Full Details
RYO Review: Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Hogarth Press, 1928
Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Mild
Ace/Genderqueer characters: Yes
Rating: PG
Writing style: 3/5
Likable characters: 4/5
Plot/Concepts: 4/5
Orlando was a nobleman by birth, although all he really wanted was to be a poet. Throughout his years as a man he experiences love, lust, and loss, until one day he wakes up in a female body and must go about his/her life just the same. She quickly learns the ridiculous restrictions of behavior based on sex, but her goal remains… to transcend so much of life while still finding an anchor to hold on to.
Written as a fictitious biography, Orlando was apparently a love letter of sorts to Virginia Woolf‘s lover and friend, Vita. As such it has a logic (or lack thereof) all its own, verging on farce and fantasy. Most aspects of Orlando’s life are ordinary for the time she lives in—the most noticeably unusual thing is that the body she inhabits transcends both sex and age, allowing her to experience three centuries despite only calling herself thirty-something years of age. This can be taken as psychological symbolism or literal (and completely unexplained) magic. The important thing is that I found Orlando’s experience with gender and life’s deepest questions to be relatable even when made difficult through flowery run-on prose.
