In Memoriam
Father
July 25, 1929 - Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2014
Orlando: A Biography© by Virginia Woolf is a
difficult review for me. I appreciated Woolf's sublime literary sense
and yet I couldn't say the book was without a bit of disconnect. First a synopsis.
The novel centers around
Orlando, from his youth in an aristocratic family with access to the
Queen, to his marriage - as a woman of about 35 years of age - to a
ships captain a mere 350 years after his youth. Yes that's right,
Orlando changes from a man to a woman and lives approximately 350 years.
For me, these characteristics of the book are an important extending of
the concept of fictive writing.
Both the case of Orlando's male/female being and the case of settings spanning across a few centuries
add, in an evincing way, to the humane sensibility which seems
to most concern literature. The effect isn't radically innovative but
rather additional in its ability to evoke. In the case of Orlando's
gender change, when reading of separate male/female characters, gender
aspects can be 'glossed-over' by readers. Orlando, as a singular
character of yet different gender - is, if subtlety so, noticeably more
availing and gritty as a man and noticeably more thoughtful yet reticent
as a woman. Similarly, - through the spanning of 300+ years - Woolf
delineates societal changes more noticeable than could be done by
detailing societal relationships within the timespan of only 1 or 2
lives, 60 or 70 years. Whether the the reader agrees with the
characterizing and conclusions of these gender and era differences is a
question separate from the evocativeness of Woolf's portrayal.
The setting of the novel is mostly of Britain and it's society. It
seemed obvious to me that she harbored a deep love for Britain - its
people, it's class structure of aristocracy and commoner, and most
obviously its natural, urban, and rural, geography. Time and again I
was enticed by the depictions of a liveliness, warmth - even in
drunkenness - and a social security which characterized Woolf's
Britain. The countryside was a frequent escape for a forlorn Orlando,
and it was always beautifully depicted.
The book is as much
humorous with satire and absurdity as it is with a sublime literary
aesthetic. Here, Orlando is a male and is smitten:
"Images,
metaphors of the most extreme and extravagant twined and twisted in his
mind. He called her a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree . . ."1
Here, her future husband - Orlando is now a woman - and her meet for
the first time. She's sitting under an oak tree, ankle broken. He's come upon her while riding a horse and has pulled the horse to a
stop:
"Madam," the man cried, leaping to the ground, "you're hurt!"
"I'm dead Sir!" she replied."
A few minutes later they became engaged.2
The humor is not unfunny and the satire is forgiving rather than
biting, but the contrast with the more profound style and elements of
the book was such that trying to harmonize - connect - the two gave me a headache. I
finally settled on labeling the humor as somewhat sophomoric and
silly. Maybe you could say the humor derived from an 'aristocratic
guilt'; The humor seemed inclined to, sophomorically, assuage some
disdain of aristocratic pompousness, although, for me, the pompousness
of aristocracy seems trite and cliched.
Overall, the book is as good as the reputation of its author, Virginia Woolf, would suggest but it is not without lapses.
1Orlando; A Biography, Virginia Woolf, ©Leonard Woolf 1956, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, pg .28
2 Ibid, pg. 183