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Orlando
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Orlando
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Orlando
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Orlando

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928.

A high-spirited romp inspired by the tumultuous family history of Woolf's close friend, the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, it is arguably one of Woolf's most popular and accessible novels: 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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 16, 2015
ISBN9788892508200
Author

Virginia Woolf

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, including Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando.

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Rating: 3.8991005679595276 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A surreal novel, unmoored from conventional time framework, centred on an immortal, sometimes male and sometimes female. Woolf was a highly skilled writer, and though the work is sometimes entertaining, overall, I found this exercise dull.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Biological Constructs: "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf(Original Review, 2002-06-18)I’m probably in a minority, but I find Woolf hugely overrated. A snob in the way that Wilde was a snob before her, sucking up to the wealthy and titled and, like Wilde, happy to be unfaithful if it ingratiated her with the gentry. People go on about ‘a room of one’s own’ but have they read the whole piece? She thought only a few superior personages should be allowed to write, and then only for a select audience.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was a joy to read. Exuberant, fanciful, exemplifying literature at its finest. This semi-biographical novel is partly based on the life of Vita Sackville-West, an intimate friend of Woolf. Orlando is a character who is liberated from the restraints of time and gender. He starts as a young nobleman in the Elizabethan era and ends as a modern woman three hundred years later. Woolf explores the theme of femininity and roles of men and women within certain cultural (English mainly and Oriental) and historical contexts through some bizarre and outrageous devices (e.g. Orlando is not the only androgynous character). The reader is taken on a wild and playful ride, from his days as a young steward of the queen and on the throes of passion for a Russian princess, his devastation on her desertion, to a period of ambassadorship in Constantinople where he awakes one day as a woman, to time spent with the gypsies, and eventually, to her return to modern-day England. The 2 constant things through all this was her passion for writing, and search for love -- the fulfillment of which she finally found towards the end of her 300-year journey (signifying the drastic difference of the social milieu and implications for women in general). The novel is full of wit, and where Orlando has moments of ambiguity and confusion (owing mostly to social restraints of the era) -- which she would after a round of internal debate, invariably junk, i found hilarious. This publication of this book in 1928, was a hallmark in literature, especially in regard to women's writing and gender studies, for obvious reasons.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Orlando features less of the beautiful prose passages that I associate with Woolf's writing than her other works, which leaves the story to carry much of the burden. Unlike Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse (and I suspect The Waves, which I shall read shortly), there is an actual story here focusing on the life of the titular Orlando. Orlando occupies a strange semi-supernatural role where both sex and gender shift and the years pass without leaving much trace. It's an interesting center for the story in theory, though in practice I found Orlando to be a rather uninteresting character who goes from a pining youth to a married woman without inspiring much interest or sympathy from me. The character exists in different time periods more than s/he lives in them, making the different ages mere window dressing. Eventually the book ends, though it doesn't feel so much like the story has concluded as it does that Woolf thought she had written enough.

    Decidedly different from most Woolf in both style and substance, I thought this one was alright.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The story begins with Orlando as a passionate young nobleman in Queen Elizabeth's court. By the end, Orlando is a 36-year-old woman three centuries later. Orlando witnesses the making of history from its edge. A close examination of the nature of sexuality and the changing climate of the passing centuries. Very novel and engaging if a bit loose-ended at times.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It’s a mistake to reduce this book, as Vita Sackville-West’s son did, to ‘the longest and most charming love letter in literature’. I hate that characterization. While clearly inspired (and dedicated) to her lover for a few years in the mid 1920’s, an affair that neither husband apparently objected to, this book is far more than that. In ‘Orlando’ Woolf explores the individual’s role in society, what it means to be a woman or a man, what it means to be rich, and in short, what it means to live. Along the way she is whimsical, fantastical, and progressive in both her experimental prose, and her feminism. This is a profound book, not a simple expression of adoration. Much is made of Orlando ‘magically’ transforming into a woman midway through the book, and in the fact that he, then she, lives for hundreds of years, both of which are completely unexplained by Woolf. In having Orlando transform into a woman, and in describing her later as having multiple selves, all at the same time, Woolf explodes the view that we as individuals are one thing, or need to define ourselves that way. In having Orlando live for centuries, she shows that cultural norms will change, and that even though we may not always perceive that fact, we can open our minds, live unconstrained, and embrace progress. Included in what’s arbitrary are clothing and sexual preference, which is liberating. At the same time, the book is sentimental at times. Written at age 46, Woolf both remembered her past through mature eyes, and had a better understanding of her own mortality. This manifests itself in Orlando’s character as having her essentially be middle-aged across centuries, observing changes in London, society, and scientific progress, while occasionally calling up memories from long ago. This puts our situation as individuals with relatively short lives in extremis, magnifying the act of recollection and memory that normally spans decades, and yet also shows the thread of humanity at large continuing on through all these years.Woolf was troubled, having suffered sexual abuse by two older half-brothers growing up, and headaches throughout her life which culminated in occasional breakdowns, and her tragic suicide at age 59. Read her words, look at the beautiful pictures of Vita which illustrate the book, particularly “Orlando on her return to England”, and enjoy her moment in the sun.Quotes:On how complex individuals are; I loved this one, especially with the tongue-in-cheek ‘unwieldy length of this sentence’:“Nature, who has played so many queer tricks upon us, making us so unequally of clay and diamonds, of rainbow and granite, and stuffed them into a case, often of the most incongruous, for the poet has a butcher’s face and the butcher’s a poet’s; nature, who delights in muddle and mystery, so that even now (the first of November, 1927) we know not why we go upstairs, or why we come down again, our most daily movements are like the passage of a ship on an unknown sea, and the sailors at the mast-head ask, pointing their glasses to the horizon: Is there land or is there none? to which, if we are prophets, we make answer ‘Yes’; if we are truthful we say ‘No’; nature, who has so much to answer for besides the perhaps unwieldy length of this sentence, has further complicated her task and added to our confusion by providing not only a perfect ragbag of odds and ends within us – a piece of a policeman’s trousers lying cheek by jowl with Queen Alexandra’s wedding veil – but has contrived that the whole assortment shall be lightly stitched together by a single thread. Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind. Instead of being a single, downright, bluff piece of work of which no man need feel ashamed, our commonest deeds are set about with a fluttering and flickering of wings, a rising and falling of lights.”On memories, and the art of life:“’Time has passed over me,’ she thought, trying to collect herself; ‘this is the oncome of middle age. How strange it is! Nothing is any longer one thing. I take up a handbag and I think of an old bumboat woman frozen in the ice. Someone lights a pink candle and I see a girl in Russian trousers. When I step out of doors – as I do now,’ here she stepped on to the pavement of Oxford Street, ‘what is it that I taste? Little herbs. I hear goat bells. I see mountains. Turkey? India? Persia?’ Her eyes filled with tears.That Orlando had gone a little too far from the present moment will, perhaps, strike the reader who sees her now preparing to get into her motor car with her eyes full of tears and visions of Persian mountains. And indeed, it cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of the art of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat simultaneously in every normal human system so that when eleven strikes, all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent disruption nor completely forgotten in the past.”On the rich:“Looked at from the gipsy point of view, a Duke, Orlando understood, was nothing but a profiteer or robber who snatched land money from people who rated these things of little worth, and could think of nothing better to do than to build three hundred and sixty-five bedrooms when one was enough, and none was even better than one. She could not deny that her ancestors had accumulated field after field; house after house; honour after honour; yet had none of them been saints or heroes, or great benefactors of the human race.”On scientific progress:“The very fabric of life now, she thought, as she rose, is magic. In the eighteenth century, we knew how everything was done; but here I rise through the air; I listen to voices in America; I see men flying – but how it’s done, I can’t even begin to wonder. So my belief in magic returns.”On sex, I loved how she put this:“In short, they acted the parts of man and woman for ten minutes with great vigour and then fell into natural discourse.”On sexual identity:“The difference between the sexes is, happily, one of great profundity. Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep beneath. It was a change in Orlando herself that dictated her choice of a woman’s dress and of a woman’s sex. And perhaps in this she was only expressing more openly than usual – openness indeed was the soul of her nature – something that happens to most people without being thus plainly expressed. For here again, we come to a dilemma. Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above. Of the complications and confusions which thus result every one has had experience…”
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Woolf presents a satirical biography of Orlando, a young man who lives for over 300 years and has a mysterious transformation into being a women along the way. It's never clear how it is Orlando is able to gain this immortality (perhaps his obsession with thought, words, poetry?) or how it is that Orlando becomes a woman, which worked for the way the story unfolded. I really wanted to be charmed by this, as I had been with other books by Woolf, but whereas the vibrancy of language and compactness of the stories in both To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway delighted me, Orlando failed to hold my attention. Also, I was deeply bothered the racism within the book, particularly the opening scene (in which Orlando toys with the head of a nameless dead Moor), but also by the Orientalism in the scenes in Turkey and the portrayal of the "gipsies." The fact that the story was "of it's time" is not enough to shake the unsettled feeling from me.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    about a person that changes genders and lives over several centuries
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    On the back cover it states that this is one of Virginia Woolf's most popular and entertaining works. Last year I had read Mrs. Dalloway, my first Woolf, and enjoyed it a lot more.(VERY MILD SPOILERS)The book was interesting, but it didn't grip me. It is a fantastical biography about Orlando, starting with him as a 16-yr old boy sometime in the 1500's, who eventually turns into a woman (I don't think this is a spoiler - it's written on the back of the book...), and is still a relatively young woman when the novel ends in 1928. Orlando is rich with a large estate and is in good favor with the Queen. He has a romance with a Russian princess (at least we think she is), and many others, gets to be Ambassador to Turkey, turns into a woman, has more affairs, and so on.There was lots of just the narrator stepping in and saying how this part is boring. Also, there were some confusing bits, like at one point I think she got pregnant, but it wasn't really clear. But then years later (I think) she gives birth. And then no mention of her child. I was used to that a bit from Mrs. Dalloway, but it was a lot worse in this book.It took me a lot longer to read than it should have; I figured I definitely would have finished it by the end of the year, but it just dragged on and on, and it was a chore to finish.I haven't said a lot of good things about the book, and I'm sorry about that. There were interesting parts here and there, and it did spawn a neat movie, but all in all, I didn't think it was that great.I'm going to give it 3 stars; I'm vacillating a bit, quite ambivalent about it, but I think that's what it should get on my scale.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Everyone in our book circle agreed that this was a funny book, not what you would expect from Woolf, but it is after all a gloss on Vita Sackville-West and Woolf's complicated relationship with her. What is impressive: Well, for one, the brilliant evocation of such different times across the four and a half centuries of Orlando's existence. As Karenmarie mentioned, the evocation of a frozen Thames and the celebrations on the ice, and then the breakup and disaster that came after, are beautifully realized. And this continues through the coming times, in England and in Constantinople and in the gypsy camp. Then there are the changing attitudes toward women in society that Orlando lives through and adjusts to. And there are the sly sideswipes and writers past and present, which in some cases were laugh-out-loud funny.My edition had notes in the back to help readers who don't know the historical references. Sometimes they were a bit overdone, but often helpful.Sometimes it feels a bit like an adult fairy tale, or a fantasy adventure. Sackville-West's life has something to do with that, but to read this only as a roman-a-clef would do it an injustice. So much daring in Woolf's time and before had to do with breaking conventions that deserved to be broken, it's hardly avoidable to see this as a social commentary as well as a romp.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is one of a kind; I have heard people condemn the book vehemently but I myself enjoyed it tremendously.The key to enjoying the book is to recognize the humour; I've laughed out loud at many of the passages. If the humour is not the kind you appreciate or even recognize you will surely dislike the book as much as I like it.The lengthy paragraphs are a deliberate device of the author. It is an intriguing introduction to English literature; I found myself a good deal more interested in the Augustan poets after I finished the book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I didn't particularly enjoy Virginia Woolf's "Orlando". It was a rather fantastical yet dull story.... and I really wasn't able to discern what Woolf was trying to say.There are a few brilliant passages of prose -- particularly the part with the frozen river Thames. The story is of a man who turns into a woman and then lives 300 years.... I'm not sure what the point of it all was. This is the fourth Woolf book I've read and she clearly isn't a good match for me. I only really enjoyed "The Years," which has a much more traditional narrative and style. There are several authors that I feel like I'm just not smart enough to understand and Woolf is among them.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I struggled with this. I always expect to love Virginia Woolf's novels but the stream of consciousness style is a bit of a chore for me, ashamed as I am to admit it. There were a lot of in-jokes in this and I felt a very strong sense of nudging or smirking from the author, which I tired of. It seems like she wrote it for her inner circle and I consequently felt excluded from full enjoyment of it. That said, it is a cleverly crafted farce with exploration of gender roles which would have been ground-breaking at the time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a great book, extremely well written and the storyline is interesting. Orlando, who is Elizabeth I's favourite pet companion, lives an adventurous life through the following ages and centuries, in different nations. His/her change of gender in Turkey sends her into a confusion of the genres, whilst reflecting the ages' preoccupations. Whilst elevated, the language is lyrical, sometimes poetical and practical, with a focus on Orlando's own narrative inner voice, her reflections on life, society and her role within a seemingly linear chronology.Orlando's life is a reflection of Vita Sackville West's familiar grounds and life. Some readers may interpret the book as a declaration of love or as a philosophical discussion about gender and a nation's historical changes through Orlando's life. It is open to interpretation and it is well worth reading the book for the multitude of questions it opens. A highly recommended classic.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A fantastic novel in which a young courtier from the time of Elizabeth magically lives for four centuries without aging, even more magically changing sex from man to woman halfway through. This humorous book satirizes the politics of all the eras Orlando lives through, and more so challenges the gender roles across time. Very different from any other Woolf novel I've read. Sally Potter made an excellent film based on the novel staring Tilda Swinton as Orlando, but definitely read the book first.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a glorious explosion of a book and I loved every sentence of it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Where I got the book: public domain freebie on Kindle.This is one of those novels I've been promising myself I'd read for years, especially after visiting Knole Castle where Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West grew up and which provided the inspiration and location of this tale of a man-or-is-it-woman with many lives. It also houses the manuscript, so you can see just how hard Woolf worked on her prose which is GLORIOUS.This novel is just...Sublime.Weird.Funny.Tragic.Quotable.Luminous.Picturesque.Driven.And a good many other adjectives. I remember once reading an extract from Woolf's diary where she describes her writing as being like those times when you go to the loo and have an endless crap; you think you're done and then another lot comes out, and another. This was a writer who wrote because she couldn't help herself and when she wasn't writing, she read, endlessly. And if she couldn't read or write she thought. Her head must have been like heaven and hell at the same time.And that somehow gets into Orlando: the voices, the ages, the fear of death, the fear of life, the striving for immortality and the knowledge that immortality is a tragedy. Woolf understands that gender is just happenstance, and that we've all got a bit of both sexes inside us; so she makes her main character both male and female and points out that the female version is by her very nature less free. And at the center of the action is the great house that endures through the centuries, changing but never changing. The Sackvilles still live there, and visitors are told that if they hear children's voices, it's not ghosts; it's people, occupying a space that's been in their family since 1566. Ain't that grand?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a great novel. Witty, clever and a great conceit. Too bad the rest of her novels aren't so good to read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is by far one of Woolf's most entertaining novels. Her exploration of androgyny, gender, class and feminism leaves one at once amused and fantastically intrigued.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    'The longest and most charming love letter in literature.’Virginia Woolf’s Orlando is the well known story an English Nobleman who works for the Queen in Elizabethan times. He has his heart broken by a Russian princess, and so he decides to leave the country. He becomes an ambassador for England in the city of Constantinople. During a fight in Constantinople, Orlando falls into a deep sleep, awakening days later as a woman. The novel then returns to England, where Orlando must take her place as an English woman in 19th century society.I'm not entirely sure this book was for me. The more I reflect on reading it, the more I'm not entirely sure I enjoyed it. I have only read one other book by Virginia Woolf and that was Mrs Dalloway, and that too gives me that same sense of “what did I just read?” I guess my feelings are partly due to Woolf’s stream of consciousness style. It’s very quick and I sometimes felt lost, like I was reading pages and pages and wasn’t entirely sure what the point was. I put this book down so many times and it took me a good while to finish it.That being said, I still think Orlando is a pretty interesting work, and I much prefer it to Mrs Dalloway. Orlando has a lot to say about women and the way women are treated. The story is written as a love letter to Vita Sackville-West, a woman Virginia Woolf had an affair with. It shows the passion of the Elizabethan age as well as both resenting and craving the idea of love.It is written in a very experimental style, it has a biographical feel to it, and I liked the elements in which the narrator stepped in to say a few words. It was full of wit and humour, as well as telling a very tender love story. It has very beautiful writing and imagery, but I still found it a very strange book to read.There is also a rather interesting film adaptation with Tilda Swinton, and I have to say it does a pretty great job of converting the book to the screen. While this book may not have been entirely for me, I think it’s a really important piece of literature. It discusses a lot about writing and why people choose to write, and overall is an immensely influential piece of writing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is worth a read, especially when you consider that VW was writing this comic satire in the 1920s. An indictment of patriarchal society, this story will make you think about gender politics and just exactly what constitutes gender. Is it clothes? Societal expectation? Or something else entirely? Read and decide for yourself....
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    strange book, at times especially in the first half, very thoughtful. the character goes from being a man to a woman very interesting way of exploring gender roles. at times the novel was funny. the last part seemed to go on forever, it lost my interest. but I do want to see the movie!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ms. Woolf always writes a brilliant novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Virginia Woolf's most sustained work of narrative fiction is in fact a spoof biography of the Elizabethan lord Orlando who travels the years to the Twentieth Century while turning into a woman. A hymn of praise to the character of Vita Sackville-West.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I didn't realize that novels written in the twenties were allowed to be this fun. Instead of being a long, pretentious in-joke as I'd feared (it's adapted from Vita Sackville-West's biography), it's part decadent fairy tale and part meditation on the history of English culture and literature. And 100% awesome, which is what's important. Every sentence is crazily beautiful and perfectly formed.

    I think it's really much more of a love letter to England than VSW, or maybe to England as it was personified in VSW.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was the first novel by Woolf that I read, and her masterful skill with words held my attention, which is impressive, considering that the plot of this story begins with Orlando, a young boy, and ends hundreds of years later with Orlando, a mature woman. Orlando, the same person. Woolf offers no apologies for the passage of years, and only a very funny "explanation" of how Orlando changes gender midlife. The book claims to be a biography, and this tongue-in-cheek premise sets the stage for the droll humor that permeates the rest of the novel. Yet the novel manages to be profound and dramatic within this construct.Nevertheless, Woolf's language play is even more incredible than the storyline. She creates metaphors that are poetry in prose, and her creative use of lists is another strong technique. She also uses some very clever allusions. I love the characters Purity, Temperance, and Chastity, who physically make an appearance when Orlando changes gender and try to cover her, while cleverly providing a reason for Woolf not to describe how the miracle takes place. Her writing is lyrical.I read this book twice. First, just because I wanted to, and the second time for a group read. I'm very glad that I read it a second time. The first time, I was captivated by her use of words, but the story lost me several times, and I put it down frequently. The second time, already knowing what to expect plot wise, I was able to appreciate the craft of the novel, and at the same time, understand the story and characters more deeply and stay focused. This book has a lot to offer. Orlando's life spans several ages of London life, from Queen Elizabeth, through James and Victoria, and through the eyes of her main character, Woolf offers interesting criticism of each. Her perspective on gender is another central theme, which she can explore from two angles, thanks to her character's unique personality. Not content with those broad motifs, Woolf further ponders the themes of love and life. With her language, intriguing characters, and complex themes and metaphors, this story is well worth a read, and then another, to fully appreciate this work from Virginia Woolf.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Just an outright joy of writing read of a novel that plays with time and love. It can be read as something resembling fantasy/science fiction - it can also serve as a nice break from her more challenging books.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Vreemde pseudobiografie van personage dat door de eeuwen heen van geslacht veranderd. Mijmering over de vrouwelijke (en menselijke) conditie. Fascinerend en wervelend geschreven, maar niet helemaal my cup of tea.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Orlando is a man attracted to a Russian woman in trousers who looks like a man. A despondent Orlando goes to Turkey as an ambassador and emerges as a woman. Orlando is pursued by a man who is a woman. Orlando falls in love with a man and in a bizarre sequence they confess to each other that they are the other sex. But they remain the sex in which they presented themselves to each other, get married, and Orlando has a baby. Oh, and all this takes over three centuries. It's easy to see why Virginia Woolf is admired by modernists, litarati and feminists. Woolf transitions seamlessly between gender and centuries in a classic of modernism that can just as easily be labeled postmodern today.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A quote from one of my favorite Woolf novels and one of my favorite books of all time:"Different though the sexes are, the intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what is above."