Gender is one of the most important
themes in the novel Orlando which is developed through various aspects of the
novel particularly under the effects of societal changes and also through the
voices of the narrative. Throughout
the long period of time, Orlando lives in many different societies. In one
instance during the mission as ambassador in Constantinople, and following the rise against the Sultan of Turkey,
Orlando’s circumstance changes rapidly from the
prestigious position of ambassador to the inevitability of living in the primitive
community of gipsies. Subsequently, she is exposed to experience a completely
different life among gipsies. In the
gipsy camp gender does not play any role at all. Orlando “milked the goats;
[…]; she herded cattle; she stripped vines; she trod the grape;”[1]
there is nothing distinctive about her gender in all these activities. On the
contrary, right after Orlando leaves the gipsies, on the English ship “she felt
the coil of skirts about her legs”[2]
she suddenly begins to feel the difference with regards to her gender. Therefore,
Orlando signifies that gender relates to society. Orlando
suggests that various societies consider gender differently, and there is a direct
relationship between the level of civilisation and gender in a society. In this respect, the novel develops gender by examining
Orlando’s life among gipsies and then in the English merchant ship as a rather
civilised setting. The fact that gender is intrinsically a social construction
implies that the more civilised a society becomes, the more gender-based values
are invented and applied. Thus, the novel enacts different living conditions for Orlando under
fundamental changes at the society level to make gender central and represent
its developments in this way.
Gender is also
developed through the voice in this novel. Orlando applies an approach of
parodying the biographer in which the male-dominated genre of biography is criticised.
The inherently ironic voice of the narrator provides with the possibility to
reflect upon femininity and masculinity “[d]ifferent though the sexes are”[3].
Orlando develops gender through the sarcastic comments on distinctive
desires of both man and woman: “the gentlemen took the
very words out of our mouths”[4]. Although Krouse
mentions “[t]he sarcasm
in the narrative voice”[5] to contextualise it
in relation with love, we can also consider that this sarcastic voice of Orlando
signifies the differences of attitude and ideas which ultimately develops gender.
The narrator frequently ridicules the biographer and emphasises the
conventional rigid dichotomy between the spirit of the age and the chronology.
Similarly, gender is reflected in Orlando’s artistic desire, particularly in her
lifetime attempt of writing ‘The Oak Tree’. As a result of literary progress
over the course of four centuries, ‘The Oak Tree’
seems important. Ironically, it is subject to verification by the male
authority, and that leads Orlando to come along with Nick Green whose “article had
plunged her [Orlando] in the depths of despair”[6].
Although Orlando occupies ambiguous genders, a contrast of different desires in
relation to literature has provided the novel with the voice in which gender is
central. Orlando establishes opposing attitudes in regards to representing different desires and
consequently emphasises gender’s pivotal role in the novel.
Bibliography
Krouse, Tonya. “Orlando and the
Discourse of Love.” In The Opposite of Desire: Sex and Pleasure in the
Modernist Novel 101-16. Lanham: Lexington, 2009.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. Vintage Classics. 2004.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. Vintage Classics. 2004.
[5] Krouse, Orlando
and the Discourse of Love, 101.