How did Virginia Woolf’s Orlando become an iconic piece of queer media?
By Manini Manushi Gangal
Orlando’s status as an iconic piece of queer media is rooted within the swirling context of Virginia Woolf’s relationship with Vita Sackville-West. As friends and lovers, Woolf and Sackville-West were part of the Bloomsbury Group who rejected social norms surrounding sexuality and gender roles. Famed and revered among queer discourse for their love letters and brazen affair, Orlando is arguably Woolf’s most intimate exploration of Sackville-West’s life; Sackville-West’s son wrote that the novel “explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries, tosses her from one sex to the other, plays with her (…) teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her.” Orlando was based on Vita Sackville-West’s aristocratic family history, and follows the titular character Orlando who is born as a male nobleman; we meet him in Chapter One as a teenage boy in the Elizabethan court serving as a ‘favourite’ page of the elderly queen.
In Chapter 3 Orlando, at the age of 30, wakes up as a woman with no reason provided, and while the narrative voice demonstrates some confusion at this change, Orlando herself does not resist and accepts it. This point in the novel also marks the beginning of her romantic involvement with people of varying genders while remaining biologically female for the remainder of the novel. It is suggested that a Romani witch caused Orlando’s transformation, perhaps referencing Vita Sackville-West’s fascination with the Romani people.
Woolf unabashedly uses Orlando’s character as a vessel for Vita’s experiences: Orlando remains an English aristocrat as she cannot adjust to the nomadic lifestyle of the Romani caravan; Vita fantasised about joining a Romani caravan, but did not wish to relinquish her lifestyle or be subjected to discrimination. In this manner, Woolf depicts the intersectionality of minoritised experiences; Orlando is a queer, yet privileged, individual who retains agency over society’s perception of her, just as Vita managed to avoid the Romani peoples’ struggles. Perhaps Woolf meant to depict this crucial contrast: the Romani people did not have a say over the discrimination they faced. Furthermore, queer Romani individuals remained affected by intersectional discrimination, without Orlando/Vita’s class privilege to bolster their financial or social status.
Orlando is read as a feminist and class-critical novel, alongside its queer interpretations. While these readings are inherently intertwined due to the interwoven nature of marginalisation, Woolf weaves nuance into Orlando’s personhood by depicting her privilege. Readers might be inclined to imagine Orlando’s experiences were she not rich, white, or ‘appropriately’ feminine presenting after her transformation.
In Sackville-West’s letters to Woolf, Vita details her desire to be ‘equally strange and equally real’ with Woolf, which is also reflected in Orlando’s marriage to the gender-non-conforming sea captain Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine in the last chapter. Orlando credits the success of their marriage to the inherent understanding they share as genderqueer individuals, perhaps portraying Sackville-West and Woolf’s lifelong search for belonging and uninhibited acceptance. The parallels between Woolf’s intimate understanding of Vita, and Orlando’s contentment in being profoundly understood by Shelmerdine demonstrate the passion and authenticity Woolf embedded in Orlando, perhaps lending to its status as a queer masterpiece.
The novel spans over 300 years, from the Elizabethan era into the modern world without Orlando visibly aging beyond 30, a feature which allows Woolf to explore queer lives throughout history, and place Orlando’s experiences within vastly different social contexts. Some academics equip Judith Butler’s concepts of gender, performativity, and bodily agency, to imbibe additional meaning within Woolf’s work. With this lens, Orlando provides a critical analysis of the ‘implications’ of being a woman, which is well-contrasted with Orlando’s past experiences as a man, for example once she becomes a woman she notices her constraining women’s clothes and the impact that a flash of her bare ankle has on a sailor, who promptly falls to his death. She concludes that overall her new gender is an advantage to her: “Praise God I’m a woman!”, which is a powerful reclamation of her womanhood and autonomy. Furthermore, the transition between the genders, and Orlando’s consequent ‘cross-dressing’ in later chapters, portrays the principles of gender as performance, a concept which Butler’s work studies. Scholars such as Stokoe also credit Woolf for her satirical depiction of reductive gender norms, using humorous and fantastical scenarios to subvert ‘normal’ society. For example, Orlando as a woman comes across ‘Archduke Harry’ in Chapter 4, who she had previously met in Chapter 2, when she was a man, as the somewhat androgynous ‘Archduchess Harriet’. Ironically both Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 see the pair interact as ‘man’ and ‘woman’; they “acted the parts of man and woman for ten minutes with great vigor and then fell into natural discourse.” Woolf’s once again champions the self over the performance, lending to queer interpretations of the novel, which aligns with public interpretations of her intimate and multi-faceted relationship with Sackville-West.
Orlando has been adapted a number of times, for example in Ottinger’s 1981 film, Freak Orlando, and Wilson and Pinckney’s theatrical production, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1996. In 2022, Emma Corrin starred in Bartlett’s stage adaptation in London, which was described as ‘glorious’ and experienced success at the box office.
Woolf’s rompish source material has allowed for myriad depictions of Orlando’s frolicsome nature, and her novel has carved out a space for queer recognition throughout history.
Bibliography:
K. Blair, ‘Gypsies and Lesbian Desire: Vita Sackville-West, Violet Trefusis, and Virginia Woolf’ Twentieth Century Literature Volume 50 No. 2 (Summer, 2004).
H. Blamires, A Guide to twentieth century literature in English (London, Methuen, 1983).
D. Jays, ‘Orlando review – Emma Corrin is glorious in a giddy, heartfelt show’ (The Guardian, 5 December 2022) < https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/dec/05/orlando-review-emma-corrin-garrick-theatre-virginia-woolf>.
C. Patterson, ‘The queer love story behind Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’’ (Art UK, 13 February 2020).
K. Stokoe, ‘Fucking the Body, Rewriting the Text: Proto-Queer Embodiment through Textual Drag in Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928) and Monique Wittig's Le Corps lesbien (1973)’ Paragraph Volume 46 Issue 1 (2018).
V. Woolf, Orlando (1928).