Orlando

I am kind of at a loss for anything to write about but...

I thought it was interesting in class yesterday when we were talking about how Virginia Woolf bases most of her novel Orlando inside the protagonist's head. We only become familiar with her thoughts and reactions, and never with those of the people around her. Someone commented that this may be because Virginia Woolf wanted to remove the influence of the audience both inside the novel itself, and externally as she was writing it. This made me wonder what the actual audience response was in 1928 when Orlando was published? Did people see it as risque? Was it heavily criticized or praised? So... I did a little research on Wikipedia (I figured since this was a blog entry my research didn't need to come from strictly academic sources.) I will admit that it doesn't say a whole lot about the response but I did find it interesting that the author of the entry argues that Woolf used magic within the book to escape criticism for what could be considered a lesbian love storyline. Because Orlando is a man when he is involved with Princess Sasha people didn't think it was controversial even though he turns into a woman later on in the novel. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall was published in the same year as Orlando but it was banned for dealing with lesbianism. Obviously, it was a very taboo subject and Woolf writes her story in the way she does (with a gender metamorphosis part way through) to avoid censorship.

On a final note, a fun fact: U of A's Orlando Project, a database dedicated to English female writers, is named after the novel. Ahhh, the things you learn from Wikipedia.