Woolf Seminar:
some notes onWriting, Writing Biography, Writing Fiction in Orlando:
All references are to the Harcourt Brace Harvest Books edition
chapter one chapter two chapter three chapter four chapter five chapter six
I. Chapter one16, 17, 18, 31, 47
Notice what attitudes toward writing and the project of writing a biography of someone appear throughout chapter one. What difficulties arise?
56-57 reference to Shakespeare’s Othello; Orlando feels the kind of murderous jealousy that Othello felt; is this a kind of satire on the notion of literature as any kind of morally uplifting (didactic) art (the Victorian view of literature, expressed by critics such as Matthew Arnold)
71, 75, 83-95 (Nick Greene; 93-94 satire on romanticism and on pastoral vision; Greene can’t sleep at Orlando’s estate because of the rural "silence"—needs hustle and bustle of London; Orlando becomes patron of Greene, and ungrateful writer will not show gratitutde but instead writes a defiant satire, biting hand that feeds him; later in the book we see how this patronage has made Greene respectable and conventional on pp. 278-280; effects of success on writer, etc.)
103;
106, 107; why not a literature of the ordinary? why not describe the domestic lives of women? etc. This theme is developed later (see 253, end of chapter 5, other references)
process of writing 113; the poem "The Oak Tree" will be "unwritten" as she writes it
desire to write returns 145, linked to Orlando’s love of nature (code for love of feminine at times, code sometimes for Orlando’s lesbianism)
"I will write" 175. Orlando will lose some illusions and "acquire others" V. Chapter Five180 women must take a sidelong glance at world
163 conventionality = slavery; silencing herself—censorship, images of ‘fettering her limbs, restraining her tongue’; theme of censorship continues throughout chapter
description of "hostess" on 199: the hostess is our modern sibyl, a witch who creates illusion; like writers and artists, the hostess creates illusions that are "most valuable" and the "most necessary of things"; hostess (artist, writer) is the "world’s greatest benefactor"
This book is an illusion, too. However, the comparison is ironic because the hostess creates illusions that make people think they are happy and profound. In a way, books do that (even good books) if they make readers feel they’re clever while reading them. But Woolf only goes so far in endorsing wit in literature. See her judgments of Pope etc.
206. Alexander Pope’s noble brow an illusion. The notion of "genius" is suspect; it’s vain to worship another’s genius just as its vain for men to think they can protect women; thus, Woolf links romantic illusions about the nature of literature and writing with the notion of romantic illusions about sex roles (gender identity)
207. genius = lighthouse image; one ray, then no more for a time. Not consistent, predictable, not conventional; won’t obey our command; be careful what projections you put on notions of genius etc. How is this lighthouse image related to (or not) the lighthouse in To the Lighthouse?
211 Swift; 213: satire on egoism and sexism of poets. The intellect (brain) is the most seedy of carcasses. Compare to 205 and Pope’s very ordinary forehead, compare to vulgarity of Nick Greene’s bodily appetites earlier.).
214 echo of the hilarious rapier-toad line on 184
writers like Pope (great satiric writers much admired in 18th C. literature) can’t use a rapier but will use a pen to run her through the body. This is not only a pun on Swift’s famous line about the pen being mightier than the sword but also a parallel to rape; the wit is like a phallus that will be used out of vengeance to run through an opponent or someone you wish to dominate or conquer. Of course, this is also humorous when compared to the subject of one of Pope’s most famous comic poems, "The Rape of the Lock." Still, Orlando feels as if Pope "struck her" a physical blow. And the narrator says that "Never was any mortal so ready to suspect an insult or so quick to avenge one as Mr. Pope."
220 how Orlando’s cross-dressing further complicates the biographer’s ability to give "an exact and particular account" of her life.
225 contrast between Elizabethan Age and 18th Century a contrast between violence and passion on the one hand and reason, enlightenment on the other; discuss whether you read this ironically (18th C. enlightenment typically viewed this way, but from what you have seen in this chapter of Swift, Dryden, Pope, Johnson and Boswell, supposedly the greatest writers, and the various discrepancies between the wit and the heart or lack of one; the mind or intellect and the seedy "carcass" it inhabits etc., do you think the stereotype is being reinforced or satirized, or neither, or a combination?
Writing and the Body.
19th Century comes in at end of chapter 4 with darkening skies, storm threatening, and now we have an England permeated by DAMP. Women bear way too many children; the crinoline is introduced. Discuss the DAMP as a metaphor both of fertility and decay. The wetness of damp is perhaps suggestive of an increasing sexual desire. If so, is this perhaps related to the various disciplines and punishments of such desire that Victorian society developed? And is such desire also linked to the same creative force that writes—that writes according to a desire that cannot be tamed by conventions?
236 Orlando’s poem "The Oak Tree" now bears the marks of 300 years of composition; you might wish to compare the description of the manuscript to a description of literature itself, or English literary history, and also to Orlando’s physical body. Is Orlando’s physical being written, unwritten, crossed out, marked up, marked over, stained, torn, etc, just as the manuscript is? Is Orlando, the novel, or the putative "biography" of a life, really all of the character Orlando’s body that exists? Is Orlando, the biography, really "The Oak Tree" manuscript, after all? VI. Chapter Six240-244 Orlando and the wedding ring. Is the WEDDING RING an appropriate response to the DAMP? Compare these two images. The wedding ring is a simple band that is put on a finger and thus is linked to other images in the novel of items such as clothing (the coil of skirts around one’s legs), the "stays" in women’s undergarments, etc. and items that can be read as the "fetters" on one’s limbs; this "band" that one puts on is linked to a kind of death. Think of putting a metal band around the body. Think of chastity belts. Notice the effect on Orlando. She has difficulty thinking of anything or writing anything when the ring is on her finger.
248-252 When Orlando decides she is married to nature, she will be nature’s bride, she is of course succumbing once again to romantic illusion (return of the pastoral vision satirized earlier). Then, when Shel comes up on his horse and tells her she’s hurt, she says "I’m dead, Sir" (253). Does this imply that the writing woman must DIE? Does it imply that marriage is a kind of death? How do you compare this "death" to Orlando’s other putative deaths in the novel (for example, the long sleep in Turkey after which he becomes a woman?)
Also on 253, near the end of the chapter, is a recurring discussion of the importance of rendering everyday life, the stuff of ordinary life and ordinary lived experience, in literature, as opposed to believing that only certain subjects [such as men; wars; tragedies; external actions of ‘great’ or ‘serious magnitude’ etc.] were fit subjects for literature. Compare this passage with the essays "Modern Fiction," and "Character in Fiction," a version of "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown." Compare this to the focus of the novel Jacob’s Room, and particularly its final scene, where such items as shoes are mentioned. Think of Clarissa Dalloway and of Mrs. Ramsay. Think of the importance of ordinary things. Think of G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica. Think of the "Art" of living. Michel de Certeau’s book The Practice of Everyday Life might come to mind here as well.
Also on 253, end of chapter is silence, a space. This is very Samuel Beckett yet also very Laurence Sterne. Very ‘"l’ecriture feminine.’ Woman’s writing is said to be writing that opens up a space for woman in language, or rather, writing in which woman create their own language, and escape the limitations of conventional language, which is the language of patriarchy (and also the conventions of heterosexist discourse). However, this ending of chapter 5 is also not without irony.
The wedding ring "proves" her marriage, "but if one’s husband was always sailing round Cape Horn, was it marriage?" (264). Thus, this is an unconventional marriage, and a very happy one. The key to its happiness is its unconventionality. (And of course you can see in Nigel Nicolson’s Portrait of a Marriage more about the Harold Nicolson-Vita Sackville-West marriage on which this is based.)
264-265: She tries writing again, and there is no explosion when she dips the pen in the inkpot. She succeeds in writing. 265 Censorship theme. An internalized censor appears representing something like "the spirit of the age."
"Are girls necessary?" the voice over her shoulder asks, implying that lesbian desire is not appropriate in writing, but the voice is appeased by the fact that Orlando has "a husband at the Cape. . .Ah, well, that’ll do."
265-272: Censorship theme continues.
265-266 WRITER AS TRAVELER GOING THROUGH CUSTOMS WITH A SUITCASE
There is much to discuss in the following passage, for "to compare great things with small" Orlando is compared to a traveler passing through the "customs officer" of literature, the censor. Orlando "now performed in spirit. . .a deep obeisance to the spirit of the age. . .For she was extremely doubtful whether, if the spirit had examined the contents of her mind carefully, it would not have found something highly contraband for which she would have had to pay the full fine. She had only escaped by the skin of her teeth. She had just managed, by some dexterous deference to the spirit of the age, by putting on a ring and finding a man on a moor, by loving nature and being no satirist, cynic, or psychologist—any one of which goods would have been discovered at once—to pass its examination successfully. And she heaved a deep sigh of relief, as, indeed, well she might, for the transaction between a writer and the spirit of the age is one of infinite delicacy, and upon a nice arrangement between the two the whole fortune of his works depend. Orlando had so ordered it that she was in an extremely happy position; she need neither fight her age, nor submit to it; she was of it, yet remained herself. Now, therefore, she could write, and write she did. She wrote. She wrote. She wrote."
Notice the continuation of the traveler with suitcase going through customs metaphor in the expression of "contraband" in her mind. Her mind, then, is compared to a suitcase which the spirit of the age, or the customs officer, examines. Yet luckily, Orlando has managed to "perform" a "deep obeisance" to this spirit of the age—in short, finding a way to censor herself a bit as she writes, so that the customs officer won’t be tempted to "examine" the "contents of her mind" too "carefully." This performance of obeisance protects Orlando from invasion by the censor’s prying, and is necessary self-censorship or rather encoded performance, masquerade, because indeed Orlando is sure that there is "something highly contraband" in her mind for which she would be punished, or would have "to pay the full fine" if it were discovered. The question becomes what thoughts Orlando might have had in her mind that she found she had to disguise, mask, perform in her writing? Perhaps these are her lesbian thoughts, her lesbian desire, and she can write successfully and please the spirit of her age because she is masking her lesbianism through her "dexterous deference," her "obeisance" to the spirit in her writing and through a marriage of convenience. Because of this marriage of convenience, she is not inspected as closely when she travels through customs. But it is not only her marriage which protects her. It is also her own willingness to disguise her lesbian desire in her writing, so that the censor won’t quite catch it ("are girls necessary?" the censor would ask). "Deference" has negative associations of moral and aesthetic compromise, yet "dexterous" has positive connotations of agency and craft. Think about that phrase and how it enacts its own sort of ambivalence.
Orlando’s performance includes "putting on a ring and finding a man on a moor,"—making these almost seem silly, theatrical acts or whims, but it also includes "by loving nature and being no satirist, cynic, or psychologist—any one of which goods would have been discovered at once" suggesting something about the Edwardian and Georgian age. Whereas satire had been a very popular form during the 18th Century, during the Victorian period a new era of sentimentality and moral didacticism had begun. And during the early 20th century an emphasis on realism intensified. At the same time, writers such as Henry James had developed, during the late 19th Century, the "psychological novel," a novel devoted to more thorough rendition of interior states of mind and less dependent upon external action (see "stream of consciousness" page). With the rise of psychology (Woolf’s brother Adrian studied to become a psychoanalyst) the modernist writers began to further develop this strain in much more impressionistic works that were even less "realistic" in the old-fashioned sense of external realism Woolf attacks in her essays. (See "Modern Fiction," "Character in Fiction," etc.) So Orlando is not only avoiding satire and cynicism, she must avoid writing the kind of psychological novel that had cost James some readers and that also had cost Woolf some. (She was shocked when Orlando achieved tremendous success almost immediately.)
So techniques of the novel, choices made in terms of the form of the novel, etc. and the philosophical attitudes that critics detect in the novel, are all viewed as "goods" in the suitcase of the writer/traveler trying to get through the customs office dominated by the literary censors, the critics and readers, representing the "spirit of the age." The critics and readers are like tough professors in the school of public opinion who make writers "pass its examination." Orlando passes "successfully." She heaves "a deep sigh of relief." The "transaction between a writer and the spirit of the age is one of infinite delicacy"—this phrase suggests a bloodless, soulless, mechanical relationship dictated by a state-designed form, or a strictly business or financial relationship. "Transaction," in and of itself, need not imply anything quite so bloodless. It can be like an exchange between two persons, like a dialogue. But in this context, it seems that a more precise quality of transaction is suggested, such as to "transact" business," to buy or sell something. We also can make "transactions" in legal affairs. Think about what your reaction is when this sort of word is used to describe a writer’s relationship with the critics and the reading public. (Later in the novel, it is used to describe the writer’s relationship with poetry on 325). Also consider your reaction to the phrase "a nice arrangement between the two." On a "nice arrangement" with the critics and the reading public "the whole fortune of his works depend." Do you think that Woolf had reason for having her narrator in Orlando characterize the writer’s plight vis-as-vis her audience in such a manner? Do you find yourself surprised at such a characterization? And do you find Orlando’s success in the book something admirable, or tarnished?
This passage invites discussion of both Vita Sackville-West’s life and work and Virginia Woolf’s. It also obviously suggests that their work be compared to Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, a more overt lesbian text that was published near the time of Orlando. Woolf’s ambivalence about supporting Hall in the obscenity trial may also seem relevant as you read this passage. What would have happened to Orlando in her writing (or Woolf in hers) had she not employed her "dexterous deference" is demonstrated all too painfully in the real-life consequences Hall endured as the result of not "passing" for heterosexual in her novel. See the page on A Room of One’s Own.
267 Writing biography and writing fiction
268 Orlando a woman and therefore may substitute "love" for "action" in her writing.
269 if the subject of the bio will neither love nor kill, but will only think or imagine. . .
rather than giving up and thinking the subject dead or "no better than a corpse" (yet another "death" for Orlando in the novel) and leaving her, indeed, we might, this passage implies, rethink our notion of fiction and biography should do. Again, see the essays I’ve been mentioning as points of comparison through this page. See the "stream of consciousness" page, and the "Character in Fiction" page.
The biographer concludes here that we have to now look out of the window to see what Orlando sees .
272 Orlando’s manuscript becomes a living, breathing thing—it began "shuffling and beating as if it were a living thing" and Orlando can actually hear it talking. "It wanted to be read. It must be read." And here we encounter the line. "For the first time in her life she turned with violence against nature," presumably because nothing in nature, including "elk hounds and rose bushes"—"can none of them read." The passage goes on about how only humans have the power to read, and thus "[h]uman beings had become necessary." Orlando’s ego as a writer needs human beings only to use them, to have them read her manuscript.
277-280 So she goes back to Nick Greene, who as a result of her own wealthy patronage for three hundred years, has now grown respectable, successful, and less dangerous than before, and this "air of respectability" is "depressing". Here we see incarnate an example of what that "dexterous deference" can do.
281 Nick helps her get her poem published, and it even goes on to win a prize. (A satirical reference to a prize Vita had won; but Woolf herself also won a French prize and was very ambivalent about receiving it.)
282-285 goes into bookshop, orders everything of any importance be sent to her, for "still the old credulity was alive in her; even the blurred type of a weekly newspaper had some sanctity in her eyes" despite her twinge of sadness at seeing how Greene has lost his vitality. But in reading Victorian literature, she feels as though everyone is simply imitating someone else.
286 Decides she can’t be "spiteful" enough to write great prose and becomes rather depressed about what criticism written in mouldy rooms cannot do for life
287-88 A THEORY OF ART AS SOMETHING USELESS
Orlando has an epiphany of sorts, realizing neither John Donne nor the critics matter (neither do poltiics or wars or anything else), that what matters is her love for Shel, her passions, her feelings, and the real things of this world that she sees—the description is very suggestive: 312 Orlando in her rhapsody on the multiplicity of the self thinks of her literary fame, the seven editions of her book, the prize she won, and having her photo on the papers. The narrator says that so much of this is out of place because we are writing of a woman—not just the prizes but the laughing at the prize and the fame that Orlando is now engaging in. She repeats "A poet—a charlatan" every morning."it’s something useless, sudden, violent; something that costs a life; red, blue, purple; a spirt; a splash; like those hyacinths (she was passing a fine bed of them); free from taint, dependence soilure of humanity or care for one’s kind; something rash, ridiculous, ‘like my hyacinth, husband I mean, Bonthrop; that’s what it is—a toy boat on the Serpentine, it’s ecstasy—ecstasy.’"
Consider this passage as a kind of theory of art. Compare it to Woolf’s essays and, if you like, to such other essays as Walter Pater’s The Renaissance (especially the final chapter); Percy Bysshe Shelley’s "A Defence of Poetry" or Sir Philip Sidney’s "An Apology for Poesy" or other essays by important literary critics of whatever age.
"useless'"—that’s one definition of art; art is art precisely because it does not serve a utilitarian purpose, many have argued (Schiller, for one.) Compare to "free from taint" and "dependence" and "soilure of humanity or care for one’s kind"; art must not serve anyone’s purpose but its own if it is to remain pure; it lives in a realm above the tainted realm of human egoistic conscious or mercantile or ideological determinations, according to many in the ‘art for art’s sake’ movement during the 1890s and after (Walter Pater being one); also compare to James Joyce’s notion of the artist as being invisible behind the work, paring his fingernails, an artistic creation so pure that you could not find the petty human being of the artist’s ordinary personality behind it; because, according to Louise Bogan, an American poet, "all has been transformed into treasure"—the art work is above the mere biographical or historical events that may have inspired it; a view also subscribed to by the formalists of the 1930s (a view very much contested today by postructuralist cultural critics and others)
"sudden" and "violent" also "rash" and "ridiculous"—look at life in the Elizabethan Age, as depicted in Orlando. Look at how Nick Greene’s passsion and wildness have left him when she meets him again in the 20th Century. Much of late 19th and early 20th C. literature seems rather enervated by comparison.
"something that costs a life"—the notion that truly worthwhile art requires sacrifice, that to remain true to one’s vision, that is, not to engage in a blind "obeisance" to one’s age or conventions or social or sexual mores, etc. one has to develop a very deep commitment, a commitment for which you are willing to give up everything, if necessary. Think here also of Septimus Smith in Mrs. Dalloway. Something cost him his life. You might think of how would you define that something. One might also think of Marcel Proust here, who wrote and wrote and wrote despite the ravages of illness and suffering.
"red, blue, purple"—think of the intense (some felt garish) colors of the Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, others.
"a spirt; a splash" compare to the joyful exuberance of Clarissa Dalloway’s comments such as "what a lark! what a plunge" verbs that can also serve as nouns recur in Woolf, often in such words as these suggesting fluidity, exuberance, effervescence, or freefall; and yes, you may wish to consider the sexual implications of such terms, and whether they suggest jouissance
"hyacinth" and "husband"
you are probably having some fun with this apparent Freudian slip that Orlando makes in confusing the two. Is a husband equal, in the scheme of things, to the hyacinths you see in a garden as you pass?. Most literature is predicated on the assumption that the hyacinths are mere window-dressing and the important stuff is wars and maybe marriages, if you’re writing a comic novel or play. By having Orlando blur the hyacinths into her beloved husband, Woolf’s narrator invites us to consider reversing their roles in our values. This is ridiculous. Yet it is also a fresh insight. Perhaps one’s husband is like a beautiful hyacinth that makes the world more beautiful. If a woman can be compared to a rose, why not compare a man to a hyacinth? The shapes of each of these flowers are said to be analogous to female and male sexuality. Orlando would rewrite the history of English love literature as the history of the hyacinth instead of the history of the rose. What fun.
324-325 she has come to visit the oak tree that inspired her book. When her book falls out of her jacket, she thinks she should have brought a trowel. She wants to bury the book in the earth, to return to the land what the land has given her. She remembers Greene praising her at the awards ceremony, comparing her with Milton, and giving her the check for 200 guineas. But "what has that got to do with this, she had wondered? What has praise and fame to do with poetry? What has seven editions…got to do with the value of it? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself—a voice answering a voice."
So she doesn’t bury the book. She realizes the book and its source are not one and the same. The book was created as a dialogue, with her voice answering another voice. The book, of course, is also created as a dialogue with the reader. Think of this notion of dialogue when you read the polyphonic (multi-voiced) novel The Waves. Notice also the repetition in this passage of the word "transaction," used earlier in the passagge on 265-266. How is the word used differently here? Are the connotations different?
Orlando also reconsiders her own roots in romantic delusion in this scene. She revises her view of nature and her view of artistic creation. Yet she retains an element of romantic faith in expression.
This passage shows the tension between the writing process, the "ecstasy," and the public life of the writer who becomes famous. Compare this passage to the theory of art presented on p 287-288.
Then, on p. 327, Shel comes back, and he is described as "rash" and "ridiculous"—words also used in the passage on 287-288, as qualities necessary to the "ecstasy" of artistic creation and to the ecstasy of love, apparently, as shown here and elsewhere. Shel always comes to her in moments of deep calm (328). Shel is linked here and earlier with Orlando’s muse, her inspiration. Art and life are one for Orlando, because she finds them both with Shel as her muse. Yet the entire marriage is founded on Shel and Orlando frequently thinking the other is of the same sex.
this page created April 21 2000
