Assignment 106: Re-Dressing Feminist Identities: Tensions Between Essential and Constructed Selves in Virginia Woolf's Orlando

 

This blog is part of an assignment for the paper 106 - The Twentieth Century Literature: 1900 to World War II. (Assignment Details)

Personal Information:-

Name:- Krishna Vala

Batch:- M.A. Sem 2 (2024-2026)

Enrollment Number:- 5108240037

E-mail Address:-krishnavala2005@gmail.com

Roll Number:- 12

Assignment Details:-

Topic:- Re-Dressing Feminist Identities: Tensions Between Essential and Constructed Selves in Virginia Woolf's Orlando

Paper & subject code:-Paper 106: The Twentieth Century Literature: 1900 to World War II

Submitted to:- Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar. 

Date of Submission:-  17 April,2025

Words : 2173

Table of contents:-

• Abstract

• Introduction

• About Woolf

• Woolf’s Critique of Victorian Historiography

• Reclaiming the Renaissance and Feminist Historiography

• Woolf's Parodic Biography and the Deconstruction  of  Identity

• Clothing as a Metaphor for Gender and Identity

• The Tension Between Essentialism and Constructivism

• Feminist Debates and Woolf's Ambivalence

•  Historical and Philosophical Contexts

Re-Dressing Feminist Identities: Tensions Between Essential and Constructed Selves in Virginia Woolf's Orlando

 Abstract

Virginia Woolf explores two central ideas: the interplay of history and identity, and the tension between an individual's essential character and the influence of societal and historical forces. The novel traces Orlando's life from 1500 to 1928, with a transformative shift in sex along the way. Woolf suggests that an individual's character evolves across time, influenced by different centuries, but also hints at a deeper, continuous spirit that persists before and after life.

This notion evolves throughout the novel, where Woolf parodies the idea of an essential, unchanging self, ultimately moving toward a more complex understanding of identity. Orlando’s life exemplifies how identity is not merely a fixed essence but is shaped by both historical context and personal self-construction. Woolf doesn’t present a deterministic view; rather, she emphasizes the possibility for social and self-directed transformation. The novel ultimately raises questions about subjectivity, considering how historical forces and personal experiences interact in the formation of identity.

  

About Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf (Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors. She pioneered the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London. She was the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen in a blended family of eight that included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. She was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature from a young age. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London. There, she studied classics and history, coming into contact with early reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement.

After her father's death in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where, in conjunction with the brothers' intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group. In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and permanently settled there in 1940.

Major Works 

     

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) To the Lighthouse (1927)

Orlando (1928), 

The Waves (1931)

A Room of One's Own (1929) 

Re-Dressing Feminist Identities: Tensions Between Essential and Constructed Selves in Virginia Woolf's ‘Orlando’

Introduction

Christy L. Burns' article, "Re-Dressing Feminist Identities: Tensions Between Essential and Constructed Selves in Virginia Woolf's ‘Orlando’," explores the complexities of identity, gender, and subjectivity in Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography. The novel, a parodic biography of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West, challenges traditional notions of fixed identity by presenting a protagonist who lives for over three centuries and undergoes a dramatic sex change. Burns examines how Woolf uses clothing, parody, and historical context to deconstruct essentialist views of the self, while simultaneously engaging with contemporary feminist debates about the nature of gender and identity. The article situates ‘Orlando’ within broader discussions of feminist theory, post-structuralism, and the tension between essentialist and constructivist perspectives on identity.

Woolf’s Critique of Victorian Historiography

De Gay highlights Woolf’s ambivalence toward Victorian models of history, particularly the rigid periodization and "great man" approach championed by her father, Leslie Stephen. Stephen’s English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century (1904) framed literary history as a series of reactive shifts led by influential male writers, neglecting women’s contributions. Woolf parodies this method in Orlando by exaggerating the deterministic link between historical context and literary style. For example, the narrator absurdly claims that Orlando’s writing during the Restoration period became more restrained because "the streets were better drained and the houses better lit" (63). This satire exposes the reductive nature of sociological literary history and its exclusion of women.

Woolf also targets the Victorian concept of the "spirit of the age," which Stephen used to valorize male writers who embodied dominant ideologies. In Orlando, this idea is mocked as an oppressive force, particularly in the Victorian era, where it censors Orlando’s writing, enforces marriage, and stifles creativity. By contrast, Woolf’s protagonist resists conformity, illustrating how women writers historically struggled against such constraints.

Reclaiming the Renaissance and Feminist Historiography

A significant portion of the article explores Woolf’s engagement with Victorian debates about the Renaissance. De Gay contrasts John Ruskin’s moralistic condemnation of the Renaissance as a period of decline with Walter Pater’s celebration of its liberating spirit. Woolf aligns with Pater, Symonds, and Vernon Lee, who viewed the Renaissance as a rebirth of intellectual and sensual freedom that extended into modernity. In Orlando, the Renaissance is portrayed as a vibrant, ongoing influence rather than a closed historical epoch. The protagonist’s early experiences in the Elizabethan era—such as his passionate affair with Sasha—embody Pater’s idea of the Renaissance as a time of awakening.

Woolf’s feminist historiography is further evident in her imaginative reconstruction of the past. Unlike traditional historians, she uses fiction to revive marginalized voices and create continuity between past and present. The novel’s setting, inspired by Vita Sackville-West’s ancestral home Knole, symbolizes this connection, with Orlando’s longevity allowing Woolf to traverse centuries and reclaim a female literary heritage. This approach mirrors Woolf’s call in A Room of One’s Own to "rewrite history" by recovering forgotten women writers.

De Gay concludes that Orlando represents Woolf’s most sustained effort to redefine historiography through fiction. By rejecting patriarchal models and embracing imaginative, subjective approaches inspired by Pater and Lee, Woolf creates a feminist historiography that privileges marginalized perspectives and challenges the authority of traditional narratives. The novel’s fantastical elements—its gender-fluid protagonist, anachronisms, and parody—serve not just as literary devices but as tools for historical reclamation. In Orlando, Woolf demonstrates that history, when freed from rigid frameworks, can be a dynamic, inclusive, and liberating discourse.

Woolf's Parodic Biography and the Deconstruction  of  Identity

Burns begins by framing ‘Orlando’ as a parodic biography that subverts traditional biographical conventions. Unlike conventional biographies, which aim to present a coherent and stable identity, Woolf's novel deliberately destabilizes the notion of a fixed self. The protagonist, Orlando, begins as a young nobleman in Elizabethan England and, over the course of the narrative, transforms into a woman, lives through multiple historical periods, and remains ambiguously gendered. This fluidity serves as a critique of Victorian biographical practices, particularly those associated with Woolf's father, Leslie Stephen, who edited the Dictionary of National Biography. Stephen's approach emphasized the "great man" theory of history, where individuals were seen as exemplary figures embodying the spirit of their age. Woolf's parody undermines this by presenting a protagonist whose identity is fragmented, mutable, and deeply influenced by external forces.

The novel's playful tone and unreliable narrator further destabilize the idea of a singular, essential self. Burns highlights how the narrator's insistence on finding a "single thread" to tie together Orlando's identity is comically undermined by the protagonist's constant transformations. This narrative strategy reflects Woolf's broader skepticism toward fixed identities and her interest in the ways subjectivity is shaped by historical, social, and linguistic forces.

Clothing as a Metaphor for Gender and Identity

A central motif in Orlando is clothing, which Burns analyzes as a metaphor for the performative nature of gender. The novel repeatedly blurs the line between inner essence and external appearance, suggesting that identity is not innate but constructed through social conventions. For instance, when Orlando awakens as a woman after a seven-day trance, the narrator humorously declares that "he was a woman" only after Orlando is seen naked—implying that the "truth" of gender is both revealed and destabilized in this moment. However, Orlando's gender identity is not fully realized until she adopts the clothing of an Englishwoman, which forces her to conform to societal expectations of femininity. This moment underscores Woolf's argument that gender is not a biological given but a social performance shaped by external trappings like clothing.

Burns also discusses how cross-dressing in the novel allows Orlando to explore different gender roles and social positions. As a man, Orlando disguises himself as a lower-class individual to escape aristocratic constraints; as a woman, she occasionally dons male attire to reclaim the freedom denied to her by feminine norms. These instances illustrate Woolf's interest in the fluidity of identity and the ways in which clothing can both constrain and liberate the self. The novel thus anticipates Judith Butler's later theories of gender performativity, which argue that gender is not an inherent trait but a repeated performance shaped by cultural norms.

The Tension Between Essentialism and Constructivism

Burns identifies a key tension in Orlando between essentialist and constructivist views of identity. Essentialism posits that the self has a core, unchanging essence, while constructivism argues that identity is shaped by historical and social forces. Woolf's novel engages with this tension by presenting Orlando as a character who seems to retain a consistent core despite dramatic external changes, while simultaneously showing how societal expectations shape her/his behavior and self-perception.

For example, after Orlando's sex change, the narrator claims that "Orlando remained precisely as he had been," suggesting an essential continuity of self. Yet, the novel also demonstrates how Orlando's experiences as a woman are profoundly shaped by the constraints of femininity, such as the inability to swim or stride freely while wearing skirts. This duality reflects Woolf's ambivalence toward both essentialist and constructivist perspectives—a tension that Burns argues is central to feminist debates in Woolf's time and ours.

Feminist Debates and Woolf's Ambivalence

Burns situates ‘Orlando’ within contemporary feminist discussions about the nature of female identity and authorship. She notes that Woolf has been variously interpreted as an essentialist (emphasizing an innate female creativity) and as a constructivist (highlighting the social barriers women face). These debates are mirrored in the novel's treatment of Orlando's writing. As a man, Orlando composes poetry with relative ease, but as a woman, she struggles to write under the weight of Victorian gender norms. The "spirit of the age" literally possesses her pen, forcing her to produce insipid verse that parodies conventional femininity. This moment critiques the ways in which societal expectations stifle women's creativity, echoing Woolf's arguments in A Room of One's Own (1929) about the need for financial and intellectual independence for women writers.

However, Burns also emphasizes Woolf's resistance to being co-opted by any single feminist position. Woolf's playful, parodic style ensures that her work remains open to multiple interpretations, refusing to settle on a definitive stance. This ambiguity is exemplified in Orlando's eventual marriage to Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, which simultaneously conforms to and subverts Victorian norms. While the marriage appears to be a capitulation to societal pressure, it is also a non-traditional union that allows Orlando to maintain her independence and continue writing. Burns argues that this duality reflects Woolf's broader strategy of working within existing systems while subtly undermining them.

 Historical and Philosophical Contexts

Burns contextualizes Woolf's exploration of identity within philosophical and historical frameworks. She highlights Woolf's engagement with John Locke's theories of personal identity, particularly his analogy of the oak tree, which suggests that external changes do not alter the essential self. Woolf parodies this idea in Orlando by having the protagonist's autobiographical poem titled "The Oak Tree," only to show how Orlando's identity is anything but fixed. Similarly, Locke's dismissal of clothing as irrelevant to personal identity is humorously contradicted by the novel's emphasis on how attire shapes gender roles.

The article also discusses Woolf's response to Freudian psychoanalysis, which was gaining prominence in the 1920s. While Woolf was influenced by Freud's ideas about the constructed nature of subjectivity, she also resisted deterministic interpretations that would reduce identity to purely social or psychological forces. Instead, *Orlando* presents identity as a dynamic interplay between internal continuity and external change.

Conclusion: Woolf's Legacy for Feminist Theory

Burns concludes by reflecting on Orlando's relevance for contemporary feminist theory. The novel's exploration of gender fluidity, performativity, and the tension between essentialism and constructivism anticipates later feminist and queer theories, particularly Judith Butler's work on gender as a performative act. Woolf's refusal to pin down a single "truth" about identity mirrors post-structuralist critiques of fixed categories, while her playful use of parody allows her to critique societal norms without falling into didacticism.

Ultimately, Orlando challenges readers to rethink the boundaries of identity, gender, and authorship. By dressing and undressing her protagonist in various roles, Woolf exposes the artificiality of social constructs while leaving open the possibility of a self that transcends them. Burns' analysis underscores the novel's enduring significance as a text that both reflects and resists the tensions within feminist thought, inviting ongoing dialogue about the nature of the self in a changing world.

Reference :

Burns, Christy L. “Re-Dressing Feminist Identities: Tensions between Essential and Constructed Selves in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 40, no. 3, 1994, pp. 342–64. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/441560. Accessed 26 Mar. 2025.

DE GAY, JANE. “Virginia Woolf’s Feminist Historiography in ‘Orlando.’” Critical Survey, vol. 19, no. 1, 2007, pp. 62–72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41556201. Accessed 26 Mar. 2025.

Woolf, Virginia. Project Gutenberg Australia, gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200331.txt. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.