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Penelope Hartopp
Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 until her death in 1603. Queen Elizabeth falls in love with Orlando early in the novel, and she is enraged when she finds Orlando kissing another girl. It is implied that Orlando and the Queen have some sort of sexual relationship, and she is one of the many women Orlando is linked to throughout the novel. Ironically, Queen Elizabeth was celebrated in her time for her lifelong virginity, but the novel implies this isn’t entirely accurate, which serves as another example of the subjectivity of fact and truth within the novel.
Queen Elizabeth I Quotes in Orlando
The Orlando quotes below are all either spoken by Queen Elizabeth I or refer to Queen Elizabeth I. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 5 Quotes
Meanwhile, she became conscious, as she stood at the window, of an extraordinary tingling and vibration all over her, as if she were made of a thousand wires upon which some breeze or errant fingers were playing scales. Now her toes tingled; now her marrow. She had the queerest sensations about the thigh bones. Her hairs seemed to erect themselves. Her arms sang and twanged as the telegraph wires would be singing and twanging in twenty years or so. But all this agitation seemed at length to concentrate in her hands; and then in one hand, and then in one finger of that hand, and then finally to contract itself so that it made a ring of quivering sensibility about the second finger of the left hand. And when she raised it to see what caused this agitation, she saw nothing—nothing but the vast solitary emerald which Queen Elizabeth had given her. And was that not enough? she asked.
Related Characters:
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Queen Elizabeth I Character Timeline in Orlando
The timeline below shows where the character Queen Elizabeth I appears in Orlando. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...the servants spring into action, dashing back and forth in the dimly lit windows. The Queen has arrived.
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...and then looks directly at Orlando. Struck by his “shyness,” Orlando runs away, toward the Queen’s receiving line, where he drops to his knees and bows his head. The Queen approaches...
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Likewise, the Queen is only able to see the top of Orlando’s head and the “long, curled hair”...
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Two years later, Orlando receives an invitation from the Queen to join her court at Whitehall. “Here,” the Queen says as Orlando arrives, “comes my...
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The Queen, who knows “a man” when she sees one, deeply loves Orlando. She gives him land...
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...girl,” the narrator writes of the “brazen hussy” kissing Orlando, “we know no more than Queen Elizabeth herself.” The girl could have been anyone, for Orlando’s “taste” is “broad.” His grandmother...
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Chapter 5
“But is it true, m’lady,” the housekeeper asks Orlando, “that the Queen, bless her, is wearing a what d’you call it, a—” Orlando interrupts her. “A crinoline,”...
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...it, but the only thing she can see is the ring given to her by Queen Elizabeth. Orlando is “positively ashamed of the second finger of her left without in the...
(full context)
Chapter 6
...the narrator says. Orlando can call on herself as a boy, or when she handed Queen Elizabeth the rose water. She can call on herself from the “gipsies,” or the Orlando...
(full context)
