Orlando

The biographer’s inability to access Orlando’s inner thoughts presents a gap in the narrative that the biographer is unable to fill. These solitary moments are those least likely to be noted in historical documents, which limits the biographer in their search to only describe objective fact.

Orlando’s solitude is transformative, embodied by his first trance. The biographer describes this trance as a sort of death. The doctors’ treatments, their lack of effect on Orlando, and Orlando’s temperament and isolation when he awakes echo Woolf’s experiences with depression and medical treatment. When he sees the painting that forces him to remember Sasha, Orlando sobs. Sasha’s betrayal has affected Orlando deeply, causing a piece of him to die. The passage of time is emphasized in Orlando’s healing and growth, as he can only “break a solitude of many years and communicate with the outer world” (61) after intensive reading and self-reflection.

When Orlando turns to write, his hesitation matches his reluctance to reinvent himself. “The Oak Tree” symbolizes Orlando as a person and artist. His writing often matches the style and subjects of the era, and his recent heartbreak makes him reluctant to continue with this work. His pauses causes the biographer to comment upon the role of memory in life and literature, a theme Woolf often returns to. Each memory is constructed and connected in one large fabric, she argues. This fabric is a patchwork, as it is made of both fact and imagination.

Orlando’s memory of the poorly dressed poet he saw on his way to meet the Queen returns to him. The man’s plainness is transformed by Orlando’s memory into an idealized image of a starving artist. This memory, influenced and modified by the passage of time and Orlando’s youthful optimism, inspires him to pursue artistic glory for himself.

His desire to pursue immortality for his own artistic gratification is contrasted with Nicholas Greene’s desire for fame and fortune. Greene’s lackluster appearances are factually more similar to the unnamed poet of Orlando’s memory, but Orlando’s memory glorified the other poet. Greene’s failure to match the appearance and character of Orlando’s memory foreshadows Orlando’s ultimate disillusionment with and rejection of Greene’s philosophy. Greene’s description of Orlando’s literary heroes as crass, bawdy men further underscores the false romanticism of writers, challenging Orlando’s idealization of the poet.

Greene’s selection of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne, and Jonson for his criticism of bad writers is an ironic piece of commentary on writing by Woolf. Woolf’s readers would be aware of the literary standing of these poets, and she uses Greene’s dismissal of them as only in it for the money to criticize Greene’s desire for fame, fortune, and “Glawr” (66). His hypocrisy is on display when he then immediately insists that he would live only for glory if he was also paid. This desire to get a paid patronage, it is implied, is Greene's primary reason for meeting with Orlando.

Orlando’s disillusionment culminates in this chapter with Greene’s satire of Orlando. Orlando feels that this offensive satire is another betrayal, on par with Sasha’s. His reaction to the pamphlet mirrors his reaction to Sasha’s betrayal, as “Greene’s ridicule of his tragedy hurt him as much as the Princess’ ridicule of his love” (75). Sasha causes him to swear off women and love in rage. Orlando’s understanding of love was challenged. After Greene’s betrayal, Orlando also swears off men and literature before burning all of his writing. His understanding of poetry and fame were challenged. However, when Orlando burns all of his writing, he does not burn “The Oak Tree,” describing it as his “boyish dream” (71). This description reveals that Orlando still has that small bit of hope and youthful optimism, despite his anger.

The passage of several years, now in the reign of King Charles II, allows Orlando to mature. The biographer notes the “discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind” (72). This discrepancy applies to both Orlando’s age and maturity and to the novel’s unusual timeline, as Orlando physically ages at a much slower pace than the centuries passing around him. This disconnect allows Woolf to emphasize the difference between age and maturity as Orlando matures in the novel.

After his period of self-reflection, Orlando’s poetic philosophy shifts. He decides to write only for himself, not critics. His realization that poetic language is no “more true than” (75) more natural language causes his style to mature, as he uses simpler and more straightforward language. This radical change is also reflected in the writing of “The Oak Tree.” During these revisions, it seemed that “the poem would be completely unwritten” (82). Like these changes and his renovations of his estate, Orlando is reinventing himself.

In Orlando’s first sightings of Archduchess Harriet, there are many hints that she is actually Archduke Harry. Her height of over six feet suggests that she is a man in disguise. Like the readers’ first encounters with Orlando and Sasha, her clothes obscure the character’s gender identity. Harriet has knowledge of traditional unfeminine subjects for the era, including “a knowledge of wines rare in a lady” and “some observations upon firearms and the customs of sportsmen in her country” (84).

Orlando’s rejection of Harriet also reveals Orlando’s maturation with regard to sex and love. When he recognizes his feelings as “Lust the vulture, not Love, the Bird of Paradise” (87), he moves away from sexual promiscuity towards love, though his idea of love is still heavily idealized. By connecting love to a plant, he highlights how love grows and changes. In contrast, the vulture of lust only eats the dead.