Ms. Hen reviews Orlando

 

Orlando

Virginia Woolf

The Hogarth Press

1928

Ms. Hen has read this novel before, but she decided to read it again to refresh her memory of it. She originally read it after she graduated from college, but she doesn't remember which year that was. This is her favorite Virginia Woolf book.

This novel is a biography of Orlando, a duke who lives for over three hundred years, and starts as a man, then turns into a woman. No explanation exists why Orlando becomes a woman, but she does. When she is a woman, she is the same person she was as a man. Orlando strives for "Life, and a lover!" but she does not always get what she wants.

When Orlando is a man, he falls in love with Sasha, a beautiful Russian princess visiting England. She leaves the country, and devastates him. Orlando dreams of being a poet, and becomes friends with one to help him with his writing, but the duke becomes discouraged. Throughout his life, he strives for art and love. When Orlando is a woman, she understands that women are expected to only think of love, but that is not all she desires. 

When time passes, she becomes transfixed by the changes in England that occur around her. The eighteenth century turns into the nineteenth, with Queen Victoria and her values, and the twentieth century comes with motor cars and aeroplanes. The present day intoxicates Orlando so much that she becomes overwhelmed shopping for sheets in a department store.

The first time Ms. Hen read this, she wondered what Orlando would think of the rest of the twentieth century, and the twenty-first as well. So much has transformed in one hundred years, back then, they marveled over flying in the sky and cars, but now we've gone so far beyond that, both Orlando and Virginia would be stupefied. 

Virginia wrote this novel as a love letter to her lover Vita Sackville-West, an aristocratic woman she had an affair with while they were both married to men. Vita was smitten with Virginia, and they enjoyed each other's company. They remained friends after their affair was over.

This novel discusses subjects that were not talked about in the year it was published, 1928, such as gender issues, queer theory, and transgender characters. Ms. Hen likes to wonder what Virginia would think of today's society, with transgender issues at the forefront of discussion. Orlando, he/him, she/her, either is fine, they/them, but Orlando is what she is, and that's superb.