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Orlando: A Biography (Oxford World's Classics)
written by Virginia Woolf
Studio : Oxford Univ Pr on Demand
by Oxford Univ Pr on Demand
Publisher : Oxford Univ Pr on Demand
Released : 2000-04
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
EAN : 9780192834737
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 45 reviews)
List Price : $3.99
Our Price : $3.97
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Product Description |
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Virginia Woolf's exuberant `biography' tells the story of the cross-dressing, sex-changing Orlando who begins life as a young noble in the sixteenth century and moves through numerous historical and geographical worlds to finish as a modern woman writer in the 1920s. The book is in part a happy tribute to the `life' that her love for Vita Sackville-West had breathed into Virginia Woolf's own day-to-day existence; it is also Woolf's light-hearted and light-handed teasing out of the assumptions that lie behind the normal conventions for writing about a fictional or historical life. In this novel, Virginia Woolf plays loose and fast: Orlando uncovers a literary and sexual revolution overnight. |
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Marketadvisory.com Review |
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In 1928, way before everyone else was talking about gender-bending and way, way before the terrific movie with Tilda Swinton, Virginia Woolf wrote her comic masterpiece, a fantastic, fanciful love letter disguised as a biography, to Vita Sackville-West. Orlando enters the book as an Elizabethan nobleman and leaves the book three centuries and one change of gender later as a liberated woman of the 1920s. Along the way this most rambunctious of Woolf's characters engages in sword fights, trades barbs with 18th century wits, has a baby, and drives a car. This is a deliriously written, breathless-making book and a classic both of lesbian literature and the Western canon. |
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4.5 out of 5: Sexuality through the ages |
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The story begins with Orlando as a passionate young nobleman in Queen Elizabeth's court. By the end, Orlando is a 36-year-old woman three centuries later. Orlando witnesses the making of history from its edge. A close examination of the nature of sexuality and the changing climate of the passing centuries. Very novel and engaging if a bit loose-ended at times. |
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Milord! Milady! |
This `roman à clés' is very original. The hero continues to live in different historical periods and undergoes a sex change.
However, it is written in an emotional, sentimental, superlative style: `society in the reign of Queen Anne was of unparalleled brilliance. The graces were supreme.'
Except for the first period, there are no conflicts, only rather superficial descriptions of the mood and spirits of the times. For V. Woolf, `to give a truthful account of society ... only those who have little need of the truth, and no respect for it - the poets and novelists - can be trusted to do it, for this is one of the causes where the truth does not exist.'
`Orlando' is a perfect flight from reality: `But let other pens treat of sex and sexuality; we quit such odious subjects as soon as we can.' `Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party ... should be left to the historian.'
This book is a clean, introvert, aristocratic, long ode to pure Beauty.
Only for Virginia Woolf fans.
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This Book is Still Hip -- Hard to Believe Written and Published in 1928 Edwardian England [63] |
Written in 1928, this book clearly sought to shock the reading public. For every repression delivered by Victorian authorities which surely hampered Woolf's freedoms, this book delivers a defiant rebuke to the same.
Orlando - it states in the beginning - is a man for whom "there can be no doubt of his sex." He is rich, handsome and lives a life even Hugh Hefner may be jealous of. But, scandals lead him to isolation, to public ridicule or upbraiding, which led him to sequester himself to his 200-bedroom hermitage-castle. In his hermit's existence, he does not pass time philandering, but instead pulls books off the library's shelves and romanticizes with fiction.
Eventually tedium compels Orlando to ask his friendly king to deliver him overseas where he can perform the duties of ambassador. He ends up in then Constantinople, now Istanbul, Turkey. While living there, he ends one exhaustingly long night of debauchery and partying with a seven day sleep - and awakes a woman.
This was a "good thing." As a man, he could not appreciate Tennyson, Shakespeare, Byron and the like. As a woman, their written word touched her greatly. She could be red eyed, she could be lachrymose. As a man, he never loved. Wollf says, ". . . love - as the male novelists define it . . . has nothing whatever to do with kindness, fidelity, generosity or poetry. . ." Orlando the man had no love? Maybe, with Sasha (a Russian seductress) - but maybe Sasha ruined him so that he could never love again.
As a woman, Orlando knows love. Wolff explains, "Love is slipping off one's petticoat and - "
Can you imagine the Victorians reading that?!
Orlando's life continues not for decades, but centuries. And, some other characters do as well. "The true length of a person's life . . . is always a matter of dispute. Indeed, it is a difficult business - this time-keeping thing. . . " Indeed, it was for Wolff who quite intentionally delivers this novel as a time-challenged writer.
More obscurities arise - androgynous lovers, angels' visits, children born from or for Orlando - and splendor with these very biologically-defying events.
This is not written in the weaving masterful language which Woolf delivers in "To the Lighthouse" or "Mrs.Dalloway." Instead, here the schizophrenia lies with the main character, not the writing style. Probably, a better story than "Lighthouse" or "Dalloway", but I am partial to the writing style of those masterpieces.
In any event, anyone wondering just how throttled Woolf felt in the stifling moral norms of her country, read this book. If anyone wants a bizarre tale about a bizarre man/woman, this is a must read. |
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As Only Virginia Woolf Could Write |
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I like to think myself a very well-rounded reader (I have my degree in English), but I don't know if the genius of Virginia Woolf was just beyond me in Orlando. I enjoyed the story and the various historical characters that made appearances throughout, but something about it went a bit over my head. It was a strange tale of adventure and romance, with Orlando seeking the beauties of life and poetry throughout the centuries. |
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A zany tour through English history based on a house |
I read Orlando because someone told me that a central theme was Knole, the massive great house of the Sackvilles in Sevenoaks, in Kent south west of London. (I also liked Mrs Dalloway--See my Marketadvisory review.) When we lived in London my family and I spent a day at Knole. It is supposedly the largest private house in England. Much of it now belongs to the National Trust. Knole beggars description--it is a vast mansion, brooding, and dark, but also eminent; it is a castle, a factory, mills, breweries, a village, and menagerie. I remember the deer as being especially numerous and friendly. Orlando the novel is dedicated to Vita Sackville-West who sadly was unable to inherit Knole although she grew up there. Only males could inherit.
The novel Orlando is a tour through English history from the mid-15 hundreds to 1928 always from odd perspectives. It is also a subtle and searching exploration of gender roles, social roles, and artistic and creative efforts. Themes interweave with lightning speed. It's crazy, funny, satirical, wild, and moody. I found parts to be incoherent, post-modern stream-of-consciousness, but most is entertaining and illuminating.
But this novel always comes back to Knole just as Orlando does. He/she (there is a sex change mid-novel) tours her house, thinks about it, ponders it, worries about it, and is always focused on it. Orlando lives for hundreds of years, but somehow I think he/she is a metaphor for the great house. Knole is not mentioned by name in the novel, but that's it. Knole is also the setting for The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West. Knole is very worth a visit if you get to London or Kent. On the web at the National Trust website.
A visit in person however would help bring the novel Orlando to life. The novel is titled Orlando: A Biography. I think it is the biography of Knole.
One other odd feature: My edition (Signet Classics) has in index. This is the first novel I've read with an index. This suggests to me that Orlando is more than a novel, it is also a history of sorts. |
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