Orlando (Penguin Clothbound Classics)
Virginia Woolf described "Orlando" as "an escapade, half-laughing, half-serious; with great splashes of exaggeration, " but many think Woolf's escapade is one of the most wickedly imaginative and sharply observed considerations of androgyny that this century will see.
Orlando is, in fact, a character liberated from the restraints of time and sex. Born in the Elizabethan Age to wealth and position, he is a young male aristocrat at the beginning of the story - and a modern woman four centuries later. The hero-heroine sees monarchs come and go, hobnobs with great literary figures, and slips in and out of each new fashion. Woolf presents a brilliant pageant of history, society, and literature as well as subtle appreciation of the interplay between endings and beginnings, past and present, male and female.
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Community Reviews
I wrote a paper on this, so I get it more now. I think I love her wording more than anything, and the way her personality comes through in this book.. as if the biographer and narrator and protagonist all share blood.
I do still actually criticize some of her ideas. She has a bit of an elitist edge, inability to see past her class. Aristocratic stories are also really boring, so even though Orlando is an interesting experiment and a dedicated writer, showing us the downfalls of being a woman who makes art in a man's world... she really does fail to see class (and probably race... free use of n word makes for uncomfortable).
In A Room of One's Own Virginia her elitism really does start coming through. It's a logical concept to have some way of supporting yourself in order to fund your other passions, but to say that anger doesn't produce good art and that angry women are clouding their judgment. I dunno, she really lucked out in some ways and doesn't acknowledge it at all.
I do still actually criticize some of her ideas. She has a bit of an elitist edge, inability to see past her class. Aristocratic stories are also really boring, so even though Orlando is an interesting experiment and a dedicated writer, showing us the downfalls of being a woman who makes art in a man's world... she really does fail to see class (and probably race... free use of n word makes for uncomfortable).
In A Room of One's Own Virginia her elitism really does start coming through. It's a logical concept to have some way of supporting yourself in order to fund your other passions, but to say that anger doesn't produce good art and that angry women are clouding their judgment. I dunno, she really lucked out in some ways and doesn't acknowledge it at all.
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