In a career full of playful writing, "Orlando" may be Virginia Woolf's most enjoyable. The conceit of the text was to write a parodic text like it was historical. The premise itself was silly enough, finding the titular Orlando existing across multiple generations and taking on many forms. Sometimes it's female while others are male, placing Woolf in different contexts that allow for a curious study of gender politics throughout the centuries. Even as it delves into sometimes personal and affirming language, it reflects how sometimes the only difference between a man and a woman is clothes. Society places expectations on them that are in themselves ridiculous and it results in the humor in the text becoming something more intellectual. It's a commentary on what it means to be alive, finding that some things are difficult to reason with. Sometimes it's best just to be taken in by the magic of the moment.
What is the value of writing a story like this? Besides working as a game between her and a friend, Woolf's choice to write the text is likely a quest to explore the potential for what fiction can achieve. Is it inherently false if it's less about a time and place but actual emotions? Like all of Woolf's work, there's a sense of finding the humanity deep inside the characters. Even as everyone presents something more rigid on the outside, the interiority is often more thrilling. Someone like Orlando ranks as one of her most compelling characters because of the playfulness they inhabit. They are less driven by societal rules and more follow a modernist fiction's way of thinking. How can they expand the boundaries of everyday life and recontextualize the familiar? Nothing is more radical than taking on a new form.
Orlando as a character is interesting because of the various roles they play throughout the text. The identity changes may create different bodies, but the mind remains the same. They navigate the world, embraced for who they are without concern over the differences. There is something cathartic about it, reflecting the ways that a person questioning their identity would often like the world to see them. Even then, Orlando is driven by an educational drive, an effort to see the world through a more complicated lens. Still, it's less the motivations driven by Orlando than it is those around them that define the most interesting part of the text. Again, maybe it's just clothing that makes the difference. The choice to have a centuries-spanning text allows the reader to question more than the people involved but the practices with which the navigate life. How have we changed? How are we the same?
It's all a bit more playful than this sounds. While it may recall romantic literature of the 19th century, "Orlando" is anything but. There's a sense of humor to how the story is written. Even as it delves into serious topics, the premise is so absurd that one can't help but laugh. Still, it taps into a spirituality that contemplates the different ways that everyone is connected. As she explores the many continents over the many lifetimes, she finds that the world is much too interesting for one lifetime to explore. There is a need to keep that optimism and hope alive. Like the very form, there is a desire to push past expectations and find something new. Woolf is tired of the conventions of everyday life. There is a need for them to be reborn and see the struggle from a different perspective. Because of this, "Orlando" is as much about what's on the page as it is in the implications. The world is perpetually moving forward. Shouldn't our way of thinking remain that way, too?
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