Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, Orlando, follows an English character of the same name from the late 1500s to 1928. Orlando, the handsome young son of a noble English family, first appears sometime during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Orlando falls in love, experiences banishment, successfully redeems himself, and becomes the English Ambassador to Turkey. His adventures continue when he wakes one morning in Constantinople - as a woman. The change in gender does not dramatically change the protagonist: “Orlando had become a woman - there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity” (p. 89). Regardless of gender, Orlando questions the value of life and human relationships, but finds inspiration in nature and animals.

Orlando the Man

Orlando’s despondent thinking takes hold of him even during some of the best moments of his life. As a young man, Orlando falls deeply in love for the first time with the athletic, exotic, Russian princess Sasha. Her captivating presence exhilarates Orlando. The two lovers skate for hours on the frozen Thames and lose themselves in conversation. Throughout his escapades with Sasha, however, “…suddenly Orlando would fall into one of his moods of melancholy; the sight of the old woman hobbling over the ice might be the cause of it, or nothing…‘All ends in death,’ Orlando would say…his face clouded with gloom” (pp. 22-23). Despite Orlando’s good fortune and his enchanting companion, he can’t help but feel depressed at times, without warning or cause.

Orlando suffers from his own mind’s occasional despair, and from the wounding treatment he endures from others. When Sasha breaks Orlando’s heart, Orlando withdraws from society. After many years of seclusion, he invites a writer, Mr. Green, to visit him. Following his stay at Orlando’s estate, Mr. Green publishes A Visit to a Nobleman in the Country, a mockery of Orlando. Humiliated, Orlando burns his own writings (everything but his most dear manuscript, “The Oak Tree”), and says he is finished with mankind. He feels that he “need never speak to another man or woman so long as he lived; if his dogs did not develop the faculty of speech; if he never met a poet or a Princess again, he might make out what years remained to him in tolerable content” (pp. 58-59). Sasha’s wordless abandonment and Mr. Green’s lengthy characterization prompt him to question love and friendship alike. Orlando again isolates himself, better able to tolerate solitude than the rebuffs of people he admires.

Thankfully, the natural world never betrays Orlando the way people do. Orlando consistently relies on nature to calm and inspire him. His favorite oak tree pacifies his restless spirit: “He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth’s spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be…for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side…” (p. 5). The oak tree, its roots deep in the ground, offers Orlando dependability in an unpredictable world.

Orlando finds his dogs similarly reliable. After the humiliation Orlando sustains from Mr. Green, Orlando is confident, “Two things alone remained to him in which he now put any trust: dogs and nature; an elk-hound and a rose bush. The world, in all its variety, life in all its complexity, had shrunk to that…he called his hounds to him and strode through the Park” (p. 58). Orlando believes he has seen what the wide world has to offer, and his encounters with disappointment and betrayal occasion him to limit his exposure to other people. He is content to spend his time outdoors exclusively with his dogs.

Orlando the Woman

Orlando’s trust in dogs proves worthy. Around thirty years old, during his service in Turkey, Orlando falls into a long, magical sleep, and awakes as a woman. Upon awakening, one of her dogs is the first by her side. Orlando, “…called her Seleuchi hound, which had never left her bed all these days, though half famished with hunger…” (p. 90). Orlando feeds and brushes her dog, “…and thus, attended by a lean dog…the Ambassador of Great Britain at the Court of the Sultan left Constantinople” (p. 90). Another of Orlando’s dogs is the first to welcome her home to England. As she arrives, the deer in the park all follow the coach to the front door, and Orlando’s elk hound, Canute, throws himself upon Orlando. All of the dogs greet her enthusiastically, and “No one showed an instant’s suspicion that Orlando was not the Orlando they had known. If any doubt there was in the human mind the action of the deer and the dogs would have been enough to dispel it, for [they]…are far better judges both of identity and character than we are” (p. 111). Orlando’s dogs are unaffected by Orlando’s changed gender. They simply accept the person they know and love. Orlando values their loyalty and keeps her dogs close to her.

The gardens of Orlando’s childhood home also never fail to support her. When Orlando’s friend, Mr. Pope, offends her with lines from his poem about the characters of women, she turns to the outdoors to calm herself: “Orlando, to cool her cheeks, for really she felt as if the little man had struck her, strolled in the nut grove at the bottom of the garden. Soon the cool breezes did their work. To her amazement she found that she was hugely relieved…” (p. 141). Orlando feels Mr. Pope’s hurtful words almost physically and requires the outdoors to regain her composure. The personified cool breezes act as soothing friends to Orlando.

Female Orlando finds joy in her dogs and nature, and struggles to socialize. Upon her homecoming after years abroad, English nobles accept Orlando back into their circle. However, she arrives home from a party one evening, in June of 1712, and bursts into tears: “’What the devil is the matter with me?’” She wonders, “’I don’t care if I never meet another soul as long as I live…Is this…what people call life?’” (p. 128). She feels guilty and confused that she can be so unsatisfied among people, but she cannot deny that she feels lonely and tired of superficial interactions.

Orlando continues to grapple with the significance of her own life. As a woman in the 19th century, Orlando meets another great love, Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine. Orlando marries Marmaduke, and completes her life’s work, “The Oak Tree.” Despite her happy marriage and singular literary achievement, Orlando can’t help but think, “And if I were dead, it would be all the same!” (p. 183). No reality seems to protect her mind from sudden convictions of meaninglessness. Neither male nor female Orlando is better able to answer questions regarding human existence, nor to remain entirely unburdened by their weight.

While the change from man to woman may be the greatest outward alteration in Orlando’s life, gender has no bearing on Orlando’s most enduring struggles and joys. According to Orlando, “…through all these changes she had remained, she reflected, fundamentally the same” (p. 156).

References

Woolf, V. (2020). Orlando. Penguin Books. (Original work published 1928).