Orlando: The Androgynous Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf

Abstract

The literary genres used by several critics to describe Virginia Woolf's work, Orlando, published in 1928, include: religious allegory, fable, detective novel, doppelgänger literature, Scottish diabolical tales or the Gothic novel. It is still debated whether it is a science fiction story. However, the principal theme is the sexual identity of the protagonist, who crosses an "ageless time", transforming his sex and sexuality throughout the journey of his/her soul. This is a clear rejection of the structure of Victorian novels, in which male characters dominate and female characters are scarce. Orlando was born a man and then, with the passing of the centuries - from 1600, the last years of Queen Elizabeth I, until the 20th century, in the royal political context of England, that of the Suffragettes, when he becomes a woman and especially in writer. Despite what has been barely mentioned, this novel is not sexist. The chief purpose of the work is to expose the needs of a lady of the Elizabethan era, the male and female stumbling blocks of Victorian society and the obstacles inherent to the obsessions of the self, where language is decisive for the marking of times. According to Woolf, the sexual difference is given by education, but it does not intend to promote male-female duality, but to redefine femininity, while proclaiming that a mind must be androgynous.