ESSAY ON MODERNISM

Gender in Modernism: Virginia Woolfs Orlando

This essay will be dealing with the subject of gender in the Modernism
movement, and how it is reflected on the particular case of Virginia Woolfs Orlando.
But before doing so it is important to mention what Modernism was. It was a cultural
movement that is said to have begun at the opening of the XX century, and finished at
the end of World War II. As regards to the context, the turn of the century saw the
emergence of some groundbreaking theories, such as Einsteins theory of relativity and
Freuds Interpretation of Dreams, this of course influenced the thinking and works of
the artists of the time. The core of this movement was the overall rejection of the XIX
century traditions -those of the Victorian era- a break with the past, and the embrace of
new forms of art and expression. In general terms, it meant the recurrent act of
fragmenting unities (unities of character or plot or pictorial space or lyric form), the use
of mythic paradigms, the refusal of norms of beauty, the willingness to make radical
linguistic experiment, all inspired by the resolve to startle and disturb the public
(Michael Levenson, Introduction from The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, 2009
p. 3).
Modernism had an influence on literature, but it also comprised many artistic
and

philosophical

movements,

such

as

symbolism,

futurism,

surrealism,

expressionism, imagism, among others. Crisis and what was happening at that time in
history was also pivotal to this movement, as Michael Levenson puts it: Crisis was
inevitably a central term in discussions of this cultural movement () this century had
scarcely grown used to its own name, before it learned the twentieth would be the
epoch of crisis, real and manufacture, physical and metaphysical, material and
symbolic. The catastrophe of World War I, and, before that, the labor struggles, the
emergence of feminism, the race for empire, the inescapable forces of social
modernization, were not simply looming on the outside as the destabilizing context of
cultural Modernism; they penetrated the interior of artistic invention. They gave
subjects to writers and painters, and they also gave forms. (Michael Levenson,
Introduction from The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, 2009 p. 4)
In literature, more specifically in poetry, modernism meant the disregard of the
old conventions of verse, by extending the use of the vers libre. In prose, the
modernist attempt at radical renewal manifested itself in the need to represent the
human mind and soul, human subjectivity in all its impalpable complexities. Modernists

stretched the boundaries of conventional creativity, imposed a metamorphosis on the

literary world as they knew it, shaping the word to a world which demanded new
categories for understanding and representation (Anna Anselmo, Modernism, An
Introduction p.12.). This was encompassed by the stream of consciousness style
typical of the modern writers, such as Virginia Woolfs Mss Dalloway and James
Joyces Ulysses.
As has been said before, the modernist movement tried to make a break with
the past, in particular, with the Victorian era which was so concerned with certain
values and morals. That is the reason why modernists found themselves in trouble
with the censor because they wished to represent the body and sexuality as fully as
possible, and, more generally, wished to depict the full range of human behavior
without having to place it in a moral frame (from a quotation in Anna Anselmo,
Modernism, an Introduction. p.18). As a result, some modernists writers works where
considered immoral, and thus censored when first published, such as James Joyces
Ulysses and D.H. Lawrences Lady Chatterley's Lover.
The subject of gender, therefore, was very present in the literature of the time.
As Marianne Dekoven puts it Shifts in gender relations at the turn of the century were
a key factor in the emergence of Modernism. The period from 1880 to 1920, within
which Modernism emerged and rose to pre-eminence as the dominant art for in the
West, was also the heyday of the first wave of feminism, consolidated in the woman
suffrage movement. (Marianne Dekoven, Modernism and gender from The Cambridge
Companion to Modernism, Second Edition, 2011, p. 212). These changes that took
place at the turn of the century were clearly reflected in the art it produced, in Marianne
Dekovens words: The radical implications of the social-cultural changes feminism
advocated produced in Modernist writing an unprecedented preoccupation with gender,
both thematically and formally. (Marianne Dekoven, Modernism and gender from The
Cambridge Companion to Modernism, Second Edition, 2010, p. 2011)
In order to clarify, and avoid any misunderstanding the term of gender is
understood as all the things one says or does in order to disclose himself or herself as
having been a boy or man, girl or woman, sexually, socially, etc. (Saeed Yazdani and
Haleh Cheraghi in A Modernist Perspective: the Concept of Gender Identity in Woolfs
Orlando, from the Viewpoint of S.D, p. 469) From this perspective gender can be
viewed as a construction. In contraposition, this term differs from that of sex, which
according to the Encyclopedia Britannica can be defined as the sum of features by

which members of species can be divided into two groupsmale and femalethat
complement each other reproductively (Encyclopedia Britannica online, Sex). Sex,
therefore is more of a biological category and gender is more related to how a person
relates to him/her self as feminine, masculine or maybe a combination of both.
This subject of gender was also an important in one of the most influential
groups of writers of the time, The Bloomsbury Group. They were a collection of writers
and painters, most of them were English (although not all of them were), that gathered
in the London neighborhood, from where they took their name, to discuss about
literature, economics, politics, among other things. They clearly rejected the Victorian
morals, religion and codes of behavior, as they experimented on new ways of
understanding relationships between the sexes, homosexuality, and family life (The
Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, p.207). Virginia Woolf is among some of the
renowned figures that were part of this group, along with her husband Leonard Woolf,
Vanessa and Clive Bell, Roger Frey, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and
Katherine Mansfield, to name a few.
It can be said that within this group the restriction of morality was consequently
overcome and the conventional definitions of sexual orientation were abandoned.
Sexuality was also openly discussed and practiced. They experimented with bisexual
and homosexual activities, even among each other; the romantic relationship between
Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West is well known, as Patricia Morgne Cramer
states: Woolf met Vita in 1922; their love passion peaked between 1922 and 1928 ()
Woolf wrote most of her major novels from Mrs Dalloway (1925) through to The Years
(1937) with Vita in her heart and much on her mind. () In 1928, Woolf published a
mock biography of Vita, Orlando, dedicating the book to her. (Patricia Morgne Cramer,
Virginia Woolf and sexuality in The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, Second
Edition, 2010, p.185). This relationship (and others) evidently influenced Virginia
Woolfs work, and is an evidence of how gender and the blurry boundaries of sexual
orientation were reflected in her novels.
The before mentioned Orlando, A Biography is an example of how gender
roles were redefined. The story is a fictionalized biographical account of a young
nobleman that transforms into a woman in the long course of his life, as he lives up to
nearly three hundred years from the Elizabethan time in England to the present time, in
1928. The novel, consequently relates to the subject of gender as its central character

gets to inhabit both worlds, that of a man, at the beginning of his life, and that of a
woman, in the middle and maturity of his life.
Orlando wakes up one day as a woman and from that point in time onwards he
gets to experience what it is like to be a woman and, therefore, acquires the
characteristics of a female. That is to say, that he (or should I say she), once (s)he has
suffered the transformation into a woman, possess the traits of both sexes. Woolf
presents this dynamic in a very particular way: with humor and irony, and thus she
almost seems to ridicule the stereotypical gender conventions (Marte Rognstad, The
Representation of Gender in Virginia Woolfs Orlando and Jeffrey Eugenidess
Middlesex p. 39).
What Woolf does is satirize the gender role norms we are accustomed to
through the character of Orlando, whose gender we are not able to categorize so
easily. And, as Alexandra Blomdahl rightly puts it by quoting Lokke: Karin Elise Lokke
suggests that <<Woolf mocks the masculinist sublime>> but also that through Orlando
<<she also celebrates an alternative aesthetic, an alternative model of self in
Orlando>> (Lokke 242) something that according to her is echoed in Woolfs A Room
of Ones Own where she continuously calls in to question <<The gendered categories
of masculine and feminine>> (242). This would explain the stereotypical portrayal of
the male Orlando and also go along with the overall theme of the novel, which is to
mock preconceived conceptions of gender. It is also through his mocking that Woolf is
able to highlight the alternative aesthetic which is of course, the female Orlando, who
is far from stereotypical, as she showcases both male and female traits both in terms of
her looks and her personality. (Alexandra Blomdahl, Virginia Woolfs Orlando and the
Feminist Reader, Feminist Reader Response Theory in Orlando: a Biography, 2014,
pp. 17-18)
This alternative aesthetic, consequently, presents a female Orlando that has
also the traits that belonged to her former masculine self. The concept of androgyny
can be used to better describe this character. Taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica
Androgyny, condition in which characteristics of both sexes are clearly expressed in a
single individual () In psychology, androgyny refers to individuals with strong
personality traits associated with both sexes, combining toughness and gentleness,
assertiveness and nurturing behaviour, as called for by the situation. (Encyclopedia
Britannica online, Androgyny) Evidence of this can be found in the novel, for example,
in the following passage, right after the transformation of Orlando:

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. () His memory () went back
through all the events of her past life without encountering any obstacle. Some slight
haziness there may have been, as if a few dark drops had fallen into the clear pool of
memory; certain things had become a little dimmed; but that was all. (Orlando,
Wordsworth Classics , p. 67
This notion of androgyny is not only realized through the way Orlando dresses
or behaves but also through the way he/she thinks, as Marte Rognstad puts it: When
Woolf writes about androgyny, it involves more than being androgynous at a superficial
level; she talks about the androgynous brain and the androgynous self, not just
androgyny as a physical characteristic. (Marte Rognstad, The Representation of
Gender in Virginia Woolfs Orlando and Jeffrey Eugenidess Middlesex, p. 27) As the
author had previously presented in her famous essay A Room of Ones Woolf
indicates that it is only through exploiting both the female and the masculine sides of
our mind that we take advantage of our full potential as human beings. (Marte
Rognstad, The Representation of Gender in Virginia Woolfs Orlando and Jeffrey
Eugenidess Middlesex, 2012, p. 30) It can be said that Orlando is presented to us as
an ideal, as he manages to expand his/her abilities and perceptions because he/she
embraces his/her various selves.
As it was said before, this change of his into a woman is made by Woolf in such
a way by the narrator (the biographer of this supposed biography), so as to give the
impression that Orlando did not experienced it as something unnatural or traumatic. He
(now a she) embraces her new self, as Blomdahl puts it: She does not seemed to
have suffered during this drastic change and neither is she shocked or appalled by it,
which echoes Knopps words, there does not seem to be anything unnatural about it,
she accepts her new body directly. (Alexandra Blomdahl, Virginia Woolfs Orlando and
the Feminist Reader, Feminist Reader Response Theory in Orlando: a Biography,
2014, p. 18) As to the reader, that may not be the case, the acceptance of this change
may be problematic, but it is presented in such a way that the reader might be forced to
accept it. In Blomdahls words: In a way then Orlando is performing the role of the
androgynous ideal presented in A Room of Ones Own, and as she makes the reader
accept her dual personality, the reader in term accepts the role of the implied feminist
reader, without even thinking about it. (Alexandra Blomdahl, Virginia Woolfs Orlando

and the Feminist Reader, Feminist Reader Response Theory in Orlando: a Biography,
2014, p. 19)
What Woolf manages to do is provoke the reader, make him or her question
him/herself about the gender roles they are accustomed to, as they are a construction
Woolf intends to show that gender roles are not biological but societal. This falls in line
with De Beauvoirs idea on gender role; she prefers to consider gender as a fluid and
variable attribute which can be differed in various contexts and times rather than being
a rigidly fixed and unchangeable one in different times and places. It also justifies, that
one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. (Saeed Yazdani and Haleh Cheraghi,
A Modernist Perspective: the Concept of Gender Identity in Woolfs Orlando, from the
Viewpoint of S.D. Beauvoir, 2014, p. 476)
To conclude, it can be said that Virginia Woolf, in her novel Orlando, clearly
expanded on one of the main subjects of the modernist movement, that of gender. As a
member of the famous Bloomsbury group she managed to trespass the limits of
conventions, in this case those related to sexuality. As a result what she was capable of
doing (and still is) is to startle the reader, to force him or her to question something that
perhaps had never questioned before.

Bibliography
Anna Anselmo, Modernism an Introduction. It can be found on
https://www.academia.edu/2533739/Modernism
The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, p.207. It can be accessed from
https://books.google.com.ar/books?id=DlMUSzhiuEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q
&f=false
Saeed Yazdani and Haleh Cheraghi, A Modernist Perspective: the Concept of
Gender Identity in Woolfs Orlando, from the Viewpoint of S.D. Beauvoir. It can be
accessed

from

http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/T-Anth/Anth-18-0-000-14-

Web/Anth-18-2-000-14-Abst-PDF/T-ANTH-18-2-469-14-1103-Yazdani-S/T-ANTH-18-2469-14-1103-Yazdani-S-Tx[22].pdf

Michael Levenson, Introduction, The Cambridge Companion to Modernism,

Second Edition, 2011
Marianne Dekoven, Modernism and gender from The Cambridge Companion
to Modernism, Second Edition, 2011
Patricia Morgne Cramer, Virginia Woolf and sexuality in The Cambridge
Companion to Virginia Woolf, Second Edition, 2010
Marte Rognstad, The Representation of Gender in Virginia Woolfs Orlando
and Jeffrey Eugenidess Middlesex
Alexandra Blomdahl, Virginia Woolfs Orlando and the Feminist Reader,
Feminist Reader Response Theory in Orlando: a Biography, 2014

Encyclopedia

Britannica

http://www.britannica.com/topic/androgyny

online

Androgyny