LIT 601 – Literary Masterpiece

MICHAEL JAY U. MOÑERA

MAED – LT

TASK:

ORLANDO
1. Historical Approach
2. Biographical Approach
3. Psychosocial Criticism
4. Diaspora Criticism
5. LGBTQ+ Approach
6. Deconstruction Criticism

Analyze the work of Virginia Woolf entitled Orlando.

ANALYZING ORLANDO USING BUBBLE MAP

1. CHARACTERS
2. SETTING
3. PLOT
4. THEME
5. DIALOGUE
6. IMAGERY
7. FIGURE OF SPEECH
8. TONE
9. RHYME/RHYTHM
10. POINT OF VIEW
11. DEBATABLE THESIS
12. OVERALL ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL

NOTE: DEADLINE NOVEMBER 18, 2022

 Historical Approach of Orlando

Orlando is set chiefly in England (in London and Kent) from the time of Elizabeth I (16th century)
to 1928. There is one excursion to Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), when Orlando is an
ambassador for Charles II (r 1660-85). The life of Orlando unwinds within three centuries from 1588 until
October 1928, the actual year of the book’s publishing. Using flashforwards and flashbacks, the author
explains the history of the characters, which preceded their sympathy towards the queer. Bakthin’s
understanding of chronotope – the “intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that
are artistically expressed in literature” (in Macovski, 2006, p. 67) – can be applicable to Orlando’s
analyses, as it connects time and space; depending on the era, the author swaps the points of view and
roles of the hero, while taking into consideration his/her current gender. When Orlando’s femme fatale
Sasha abandons him without explanation, he does not leave his house, containing a symbolical number
of bedrooms, 365 as the days of the year and 52 stairways, standing for the weeks. One night he
decides to continue writing a thick document, called “Xenophila a Tragedy”. DiBattista (2009) explains
that the title “Xenophila” is a mispronunciation of the Greek term “xenophobia”, derived from the Greek
word “xenos”, standing for ‘queer’. The whole story is interleaved with depictions of Orlando writing a
poem which s/he carries with him/her everywhere, keeping it close to his/her heart, named The Oak Tree.
The poem resembles a tree which grows in the garden of Orlando’s father. In the beginning of the
story, Orlando lies below it and there she finds herself also in the last lines of the story. Even if the life
span of Orlando endures through centuries, the poem serves as a lifeline on his/her life voyage and
connects him/her to the present.

Biographical Criticism of Orlando

Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. Inspired by
the tumultuous family history of the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's lover and
close friend, it is arguably one of her most popular novels; Orlando is a history of English literature
in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and
lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. Considered a feminist classic, the
book has been written about extensively by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender
studies.
The novel has been adapted a number of times. In 1989, director Robert Wilson and writer Darryl
Pinckney[1] collaborated on a single-actor theatrical production. [2] This had its British premiere at
the Edinburgh Festival in 1996, with Miranda Richardson playing the title role;[3][4] Isabelle
Huppert performed in the version in French, which opened at the Théâtre Vidy-
Lausanne in Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1993.[5] A film adaptation by Sally Potter, simply titled Orlando,
was released in 1992, starring Tilda Swinton in the title role. A stage adaption by Sarah Ruhl premiered in
New York City in 2010, and the novel was also adapted into operatic works.
Vita Sackville-West, the inspiration for Orlando, was a highly successful poet and author whose
poetry was published in over a dozen collections. She also wrote thirteen novels, twice winning the
Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature. In addition to being a writer and poet, Sackville-West was
renowned as a garden designer. She and her husband, Harold Nicolson, designed one of England's most
famous gardens at Sissinghurst. Along with Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West was a member of
the Bloomsbury Group. This group of artists and intellectuals drawn from the leading ranks of Oxford and
King's College London espoused progressive, and even radical, approaches to sexuality, politics, and
economics.
Fellow Bloomsbury member John Maynard Keynes, one of the world's most important
economists, expressed their view of morality when he said, "We recognized no moral obligation on us, no
inner sanction, to conform or obey." They championed immorality and sought to maximize pleasure in all
of their relationships. In the words of Dorothy Parker, the Bloomsbury Group, "lived in squares, painted in
circles and loved in triangles."

Psychological Criticism of Orlando

This statement was discussed how Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari renew the concept of illness
by overthrowing the psychoanalytic theory of subject and desire. part exemplifies Virginia Woolf's Orlando
in which Orlando's second oversleep diagnosed as illness demonstrates that Orlando embodies life as a
zone of indiscernibility and sex as merely one attribute of this greatest machinic assemblage or one facet
of this indiscernible zone. We should not put emphasis on the result of Orlando's sexual transformation
{either & man or a woman) but on the possibility which life force/desire oscillates between them {both a
man and a woman). With the evacuation of three goddesses, Woolf points out life as a zone of
indiscernibility can never be stabilized by any virtue. Its nature is forever floating and it is indiscernible
from other objects.

Diaspora of Orlando
 The search for Identity in Orlando.  “The Orlando whom she had called came of its own accord…
she was now darkened, stilled, and become, with the addition of this Orlando, what is called, rightly or
wrongly, a single self, a real self” (313-314). This would seem to solidify at least the biographer’s notion of
an essential self (though the shape and context of the passage would indicate Woolf as well, as will be
shown), except that this passage does not affirm any hierarchy of identities. The key lies in the following
sentence, with the slightly anachronistic application of différance: “it is probable that when people talk
aloud, the selves…are conscious of disseverment, and are trying to communicate but when
communication is established there is nothing more to be said.” Woolf was clearly thinking along the
same lines as Georg Hegel in this deconstruction; her understanding of the alienating effects of difference
is paralleled only by her facility in self-definition through the very same phenomena. 6

The key to understanding this long and difficult passage is the appearance of the bird motif.
Throughout the book, birds have appeared at various events related to self-discovery, from his discovery
of natural beauty through peacocks and rooks on page 16, to the thousand vultures who pick bare her
visions of the Gypsy landscape on pages 150-151, to the birds that lead her to Shelmerdine on 248-250
and the birds that dash the windows during her marriage on page 262. 7 In this passage is the first of two
appearances of the goose: “Haunted! Ever since I was a child. There flies the wild goose. It flies past the
window out to sea. Up I jumped…and stretched after it. But the goose flies too fast…Always it flies fast
out to sea and always I fling after it words like nets” (313). It is directly after this passage that Orlando’s
true self manifests itself of its own accord. The passage does not seem entirely noteworthy until the
metaphor is embodied in the final lines of the book: “And as Shelmerdine…leapt to the ground, there
sprang up over his head a single wild bird. ‘It is the goose!’ Orlando cried. ‘The wild goose…’”

Having deconstructed this passage of the book, we may say with some certainty that the
essentiality of identity is an integral aspect of its meaning. We can therefore say that the various forms
embodied by the character are constructed meanings—their relevance is defined by their difference and
deferment to other constructed forms in the concatenation of events that leads to the actualization of
Orlando as manifested in the trinity of male, female, and goose at the end of the book.

LGBTQ+ Approach of Orlando

Orlando is a literary text that presents a new view regarding gender categories, asking for
acceptance for all those categories considered unintelligible. In a way, it seems that Woolf tries to
overcome gender categorization of her time by presenting stereotypical gender conventions in a
humorous manner. In Orlando, it is made clear that a person creates its identity by performing features
that are culturally accepted to be specific for a gender category. Orlando is considered a woman when he
dresses and acts as a woman is supposed to do. Moreover, he feels like a woman when he starts to
repeat constantly those acts considered feminine. Although Orlando had suffered a biological
transformation, he still uses masculine clothes in order to change his gender as he pleases and to escape
restrictions regarding her gender as a woman. By doing this, once again, Woolf challenges the
stereotypical view of the existence of a binary system, showing that there are no clear boundaries, that
one’s sexual identity can be more complex that the traditional idea of having only the male and female
gender categories.

Orlando can be read from multiple points of view, but mainly feminist, transgender and
homosexual ones that fall under the umbrella term queer. According to Whittington (2012), the queer
movement is widely represented all over the globe, dealing not just with homosexuality itself, but being a
cluster of aberrances from the generally perceived borders of the societal mainstream. Queer is an
escape for various people with different points of views, from the social majority to the world’s edge,
without shame, announcing a new type of homosexual liberation (ibid.). Norton (2016) states that queer
literature and queer history depicts the relationships between queer people, their love and emotional
bonds; it is not about the views from outside, but the subjective perspective of people who are in love.

Deconstructionist Criticism of Orlando


PLOT
It describes the adventures of a
poet who changes sex from man to
woman and lives for centuries,
meeting the key figures of English
literary history. Considered a
feminist classic, the book has been
written about extensively by
scholars of women's writing and
gender and transgender studies.
THEME
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.". It’s all about fulfillment,
values, gender, language, fame, writing
and poetry.
DIALOGUE
“Nothing thicker than a knife's blade
separates happiness from melancholy.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando
"It was Orlando's fault perhaps; yet after
all, are we to blame him? The age was the
Elizabethan; their morals were not ours..."
Through this quote, the narrator tries to
convince the reader that maybe Orlando’s
actions should not be harshly judged and
that we, as readers, have no right to blame
him for his actions. In the light of this
quote, it is clear that the narrator is not
impartial, but rather tries to convince the
reader to like Orlando.
IMAGERY
Nature and city scenes are
described in great detail.
The images of the city
change over the course of
the book as centuries pass,
while the scenes of nature
change very little,
underscoring themes of time
and change.
FIGURE OF SPEECH
Personification,
allusion, Metonymy
and Synecdoche.
Parallelism, Paradox,
metaphor and similes,
and irony.
CHARACTERS
Orlando, Marmaduke Bonthrop
Shelmerdine, The Countess of R,
Nelly, Pope, Sasha, Nick Green,
Euphrosyne, Queen Elizabeth I,
King Charles II, Rosina Pepita,
The Ladies of Purity, Chastity,
and Modesty, Captain Nicholas
Benedict Bartolus, Harriet/Harry.
ORLANDO
By Virginia Wolf
TONE
Ambition,
Success, and
Failure. Tragic
and satirical.
SETTING
Orlando is set chiefly in England
(in London and Kent) from the
time of Elizabeth I (16th
century) to 1928. There is one
excursion to Constantinople
(now Istanbul, Turkey), when
Orlando is an ambassador for
Charles II (r 1660-85).
POINT OF VIEW
The story is told from
the biographer's point
of view with objective,
third-person narration.
DEBATABLE THESIS
More than anything, Hankins argues, the
novel mocks “compulsory heterosexuality”
and challenges homophobia in an age
decades before common society would
come to accept same-sex love and nearly a
century before the law would. In this way,
rather than making explicit statements
about censorship like so many famous
authors have done, Woolf chooses instead
to tease and taunt the censor with her
literary magic wand, which she uses, more
than anything, as an empathic tool.
Consider this seemingly simple, infinitely
evocative passage.
OVERALL ANALYSIS OF
THE NOVEL
Orlando: A Biography is one of the strangest books
penned by Virginia Woolf, who lived from 1882–1941.
Published in 1928, it follows the life of Orlando, born a
man in Elizabethan England, who experiences a
mysterious sex change at the age of 30 and stays alive
for 300 years. During that time, she interacts with many
great literary figures, such as the poet Alexander Pope.
Orlando is said to be a drawn-out love letter to Woolf's
friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. The two carried
on a romantic relationship for ten years and influenced
one another profoundly. Woolf was inspired by
Sackville-West's family history and outlook,
filling Orlando with references to her onetime lover.
Because the main character sees her transformation
from a man into a woman as a good thing, many
feminists have written about the importance
of Orlando. Virginia Woolf certainly belonged to
progressive social circles, and she infuses this work
with her values. The book is a satirical history of
England and its literature.
RHYME/RHYTHM
“The flower bloomed and
faded. The sun rose and
sank. The lover loved and
went. And what the poets
said in rhyme, the young
translated into practice.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando