Orlando Learns to be a Woman

Orlando as a Woman ( a picture from the movie)

I decided to concentrate my blog on Chapter four of Orlando because of time contraints which I am sure being so in tune with time themes, Virginia Woolf would understand.   In chapter three, Orlando fantastically changes sex into a female, but it is in chapter four that she reconciles herself into being a woman and makes what she herself what she wants a woman to be.  She is at first astounded at the “penalties and privileges” of her situation (113).  She has lost the “family jewels” to have only one jewel, her chastity.  And it is to this prize of chastity that men desire for women for women in their circle; they also want them to be obedient, perfumed, and exquisitely dressed.  All of which is against nature.  Chasteness is not natural for it is a necessity of nature to procreate.  She realizes that fighting is no longer in her retinue.  Whereas she once yielded a sword, she now must yield the teapot.  This whole chapter deals with what is considered womanly duties, and touches on how they should not be educated.  As we know this is a thorn in Woolf’s side because she always had a desire to attend university although she had an exceptional education as can be attested to by her writing. 

As a woman, Orlando understands Sasha; she understands the delight in refusing then yielding showing that women have power in the seduction rites.  But she now sees how women are prisoners in the conventional ideas of humanity.  In some sections of this chapter (being that this was written to and for Vita), I felt that it touched on the fact that Vita could not inherit Knole because of primogeniture.  So while some claim that this is a love letter to Vita, it also appears to be a discussion of women’s rights or lack thereof.  Women had a role in society, and when she returned society expected her to take that role.  Her staff of servants was delighted that a woman would now take care of the house by replacing the moth-eaten curtains, and replacing the towels – all womanly duties.

  

There’s hilarity to be found in the courtship from Archduke Harry.  Before he/she left London, he almost was smitten by sight with an Archduchess, but upon her return she discovers that the Archduchess is an Archduke.  She gets a front row seat to the idiocracy of courtship.  When she was a man, she saw Harry with her Cyclops eye; but when she became a woman, she viewed Harry with both eyes and saw what was lacking.  Although as a man Orlando cried, he thought it shocking for a man to cry.  Because Harry did; he cried in front of her.  She even touches on the topic of clothes because the clothes helped her assimilate into a true woman of the times. 

As a woman, she comes out into society which she eventually sees falls short.  She states that: "Society is everything and society is nothing” (142).  She goes to this social gatherings looking for life, love, intelligent conversation, and gets none of these.  She found it both “delightful” and “repulsive” (144).  She eventually quits attending the gatherings and visits with famous, witty authors.  Even with them she eventually finds them droll.  The turning point with her relationship with the writers is when she realizes that she listens to them prattle on and on while she serves them tea (it’s what women are supposed to do – wait on men).  On page 151 on the carriage ride with Mr. Pope back to her home, she keeps an internal monologue on her opinion of Mr. Pope.  Her thoughts of him are positive in the dark, but negative in the light.  She believes that he has deceived her.  This is a foreshadowing of her realizing that these poets/writers don’t hold her as an equal.  So he does eventually deceive her into an illusion of equality because it is never a sharing of ideas with these men; it is more like she is their audience and tea-server. 

Towards the end of this chapter, she starts going out at night dressed as a man, and it is at this time that she does find life.  Living a little in both worlds, man’s and then woman’s, she seems to have the most freedom.  Ironically, she runs across her writer friends.  She sees them chatting and drinking together in a house.  It’s ironic because she sees them and thinks them marvelously intelligent, but can’t hear a word they say.

This chapter dealt with the confines in which women are held in society and by law.  It covers the patriarchal ideas of women in that time period.  And at the very end of the chapter, she looks out the window sees the new century arrive.  What will that bring our lovely, wondrous character Orlando?  We shall see.

Woolf, Virginia.  Orlando.  Ed. Mark Hussey.  Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, Inc.  2006.  Print.