Orlando [Hardcover]

Virginia Woolf (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Hogarth Press (January 1, 1954)
• ASIN: B0013FUINU
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)

More About the Author

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gender-bending saga of three centuries, December 29, 2003

By 

A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Orlando: A Biography (Paperback)

"Orlando" is a fictional biography whose subject in the beginning is a sixteen-year-old boy in the Elizabethan era and in the end -- three hundred years later -- is a thirty-six-year-old woman. This is not a novel about transsexuality, as such a premise would indicate, but it is a statement about sexual identity and gender roles in English society as only an author like Virginia Woolf could make, territory not even the brazen D.H. Lawrence could traverse with much confidence. It is a lyrical tour de force in which Woolf displays her considerable talent for subtly describing moods and scenery, but most surprisingly, it demonstrates her sly sense of humor and satire.

Orlando's gender alteration is naturally the central event of his preternaturally long life, but his aging only twenty years over a course of three centuries is certainly no less bizarre. To describe the circumstances under which he becomes a woman or explain the logic by which he ages so slowly would be giving away too much in this review, nor would it really help to recommend the novel to one who is not yet persuaded to read it, so I will be silent on that account, saying only that these outrageous devices fully succeed as vehicles to explore Woolf's theme of femininity with respect to English cultural and historical frames of reference.

The novel examines the effect of gender alteration on Orlando's amorous and professional capacities. As a young nobleman in the Elizabethan court whose interests are swordsmanship and poetry, he is engaged to an aristocratic Irish girl, has a torrid affair with a Russian princess, and meets a silly woman who, resembling nothing so much as a hare, calls herself the Archduchess Harriet. After serving as an ambassador in Turkey, Orlando becomes a woman, joins a band of gypsies, and returns to England where he (she) must handle the legalities regarding his dukeship because of his new gender. As a woman, he manages to gain the romantic attentions of famous writers like Pope, Dryden, and Swift before eventually marrying and having a son. Some surprises ensue, but let it suffice to say that Orlando is not the only androgynous character in the novel.

An underlying, and highly controversial, implication is that every human being harbors aspects of both genders, mainly psychological, but Woolf goes so far as to make them physical in order to press the point. Although the idea may seem tame now, "Orlando" may have set a precedent for cross-gender role-playing when it was first published in 1928. The novel is very much ahead of its time; it has a sort of nonchalant sophistication that characterizes the type of magical realism that was to become a large part of European-influenced literature throughout the rest of the twentieth century. My admiration for Virginia Woolf only increases with each novel of hers that I read, and "Orlando" is in my opinion the best yet.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Looking for something good to read? Check this one out..., November 17, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Orlando: A Biography (Paperback)

John Irving ("World According to Garp") wrote an essay on
Charles Dickens book "Great Expectations" in which he said
that that book was the first book he had ever read that he
wished he had written. For me the first book that I had read that I wished
I had written is "Orlando" by Virgina Woolf. It blew me
away. I had seen the movie version a few years ago, and
recently found it in a bookstore, so I decided to check it out.
It's subtitle is "A Biography" and although it is based (very
loosely, I'm sure) on someone's actual life, it becomes clear
to the reader that this is definitely a work of fiction.
The reason that I enjoyed it so much is, well, let me put it
this way...Charles Dickens and John Irving were and are storytellers,
very wonderful, brilliant storytellers, but Virgina Woolf is (well, was)
an amazing artist. I don't go for poetry that much, I'm a prose
kind of guy, but "Orlando" for me, was the very best kind of poetry but
written as a narrative. Read this book. And let me know what you think...

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wild tromp through literary history, June 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Orlando: A Biography (Paperback)

Orlando is simply wonderful. In the novel, Woolf uses the character of Orlando, a person who lives through four centuries as man sometimes and woman sometimes. The term biography might throw you, since Orlando is no normal biography. Woolf personifies literary thought as a person (hence the timelessness and gender changing capability). She depicts Elizabethan times through the early twentieth century with wit and sarcasm. The more that you've read of English literature from Shakespeare forward the more you will catch the little jokes and the reason for why certain things happen. A very enjoyable read. The film version is not exactly the same, so I recommend sticking to the book.