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Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—The Victorian Conclusion :
When Orlando arrives in London at the height of the Victorian Era, she encounters Nicholas Greene, who praises "The Oak Tree" and rushes to publish it. However, when she learns that Victorian literature expects authors to "always write like someone else," she attempts to come to a conclusion regarding her discovery. The narrator then interjects with an ironic comment regarding Victorian literature:
And now it is clear that there are only two ways of coming to a conclusion upon Victorian literature—one is to write it out in sixty volumes octavo, the other is to squeeze it into six lines of the length of this one. Of the two courses, economy, since time runs short, leads us to choose the second; and so we proceed [...] at last she reached her final conclusion, which was of the highest importance but which, as we have already much overpassed our limit of six lines, we must omit.
Here, the reader may expect Woolf's narrator to detail Orlando’s “conclusion” regarding Victorian literature in "six lines of length." Instead, Woolf details Orlando’s thought process on the journey towards this "conclusion" in far more than six lines. Orlando realizes that Victorian literature is both “growing very respectable” and also “growing very delicate,” but by the time she reaches her final "conclusion," the narrator interjects once more to assert their authority over the narrative.
This situation is not only humorous but highly ironic, for Woolf has a clear sense of wit when it comes to following the rules of writing. Her narrator follows such rules only at their own discretion, despite espousing the importance of following them in the first place. Thus, Woolf uses situational irony to expose the absurdity and ridiculousness of various literary conventions—particularly conventions of the Victorian Era, of which Woolf personally held a strong distaste.
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Explanation and Analysis—"Present" Time:
Throughout Orlando, Woolf approaches the concept of time in an experimental, subjective, and ironic manner. Although Woolf's narrator references historical figures and events along a predominantly linear timeline as Orlando ages, Orlando herself appears to have a simultaneous attachment and detachment to time. This unique relationship with time often produces situational irony, like when Orlando finally finishes writing her poem "The Oak Tree":
Orlando leapt as if she had been violently struck on the head. Ten times she was struck. In fact it was ten o’clock in the morning. It was the eleventh of October. It was 1928. It was the present moment. [...] For what more terrifying revelation can there be than that it is the present moment? That we survive the shock at all is only possible because the past shelters us on one side, the future on another.
Prior to Orlando's sudden realization of the present moment, the reader learns that she has been writing "The Oak Tree" for over 300 years. She must get to London to publish her poem, but when she arrives on the day in question, (October 11th, 1928) over 100 years have passed. Woolf does not give detail to this century of missing time, which furthers the ironic approach to time in Orlando. Woolf's narrator often spends pages recounting mere moments in Orlando's life, while entire centuries pass between a sentence break. Readers may expect Woolf to fill these gaps in time, (for how could it take 100 years for Orlando to make the short journey to London?), but instead her narrator encourages an experimental questioning of the present moment.
The moment when Orlando 'arrives' in the present moment is largely considered to be the climax of Orlando. Novels—and particularly biographical novels—are often characterized as such because of the author's adherence to a linear structure. Authors design novels, after all, to be read from beginning to end. However, Woolf disrupts the notion of a consistent present by marking Orlando's present state as a singular moment rather than every moment in her life. Woolf does not refute the fact that time, in a literal sense, is one continuous present. Rather, she expands upon the absurdity of this truth through the use of irony. Additionally ironic is the fact that Woolf published Orlando on October 11th, 1928—Orlando's "present" moment—but undoubtedly wrote the novel itself prior to that date. Thus, Woolf humorously plays with the concept of the narrative present in Orlando, disrupting the literary expectation that biographies should adhere to a linear sense of time.
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