity and of personality as something of rainbow-like intangibility and reflect that the aim of biography is to weld these two into one seamless whole, we shall admit that the problem is a stiff one and that we need not wonder if biographers, for the most part failed to solve it."

The metaphor of granite and rainbow emerges again in her own novel when she discusses Nature "who has played so many queer tricks upon us, making us so unequally of clay and diamonds, of rainbow and granite, and stuffed them into a case."

Woolf suggests that there is no realm of imagination separated from a realm of fact; "rainbow and granite" are stuffed into one case. Everything (internal and external, fact and imagination) are linked together by our memory, and we will grow to "understand" when we realize that neither memory nor history can be easily ordered and divided.

Fact is a subjective quality, and the 'truth' emerges when we realize the interconnectedness and relativity of everything and everyone around us. It is such a unity of experience, not a triumph of "fact" that emerges victorious over time.

These people initially appeal because they are deliciously transgendered, in the broadest sense of the term. In both of these cases, Orlando's desires seem heterosexual because of their parties sexed However, his/her desires are queer because they are initiated by the lure of gender ambiguity and defy the assumption that desire must always flow between masculine and feminine. Orlando's desires as a woman are also queered by her past history as a man.

Yet at these moments, Orlando cannot as prosser would have it transcend the consequences of his/her sexed embodiment, despite his/her fantastical transformation at other points in the narrative. Orlando's gender transforms from male to female. And Shelmerdine also confess his gender also transform from female to male. Here we find the transgender term.   

   2.  Speculation and Imagination literature can you define this term? How it's represents in Orlando? 

                          As the self - concious biographer in Virginia Woolf's Orlando explains that " Often it has been necessary to speculate, to surmise and even to make use of the imagination " in piecing together her subject's story , so does any reader nog the novel also speculate about its author. In the novel Orlando we can see speculation and imagination. Speculation, it means something fiction or without any proper evidence. This novel tells the story of Orlando and his journey to become woman. It is speculative and imaginative story about someone's life.

                       Virginia Woolf originally intended Orlando to be an imaginative biography of Vita Sackville- West, and a mere joke in comparison to her other books, the final, realized novel contains as much of Virginia's "self" as Vita's, and is of equal personal and creative importance to her typically more seriously considered works. Virginia and Vita had sexual relationship. 

  

               In the novel we see Virginia Woolf write story of Orlando based on Vita Sackville- West, the woman whom she describes as " the central relationship of Woolf's forties". Orlando's life traces the history of Vita Sackville- West's family, up to the present day, when Vita was unable to inherit her family estate because she was a woman. In the novel Woolf create imagery character and connect with Vita's life. 

             The golden domes of Constantinople which ornament the setting of Orlando's change from male to female in chapter three, the description of 'The Jessamy Brides' is quite different from the plot of Orlando. In novel's first chapter we can see the description of marvels such as the great frozen river in Mascow. 

             Though Virginia's diary reveals that she had decided Vita "should be Orlando, a young nobleman." The plot was set: "a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to another." Orlando's change from male to female is more representative of Virginia's impressions of Vita, than Vita herself.

             Orlando's poem, "The Oak Tree", which is meant to represent Vita's poem "The Land," travels through the centuries along with Orlando, and is crafted and rewritten according to the trends of the appropriate time period. Shelmerdine is character connect with Vita's husband. Here Orlando's husband is Shelmerdine. Virginia use this imagery character for give details about Vita's personal life. 

             Throughout the novel we can find imagination and speculation. Orlando represent this imagination by imagery character. And use description about time period of Orlando's life. 

   3.  How you interpreted trans study's by special reference of Orlando ?

                                   

                               Orlando is the novel about transgender studies. In this novel Virginia Woolf tells story of Vita Sackville West, who is lover of her. Vita and Virginia both are woman , here they have same gender relations it called homosexuality. In the novel Virginia talks about transgender. 

                            There are important differences between Prosser’s and Halberstam’s positions, however. Halberstam only partially concurs with Prosser’s critique of a kind of postmodern fluidity that would have one making rapid changes in gender presentation from day to day: she allows for “some degree of movement” in gender, especially over long stretches of time (147). Also, although both Prosser and Halberstam situate their work under the banner “transgender,” Prosser is principally concerned in Second Skins wih transsexuality.

Though he critiques Butler’s early work for its elision of questions of transsexual embodiment, his argument—upon which Gayle Salamon has recently placed considerable pressure—is very hard to sustain when extended to the broader range of transgender practices, particularly those forms that do not rely on bodily interventions. Halberstam, by contrast, opens up the category “transgender” to include a wider range of embodiments. She argues for the inclusion of butch subjectivity and challenges from numerous angles the implicit hierarchy that privileges the trans-ness of persons that desire or obtain sex reassignment surgery.

One way to do so is by considering the novel's treatment of Orlando's sexuality in light of his/her history as both a man and a woman. Orlando tracking the trajectories of desire that its protagonist experiences as a man and a woman: first, for Sasha, a Russian woman who initially appears to the male Orlando as masculine; second, for Shelmerdine, a seafaring English man who appears to the female Orlando as feminine.

These people initially appeal because they are deliciously transgendered, in the broadest sense of the term. In both of these cases, Orlando's desires seem heterosexual because of their parties sexed embodiment. However, his/her desires are queer because they are initiated by the lure of gender ambiguity and defy the assumption that desire must always flow between masculine and feminine.

Orlando's desires as a woman are also queered by her past history as a man. Yet at these moments, Orlando cannot as prosser would have it transcend the consequences of his/her sexed embodiment, despite his/her fantastical transformation at other points in the narrative.

Orlando's gender transforms from male to female. And Shelmerdine also confess his gender also transform from female to male. Here we find the transgender term.

         4.  Are you agree with that in Orlando Instability of Identity ? And how you see the Gender parody and Subjectivity in Orlando.

                      The novel Orlando is full of gender parody. Characters frequently change clothes and perform different gender roles as per the demand of the situation or out of their own desire. Most of the character's gender is ambiguous, let alone Orlando's who midway through the novel undergoes gender change. It is remarkable that the ambiguous, nature of gender that different characters perform is aided by the clothing of one sex and bodily acts, gestures and movements of the other.

                    Such type of gender ambiguity appears in the Russian woman called Sasha. The Russian clothing disguises Sasha's sexual identity and thereby creates gender ambiguity. Even Orlando's metaphorical description of Sasha like snow, cream of waves of the sea also adds up to her shifting, evanescent, elusive identity. Sasha is not the only character in Orlando with ambiguous gender identity.

                        

             When Archduchess Harriet Griselda appears all of a sudden in Orlando's room in the figure of a very tall lady in ridding hood. The audacity and obduracy of her stare immediately puts Archduchess Harriet's feminine gender into question. After Orlando's gender change and when she is at home there Archduchess come, now known as the Archduke Harry. And tells that "he was a man and always had been one." This shows that the Archduke's previous feminine identity was just a copy of a feminine identity.

            Orlando's continuous switching over gender poles is made possible by the parodic nature of gender itself: "In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself as well as its contingency." The parody is not the parody of original or primary gender but of the very notion of an original then it leads us to agree with Judith Butler who argues that "gender parody reveals that the original identity after which gender fashions itself is an imitation without an origin." 

             In the novel we also find subjectivity and instability of identity. Orlando critiques the notion of unified humanistic subject and the possibility of multiple subjectivities. In Orlando 'constructive figuration of subjectivity' and gendered aspect of subjectivity focusing upon Orlando's "situatedness" in his/her social order and discursive practices of gender.

             Orlando's personality is regarded as integrated until his sex change at the age of thirty. He complies with the accepted gender norms of his society and is regularly rewarded in social hierarchy. Orlando's subjectivity is constituted by his social status. He is favored by the Queen, given vast estate and is made an ambassador by King Charles. 

           Orlando is handsome, pleasant, darling gentleman both to poor working class people and to elites. His subjectivity of all favored lordship is the result not only of his charismatic personality but also of his gender conformity. When Orlando returns to England she has face many problems. Now Orlando as a woman not get any property. Subjectivity in Orlando is highly saturated with gendered experience.

           Orlando as a man feels his complete downfall when his hope are shattered but Orlando the woman does not react so violently when she face problems about property. Orlando as a man is always oriented to power, position and authority desiring control. On the contrary, Orlando as a woman is always worried to come to terms with the tradition and convention. 

           In Orlando we can find instability of identity because Orlando's gender was changed in the middle of the novel and his age. And also we find subjectivity and gender parody. In novel all characters has dual gender identity.

   5.  Can you exactly define what is the quest of Orlando in a whole novel according to your reading?

                      According to my reading the relation between art and reality, art and nature, art and gender is the ever lasting quest of Orlando. In the novel as a man and woman Orlando try to write great poem. Orlando connect art with the reality of life it is the quest in whole novel by my point of view.

            In the novel, Woolf balances the main character's isolation with the need for meaningful relationship. In the tradition of the romantic quest, Orlando must overcome obstacles to self-fulfillment in order to release creative energies. The destination of Orlando's quest are three fold: to engage in meaningful relationship; to fully realise her/his poetic power; and to affirm the continual process of her/his self-transformation in spite of obstacles and crises. 

            These ends of Orlando's quest at times appear most clearly in their absence, as the protagonist works to overcome the triple crises of non-relationship stifled creativity and a fixed identity. The majority of the narrative, however, chronicles Orlando's enduring crisis of non-relationship. During the Elizabethan Age alone, Orlando experiences unfulfilling relationships with the following: an old woman and Sasha. The crisis of non-relationship continues as the transgender Archduchess/Archduke Harriet/ Harry stalks Orlando in a relentless and absurd marriage suit, and later, as Orlando grows disillusioned with Augustan Soirees and writers.

             Orlando's two early betrayals in a novel, by the Russian Princess Sasha and by the poet Nick Greene, pose the most serious threats to Orlando's quest for meaningful relationship. Only with Orlando's marriage to the enigmatic Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine does she establish a fulfilling relationship. Orlando and Shelmerdine not only have an uncanny understanding of one another, but they also recognise each other.

              Some critics have argued that Orlando's relationship with Shelmerdine is either a masquerade or a relationship of convenience. Orlando's quest remains unfulfilled in the absence of a meaningful human connection, and her union with Shelmerdine signals the end of her relationship crisis. 

  

              In Orlando, Woolf maps out the space she must inhabit in order to achieve success as a writer Orlando's shifting gender concretely represents the notion that "a great mind is androgynous": the writer must partake of both the mind's male and female qualities to reach poetic maturity. To succeed as writer, Woolf must also draw on the long tradition of literature from the Elizabethan through the modern day, which explains Orlando's cursory tour through English literary history.

              The poetic quest is not only play role in flowering subjectivity in the novel, but it is also dramatized in Orlando's relationship with other writers, such as Nick Greene. If one reads Orlando as a writer's quest, the closing images illustrate how artistic inspiration can emerge out of the deepest, darkest recesses of the mind. Orlando begins to identify poetry as a natural process rather than as an endeavour motivated by personal ambitions or grudes.

               Orlando is the figure of the eternal poet, continually re-negotiating new ages and social conventions. Indeed the reader finds in Orlando not a historical personage but a figure surviving through parts of five centuries, seemingly defying death. Thus, Orlando's refusal to accept a fixed identity translates into an eternal transformation. The fixing of Orlando's identity, the end of his/her poetic quest, would be tantamount to death. Orlando changes from an aristocratic, Elizabethan male adventures to a twentieth century female poet.

               Here we find the quest of Orlando in the whole novel. Orlando has poetic quest. By my point of view in whole novel Orlando has quest for poetry or writing.

                         

   6.  What is the sexual ambiguity and magical realism? With special refrence of Orlando. 

                   In the novel we can see the sexual ambiguity and magical realism. Orlando is Constantinople and his gender changed. When Orlando wake up his gender changed , he became a woman. There we see the magical realism and When Orlando returns to England meet with gipsies. Orlando change her clothing there we see sexual ambiguity.

                     The plot of Orlando clearly embodies the novel's revolutionary take on gender and history. Woolf has written the ostensible biography of an English nobleman who lives for nearly four hundred years and changes sex midway through. Orlando hobnobs with Queen Elizabeth I and king James I before falling in love with Sasha, a Russian Princess who ultimately rejects him.

Orlando eventually flees to Constantinople, where he serves as an ambassador .After spending a few weeks among a tribe of gipsies, Orlando returns to England, all the while noting the differences and limitations of being a woman. She spends the 18th century cross-dressing and socializing, only to marry and bear a son during the more restrictive 19th century.

Orlando is beautifully written, filled with love and magic, suitors and carnivals. The novel engage in heady mixture of sexual ambiguity and magical realism, which combine to form a provocative and often neglected critique of binary constructs in human culture.

Woolf use sexual ambiguity and magical realism to attack the dualistic and limiting categories of male and female, just as she use magical realism to challenge critical notion of fact and fiction, fantasy .The notion of sexual ambiguity encompasses many different ideas. Chief among them is gender, a term used to signal a verity of meanings. The male Orlando is seemingly happy to live life solely as a man, complete with money, status, and privilege, while the female Orlando quickly realises the limitations placed upon her as a woman and choose to revel in endless costume change.

Orlando is not the novel's only, or even first, cross-dresser. While a man Orlando is approached in his ancestral home by the Archduchess Harriet, whom he flees when he finds himself falling in love with her. When Orlando returns as a woman to her estate, she is again approached by the Archduchess, who reveals herself to be, rather, Archduke hoping for Orlando's hand in marriage. Orlando do represent the rather abstract concept of sexual ambiguity in a similar, often radical way.

Magical realism referred not to Latin American literature, but to European art. The magical elements in Orlando are most often described not as magical realist, but more vaguely as fantastic. The most magical element of Orlando, excepting, perhaps, the miraculous sex change, is the novel's historical time frame. Orlando lives for approximately four hundred years, from the reign of Elizabeth I to "the present moment" of October 11, 1928.

  7. Can we say that it's fictional biography or it's really someone original biography. How you see that . Give your appropriate argument to defend that is it fictional biography or not ?

Virginia Woolf's Orlando  constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. 

            According to my reading this novel is a fictional biography.

                             In this novel Woolf write about her lover and close friend Vita Sackville West family background and about Vita's life. Vita and Woolf both are members in Bloomsbury group. Woolf and Vita has sexual relationship. Vita become inspiration for Woolf to writing this novel "Orlando : A Biography".This novel details the life of a man who turns into a woman and lives for centuries. One dominant feature of postmodern fiction is its concern for historiography.

This novel directly reflect Woolf's attitude towards traditional and contemporary biographical practices, using biographical frame works to provide historiographical commentary.By writing Orlando as a fictional biography, Woolf challenges the factuality of biographies as a whole, especially those that stray into fiction or do not attempt to give a complete picture of the subject.

At many points, the biographer notes that little is know about Orlando's life during a period because he/she spent most time alone. The biographer acknowledges the fact that those particular parts of the story have been fleshed out with imaginations of Orlando's experiences, which is humorously meta-fictional because, in fact, the entire story of Orlando's life is fictional.

According to my point of view, this is fictional biography because all the description about Orlando's life is impossible. His gender change, he live approximately four hundred years, and many other things made it fictional biography. And one important point is historiography. In the novel Woolf tells us history about human, specially about woman with the fictional story of Orlando.

Thank you...