Orlando

Orlando’s musings on whether her marriage was suitable for the expectations of the age reflect her reluctance to conform. Their marriage is far from conventional, and Orlando worries that her largely unchanged, solitary life is not truly a marriage. Her test of writing reveals how Orlando’s poetry is an extension of herself. Her ability to write after getting married shows the delicate balance that she must strike. Like Woolf herself, she must acknowledge the context of her life while remaining herself.

Again, the biographer reveals the constructedness of a biography when they complain that Orlando is a boring subject. The biographer prioritizes excitement over truth. His definition of life also differs sharply from Orlando’s, revealing the subjectivity of words and truth. While Orlando is content with her quiet life, the biographer states that life “has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking. Thought and life are as the poles asunder” (197). Orlando, in their mind, is failing to live up to the expectations of the subject of a biography.

Orlando and Nicholas Greene, now knighted, meet again when Orlando is seeking to have “The Oak Tree” published. While Orlando has changed over the centuries, Greene has stayed the same. His criticism has remained the same, though the classics he now praises are the writers he criticized during the Elizabethan era. Orlando, frustrated with Greene’s views on poetry, does not plan to show him her manuscript until “the violence of her disillusionment” (206) causes it to fall from her dress as if it were a piece of evidence to contradict Greene’s claims. The manuscript literally topples from her bosom, reflecting the poem’s personal and heartfelt nature. His newfound appreciation of her work is greedy at best, as he seeks to secure it good reviews and publish it immediately.

In most biographies of poets, the publication of their masterwork would serve as a climax to the book. Yet as she is only writing for herself, Orlando does not express much interest in what happens to the poem now that it has been written. The narrative importance of the publication is also undercut, as this encounter is immediately followed by an episode that undermines the importance and value of printing a book in the 19th century. She goes into a bookstore and sees the enormous amounts of mass-produced bound books. Books are no longer expensive prized possessions to be displayed proudly in one’s house; now, the “whole works of Shakespeare cost half a crown and could be put in your pocket” (208). Mistaking the quantity of books for quality, Orlando sees these authors and “a score of others whom, in her ignorance, she supposed, since they were bound and printed, to be very great writers too” (209). Writing is published for profit, not because of its inherent qualities.

The biography again presents a potentially climatic moment in a woman's life as anticlimactic. The birth of her son happens out of the narrative focus. The biographer focuses on a natural landscape out her window instead of the pregnancy or birth. Her son emerges, unnamed, before promptly disappearing from the narrative completely. This shows both the biography’s bias towards historically masculine adventure and against historically feminine accomplishments and its preference for actions over domestic goings-on. The disappearance of her son also reflects Orlando’s reluctant and half-hearted conformity to societal expectations. She bears a child but does not limit herself to the role of mother.

As the 20th century, the weather shifts again. England itself transforms after the change. Reflecting Orlando’s growing optimism, the clouds disappear and “the immensely long tunnel in which she seemed to have been traveling for hundreds of years widened; the light poured in” (218). This movement from dark to light through a tunnel mirrors both an enlightenment and a rebirth.

Yet the light soon gives way to violence, in a passage that likely symbolizes the devastation of World War I. The passage of time carries physical weight as Orlando enters the present. She can hear a clock ticking until it builds to a “terrific explosion right in her ear” (219). World War I passes, and then this ticking suggests the passing of Orlando’s life and terror that comes with aging. The biographer dates this event specifically, saying it “was the eleventh of October. It was 1928. It was the present moment” (219). This date is the date of publication for the novel itself. The end of this book becomes more autobiographical in its conclusion as it echoes Woolf’s own feelings and experiences with life and writing in the early 20th century.

The merging of multiple selves accompanies the strike of eleven. The multitude of selves allows the subject to potentially live out of sync with physical time. The “most successful practitioners of the art of life” can “synchronise” their “sixty or seventy” selves into one (223). At the striking of the clock, Orlando reflects on her multiple identities and refuses to simply pick one. Instead, she combines all of her multiple selves into one cohesive identity, symbolizing her success at achieving her goal to pursue life. The difficulty the biographer has in describing these multitudes of selves underscores the limitations of biography.

The third revelation comes at the strike of four. Orlando experiences a heightened present. When her eyes roll back into her head, she has a vision of nature that echoes the vision she had before leaving the Romani people. Her thoughts are random and subjective. The truth of the moment is not neat and tidy. The gardener’s nailless thumb shocks her back to reality.

Orlando’s desire to bury a copy of her book beneath the oak tree reflects the connection between Orlando, the oak tree, and “The Oak Tree.” Like the now matured Orlando, the tree has “grown bigger, sturdier, and more knotted” (237). Unlike Greene, the tree has changed over the passing centuries. She appreciates her decision to write for herself instead of pursuing fame and fortune. The health of the tree and the publication of her book all suggest that Orlando is thriving as a poet and a person. Her desire to bury it as a tribute indicates her connection with nature, but her failure to bury it underscores that her identity and her art are not dead things to be buried.

This last transformation subtly recalls the death-like quality of her earlier trances. Biographies often end with the death of the subject. Rather than end with her death, Orlando transforms and the novel ends on a note of optimism. The final appearance of the elusive goose suggests that she has finally found what she is looking for.