Virginia Woolf was an important artistic contributor to the modernist movement of the 20th century, which sought to break from traditional forms of artistic expression. Modernists like Woolf believed that traditional forms of writing—be it poetry, prose, and even biography—were a poor fit for their new and changing world. The early 20th century saw sweeping changes politically, socially, and economically—and since the world was changing, modernists figured, so should art. Woolf’s Orlando is one such attempt to critique antiquated literary traditions and produce more innovative work. Woolf’s form is highly experimental, and she does not conform to any one single genre or category. While declaring itself a biography (narrated from the perspective of a fictional biographer), Orlando is also a biting critique of literature and writing. The subject, Orlando, is a poet, and the biographer repeatedly interrupts the novel to comment on their own writing. Throughout Orlando’s unbelievable life, in which he changes gender after a curiously long sleep and lives over 400 years, Orlando encounters several past literary “giants,” including William Shakespeare and Jonathan Swift. Woolf makes countless references to other literary works, and while she generally respects and pays homage to the past, she pokes fun at both herself and other writers. Through Woolf’s meta commentary and her satirical depiction of writing and literature in Orlando, she effectively argues that there is a pressing need for new forms of literary expression.
While Orlando places famous poets on a pedestal throughout most of the novel, Woolf repeatedly knocks them down, which implies that these so-called literary “giants” aren’t really that “great.” Orlando passes a “rather fat, rather shabby man” writing at the servants’ dinner table of his father’s mansion and suspects the man is a poet. Woolf implies that the man is Shakespeare, but instead of portraying him in a flattering way, she presents him as an overweight man in a dirty shirt. Woolf does not deny Shakespeare’s literary greatness—indeed, she references several of his plays throughout Orlando—but she does imply that in every other way, he is much like everyone else. After Orlando changes gender and becomes a woman, she asks Alexander Pope, a famous poet from the early 18th century, to go home with her. During the carriage ride, she mistakes a “hump in a cushion” for Pope’s forehead in the darkness. In the light, Orlando realizes her mistake and sees Pope more clearly. “When one sees you plain, how ignoble, how despicable you are! Deformed and weakly, there is nothing to venerate in you, much to pity, most to despise.” While these words are certainly harsh, Woolf’s point is clear: Pope’s physical appearance does not square with Orlando’s expectations based on his poetry and reputation. There is nothing at all exceptional about Pope as a man, and Orlando later discovers that his poetry is flawed as well. The novel gives numerous other examples, and they each reflect the same general argument. Woolf implies that, aside from their works (which surely aren’t perfect), there is nothing fundamentally different or special about the literary “greats.” In this way, Woolf lifts the veil of the “illusion” of literature, making a departure from traditional forms of writing understandable, and perhaps even necessary.
Woolf also pokes fun at Nicholas Greene, a famous writer and critic, who is stubbornly resistant to change and whose opinions hypocritically change with the times, in order to critique those who oppose contemporary literature in favor of glorifying more traditional forms. When Orlando first meets Greene during the 16th century, Greene slams his fist on the table and proclaims, “the art of poetry is dead in England.” Greene does not appreciate the new forms practiced by contemporary Elizabethan writers like Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe and prefers those from the classical age, which reflects a resistance to change and a reverence for traditional forms. Orlando again meets Greene during the 19th century. “Ah! My dear lady,” Greene says to Orlando, “the great days of literature are over. Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson—those were the giants. Dryden, Pope, Addison—those were the heroes.” Of course, these are the very same poets Greene criticized so harshly during their own time, which again reflects an overall resistance to new literary forms and a reliance on the old, but it also suggests that literary criticism is hypocritical and essentially meaningless.
This resistance to new literary forms is also seen in Greene’s criticism of Orlando’s own work. When Greene reads Orlando’s original play, The Death of Hercules, during the 16th century, he is exceedingly harsh and claims the play is “wordy and bombastic in the extreme.” However, when Greene later reads Orlando’s poem, “The Oak Tree,” during the 19th century, Greene insists it must be published. “The Oak Tree” reminds him of poets like Addison, and, Greene says, “thankfully,” it has “no trace” of “the modern spirit.” Greene is accepting of Orlando’s work only when it harkens to the form and “spirit” of past writers, not when it is original and experimental.
Orlando is deeply affected by Greene’s poor review of his play, and he slips into an overwhelming depression that lasts for decades. Orlando finally snaps out of his despair when he decides to reject Greene’s opinions. “Good, bad, or indifferent,” Orlando says, “I’ll write, from this day forward, to please myself.” Later, as a woman in Victorian England, Orlando is happy that Greene approves of her poem, but his approval has much less influence on her. She questions why critics make writers feel that they “must always, always write like somebody else,” and this appears to be Woolf’s overarching point. After all, Orlando is nothing like the biographies—or novels, for that matter—that came before it, and it is through this “wordy and bombastic” book that Woolf suggests literature and writing, particularly the writing of biographies, is in need of reimagining for a new and changing age.
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Writing and Literature Quotes in Orlando
But there, sitting at the servants’ dinner table with a tankard beside him and paper in front of him, sat a rather fat, rather shabby man, whose ruff was a thought dirty, and whose clothes were of hodden brown. He held a pen in his hand, but he was not writing. He seemed in the act of rolling some thought up and down, to and fro in his mind till it gathered shape or momentum to his liking. His eyes, globed and clouded like some green stone of curious texture, were fixed. He did not see Orlando. For all his hurry, Orlando stopped dead. Was this a poet? Was he writing poetry? “Tell me,” he wanted to say, “everything in the whole world”—for he had the wildest, most absurd, extravagant ideas about poets and poetry—but how speak to a man who does not see you ? who sees ogres, satyrs, perhaps the depths of the sea instead?
Then, suddenly Orlando would fall into one of his moods of melancholy; the sight of the old woman hobbling over the ice might be the cause of it, or nothing; and would fling himself face downwards on the ice and look into the frozen waters and think of death. For the philosopher is right who says that nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy; and he goes on to opine that one is twin fellow to the other; and draws from this the conclusion that all extremes of feeling are allied to madness; and so bids us take refuge in the true Church (in his view the Anabaptist) which is the only harbour, port, anchorage, etc., he said, for those tossed on this sea.
The biographer is now faced with a difficulty which it is better perhaps to confess than to gloss over. Up to this point in telling the story of Orlando’s life, documents, both private and historical, have made it possible to fulfil the first duty of a biographer, which is to plod, without looking to right or left, in the indelible footprints of truth; unenticed by flowers; regardless of shade; on and on methodically till we fall plump into the grave and write finis on the tombstone above our heads. But now we come to an episode which lies right across our path, so that there is no ignoring it. Yet it is dark, mysterious, and undocumented; so that there is no explaining it. Volumes might be written in interpretation of it; whole religious systems founded upon the signification of it. Our simple duty is to state the facts as far as they are known, and so let the reader make of them what he may.
For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing. […] The flavour of it all goes out of him; he is riddled by hot irons; gnawed by vermin. He would give every penny he has (such is the malignity of the germ) to write one little book and become famous; yet all the gold in Peru will not buy him the treasure of a well-turned line. So he falls into consumption and sickness, blows his brains out, turns his face to the wall. It matters not in what attitude they find him. He has passed through the gates of Death and known the flames of Hell.
What was to be done, Orlando could not think. To leave the gipsies and become once more an Ambassador seemed to her intolerable. But it was equally impossible to remain for ever where there was neither ink nor writing paper, neither reverence for the Talbots, nor respect for a multiplicity of bedrooms. So she was thinking, one fine morning on the slopes of Mount Athos, when minding her goats. And then Nature, in whom she trusted, either played her a trick or worked a miracle—again, opinions differ too much for it to be possible to say which.
Then the little gentleman said,
He said next,
He said finally,*
Here, it cannot be denied, was true wit, true wisdom, true profundity. The company was thrown into complete dismay. One such saying was bad enough; but three, one after another, on the same evening! No society could survive it.
“Mr. Pope,” said old Lady R. in a voice trembling with sarcastic fury, “you are pleased to be witty.” Mr. Pope flushed red. Nobody spoke a word. They sat in dead silence some twenty minutes. Then, one by one, they rose and slunk from the room.
[…]
*These sayings are too well known to require repetition, and besides, they are all to be found in his published works.
It was happy for Orlando, though at first disappointing, that this should be so, for she now began to live much in the company of men of genius, yet after all they were not much different from other people. Addison, Pope, Swift, proved, she found, to be fond of tea. They liked arbours. They collected little bits of coloured glass. They adored grottoes. Rank was not distasteful to them. Praise was delightful. They wore plum-coloured suits one day and grey another. Mr. Swift had a fine malacca cane. Mr. Addison scented his handkerchiefs. Mr. Pope suffered with his head. A piece of gossip did not come amiss. Nor were they without their jealousies. (We are jotting down a few reflections that came to Orlando higgledy-piggledy.) At first, she was annoyed with herself for noticing such trifles, and kept a book in which to write down their memorable sayings, but the page remained empty.
“Ah!” he said, heaving a little sigh, which was yet comfortable enough, “Ah! my dear lady, the great days of literature are over. Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson—those were the giants. Dryden, Pope, Addison—those were the heroes. All, all are dead now. And whom have they left us? Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle!”—he threw an immense amount of scorn into his voice. “The truth of it is,” he said, pouring himself a glass of wine, “that all our young writers are in the pay of booksellers. They turn out any trash that serves to pay their tailor’s bills. It is an age,” he said, helping himself to hors d’oeuvres, “marked by precious conceits and wild experiments—none of which the Elizabethans would have tolerated for an instant.”
