By Michaele Jordan: Ready for a Blast from the Past?

Try Orlando, a Biography by Virginia Woolf.

I suppose I should admit up front that I didn’t care much for this book. But many of you might. The subject matter is provocative, the issue still timely, despite a 1928 publication date, and Ms. Woolf is  a truly splendid writer. Her descriptions in the lyrical passages take ones breath away.  Orlando, a Biography, by Virginia Woolf begins, appropriately, in about 1560 (No date is given – at least one commentator places the date as late as 1588.)

Why, appropriately?  At that time, Queen Elizabeth I, was also suffering gender issues. She was only the second English queen to rule in her own right, and her half sister Mary had not fared well in the job. She was always seen as a woman doing a man’s job, and felt a need to avoid the traditional definitions of a woman’s role: marriage and motherhood. Although the queen would never marry, lest a husband subvert her power, she took a great interest in handsome young men. This we know.

The book opens with the young Orlando throwing on some fresh clothes and tearing down the steps to serve the visiting queen. He kneels before her, bowing his head and offering her a bowl of rose water. 

It’s an odd moment, as neither can see the other’s face, and yet the meeting is all about her appreciation of his personal beauty. (There are also, not one but two, startling references to the queen’s yellow eyes — yellow eyes? Ms. Woolf usually keeps close to the known facts, but portraits and letters alike assure us the queen had dark eyes.) The queen is charmed, brings him to court, and showers him with gifts and honors. But when she spots him kissing a pretty girl in the corridor, she dismisses him from her service.

He remained in or near London until 1607, when a great carnival, or Frost Fair, was held on (not over, or next to, but on top of) the Thames, which was frozen to a depth of twenty feet. King James (who paid for the carnival as a public service) stepped out to see the porpoise frozen deep under the surface.

Orlando was there. And so was the ship which had transported the Russian diplomatic team, including the Russian princess, Sasha. Orlando saw the lady skating toward him across the ice, and lost his heart on the spot.

Sasha spoke no English, and Orlando no Russian, so they conversed in that most romantic of tongues: French. Soon they were madly in love, and planning to elope.

Orlando was so nervous and eager that he arrived for the rendezvous more than an hour early. He paced and fretted and, when midnight finally came, he counted each stroke of the church bell. And then it was midnight, and she had not come. He continued to wait for hours in the cold, pouring rain. The next day he saw that the ice had broken and the Russian ship had sailed.

He fled London and went home. What else could he do? He fell into bed and slept – deeply, as if in a coma – for a week.

 He lay as if in a trance, without perceptible breathing; and though dogs were set to bark under his window; cymbals, drums, bones beaten perpetually in his room; a gorse bush put under his pillow; and mustard plasters applied to his feet, still he did not wake, take food, or show any sign of life for seven whole days. On the seventh day he woke at his usual time . . . he showed no consciousness of any such trance, but dressed himself and sent for his horse . . . Yet some change, it was suspected, must have taken place [for] . . . he appeared to have an imperfect recollection of his past life . . . Had Orlando, worn out by the extremity of his suffering, died for a week, and then come to life again?

Many commentators assure us that at this point he was changed to a woman, but you will note that the text does not say so. (Just the opposite – that revelation remains a long way off.) His pronouns remained masculine. Whatever their gender, Orlando never made any comment on the change, and neither did anyone else; instead he remained in seclusion, wandering the corridors at night, bewailing the treachery of women and scaring the servants. 

So it was, and Orlando would sit by himself, reading, a naked man.

He read a lot – but then he always did.  He returned to his writing.  He had drawers and drawers full of his manuscripts. But his only work which seemed to matter to him was a poem he wrote in his boyhood, The Oak Tree. He invited writers to his home, and established writing circles. The writers he cultivated – and even gave pensions – took his money and badmouthed him, not just behind his back but in public print. Everything he touched turned to sludge.

Thus, at the age of thirty, or thereabouts, this young Nobleman had not only had every experience that life has to offer, but had seen the worthlessness of them all. Love and ambition, women and poets were all equally vain. Literature was a farce. The night after reading Greene’s Visit to a Nobleman in the Country, he burnt in a great conflagration fifty-seven poetical works, only retaining ‘The Oak Tree’, which was his boyish dream and very short.

Thirty? Assuming that he was in his teens when he first met the elderly queen (and so born around 1545), then he should have been in his sixties or at least his fifties if we go with later opening date. I’m guessing that it was not an error on Ms. Woolf’s part, but a reference to his failure to age.

He remained at home for some while, and come June, became enraptured with nature (as, I suspect, was Ms. Woolf, for she rhapsodizes at considerable length. She also includes extensive philosophical musings.)

King Charles (presumably the 2^nd, as the first was executed) then appointed Orlando Ambassador to Constantinople. This was an indisputably male role, indicating that whatever their true gender, Orlando was publicly presenting as a man. While in Constantinople, he occasionally had women hauled up on a rope to his balcony window. He was awarded a Dukedom.

It is only now, at this late date that it is acknowledged what everybody has been waiting for. Orlando fell back into a coma – just as the Turks rebelled against the Sultan, and set the town on fire. There is a bizarre little scene of various feminine muses, prancing around and proclaiming that truth must be silenced.

The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast:– ‘THE TRUTH! at which Orlando woke. He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess–he was a woman.

For awhile, Orlando assumed feminine pronouns, and went to live with a band of Romani who declared her one of them, and taught her stealing and cheese-making. She went back to reveling in the beauty of nature, despite the disapproval of the Romani. Nor were they impressed by descriptions of her mansion back in England. She experienced a vision of green lawns, and decided to go home.

She put on women’s clothes, and wondered if it would be possible to swim in them. And began to chafe under the restrictions that bound women. And discovered she was still attracted to them. She started at the courtesies men offered her, but came to accept the attentions of the ship’s Captain. Once home she discovered she was party to numerous law suits.

The chief charges against her were (1) that she was dead, and therefore could not hold any property whatsoever; (2) that she was a woman, which amounts to much the same thing; (3) that she was an English Duke who had married one Rosina Pepita, a dancer; and had had by her three sons, which sons now declaring that their father was deceased, claimed that all his property descended to them. Such grave charges as these would, of course, take time and money to dispose of.

But her household – servants and animals alike – knew her and welcomed her home. She went back to her writing. The Archduchess from her past reappeared to her considerable annoyance.,ith the salver, and behold–in her place stood a tall gentleman in black. A heap of clothes lay in the fender. She was alone with a man.

Now, that I didn’t see coming. The Archduchess, or rather the Archduke, declared passionate love, claiming that he had been posing as a woman for years to get closer to Orlando, and begged her to run away with him to Romania. She was not impressed, and went to considerable pains (including dropping dead insects into his tea) to dissuade him.

What’s the good of being a fine young woman in the prime of life’, she asked, ‘if I have to pass all my mornings watching blue-bottles with an Archduke?’

He had barely departed – with promises to return – before she called a coach and set off to London, where she discovered that high society is boring.  So she tried to write some poetry, but spilled ink all over it. Then she found herself noticing people’s wedding rings. It seemed as if everyone else in the world was mated. She went for a walk. And walked and walked, until she tripped and fell.

A man, a Sea Captain on horseback appeared to assist her and within minutes they were engaged. He recognized her as a man, (although the courts had declared her female, unable to own property). She recognized him as a woman, for no clear reason. They married, (later it is mentioned she had a child) and he sailed off to the Horn. She discovered bookstores. Wandering around the city, she bumped into old acquaintances including that long lost first love, Sasha, now rich and fat. (No comment is made that she must have been as old as Orlando.)

So she went home – she was always going home, she was bound to the place. She was surrounded by swirling memories. And, once more she heard the bells toll midnight.

At this point, I should conclude with some remarks about what all this meant. But that seems so unnecessary. Perhaps back in 1928, when this book was written, the statement that a woman could do pretty much anything a man could do may have been startling, questionable. But not today.

And then there’s the movie. Although I am admirer of Tilda Swinton’s work, I found her utterly unconvincing as a man. The movie attempts to stick to the book, pecking at various incidents from the text, but cannot do justice to any of them within the minimal amount of time available. (The book is 300 pages long; the movie, 94 minutes). Plus, the movie was made in 1992, and, since Orlando is essentially immortal, it could not stop at 1928.  So World War II is squeezed in before the end, which included a tender lovers-in-bed scene, followed somewhat later by Orlando driving a motorbike with a child in a sidecar. I said above that I didn’t care for the book, but even so I gave it credit for excellent writing, and a solid point. The movie, however, was just plain stupid (in my not-in-the-least-bit-humble opinion).