March '05 Book: Orlando

[Scheherazade]

You won't believe this, Scheherazade, but.... as I posted this morning, in my mind's eye (well, way in the back of my mind, in that third eye I have behind my head), I actually saw you making such a post as this in reply, asking me such things as whether I REALLY have an unabridged book, or how I have the time to do all of this, or whether I have finished yet, or whether that teeny tiny print isn't too much of a strain on my eyes (honest to God, I'm not joking....)

I am predictable like!

A snake eats a pig by starting at its head, working its way slowly, engulfing it in a linear fashion, from beginning to end, until the tail disappears down the gullet, and then digests it. A spider dines by poking a hole in its prey, filling it with digestive juices, digesting it OUTSIDE of its own body, and then, finally, drinks in all the essence. I am more like the spider in my reading than like the snake.

Thanks for the vivid imagery! Did me lotsa good before lunch!

On a serious note... Just back from the library;still no 'Orlando'... Visited the only book shop in town and they don't have a copy either. *sighs*

[Scheherazade]

I have finished reading Chapter I. I am quite amused with the way Woold describes her main characters;the gender ambiguity is really interesting... Probably an insight to Woolf's own feelings.

I'm wondering what other women think of this? Do you believe it is still the case today?

It would depend on one's cultural background surely but in my opinion what obstacles women face come from the 'intricacy' of their hearts mostly.

[Sitaram]

It would depend on one's cultural background surely but in my opinion what obstacles women face come from the 'intricacy' of their hearts mostly.

I see the problems which women have faced for millenia as coming from patriarchal societies and religions, imposed upon them from the outside, and not from "intricacies" of their hearts, as if a woman's heart is my nature essentially different from the heart of a male.

One given individual woman may be brutal and insensitive, and a particular male might be quite sensitive or compassionate. I think these are differences in individuals and not gender specific.

Woolf, in her essay "A Room of One's Own" is prophetic when she predicts that in time women will assume all the jobs which in her day were reserved for males.

A little known fact, the first elected woman leader of a nation in modern times was the prime minister of Sri Lanka, after it gained independence (former Ceylon). She passed away recently.

I think it was Kemal Attaturk who said, towards the end of the 19th century "How can our nation compete with the west when one half of our population, the women, are uneducated."

[Scheherazade]

Kemal Ataturk was born in 1881 so he probably said that in the 20th century.

When I refer to women's hearts, I don't assume that there would be physical differences but that men and women in general tend to look at love and sex differently. It is true that there will always be exceptions but in general women get more involved and attached.

The cultural background plays a very important factor how one experiences and relates to love and sex but I think it is particularly hard for women to express themselves even in so-called more 'open minded' societies.

[Sitaram]

When, in the Book of Samuel, God tells the prophet Samuel that God is the "only knower of hearts", no one assumes that God is saying He is a cardiovascular surgeon. We all know what "heart" means, hopefully, in this context, as something emotional, intellectual, or spiritual, but not that lump of muscle in the chest that constantly goes "Lub Dub".

But, suppose we WERE speaking of that physical organ which we call the heart. Some people, perhaps many, would have signs of cardiovascular disease. Some would have larger organs, others smaller. Some would be in excellent physical shape and last a long time. Others would have congenital defects from birth. Others would have damage because of some disease, or injury, or parasititic infection.

Why should the emotional realm, which we metaphorically call "the heart", be one thing for males, and another for females?.... look at the famous Phulan Devi, the female bandit in India...

I can see the validity of saying that each person is different as an individual.... I am not so certain I am convinced by blanket (no pun intended) assertions that all women are mostly one way, and all males are some different way...

And were that the case, then why would there be so many males in the world who desire to become women,... and perhaps a lesser number of women who desire to become men....

I think this whole notion that you present, of women being essentially different needs some debate, some investigation.....

If there is some fundamental difference between males and females, then it seems to me that such a difference should manifest statistically in some fashion, in educational testing, for example. Do we see the same number of female poets as male poets, or novelists? What can we say of actors and actresses? In nations where military service is compulsory for all males and females, what differences can be measured?

I am searching google unsuccessfully for answers:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...nce&vi=reviews


The Gendered Society Reader
by Michael Kimmel

Designed as a companion volume to Kimmel's forthcoming book, The Gendered Society, the overall purpose of The Gendered Society: Readings is to provide students with a sense of different discourses on gender that have been produced by a wide range of disciplines. In a series of readings, both classic and contemporary, from the biological sciences, anthropology, cross-culture studies, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, and gender studies, Kimmel focuses on the two major issues in the study of gender - difference and domination - looking at such fundamental questions as: How are males and females different? What do these differences mean? Why does it mean different things in different cultures to be male or female? Why is it that virtually every society differentiates people on the basis on gender? Why is that virtually every known society is also based on male domination? The first sections are organized by discipline, collecting classic statements of different theoretical perspectives and research inquiries. The final sections address various substantive issues such as: sex; gender and work; and love, sex, and the family. In its focus on both empirical and theoretical issues, its broad interdisciplinary perspective, and its emphasis on including both men and women, this reader is both informative and entertaining and appropriate for both scholars and students.

============
Here are some scholatic testing studies:

http://www.judithkleinfeld.com/ar_st...rformance.html

(excerpt) :

In a nutshell: On standardized achievement tests of basic school skills, females surpass males in writing ability and reading achievement while males surpass females in science and mathematics. Generally, these gender differences are small. The one exception is the significant female advantage in writing skills. Indeed, the female advantage on standardized tests of reading and writing achievement substantially outstrips the male advantage on standardized tests of science and mathematics.

As for the male advantage in mathematics and science, it is shrinking. The National Assessment of Educational Progress has measured the knowledge of 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds in mathematics and science for over 20 years. In mathematics, the gender gap among 17-year-olds has declined significantly since the 1970s and no longer reaches statistical significance. In science, the gender gap has also declined.
======================
BUT CONSIDER THIS: Suppose it were demonstrated scientifically that, statistically, as a group, males have, lets say, a math advantage, while females have, lets say a verbal advantage.... It is still the case that one male with a high verbal advantage might be working with a female with a low verbal capacity.... so.... it still boils down to the individual... and some individuals with less talent, will make up for that with persistence and hard work, and will overcompensate, while a gifted individual may be lazy, and not develop their innate gifts

[Scheherazade]

I really like these two passages:

Soon, however, Orlando grew tired, not only of the discomfort of this way of life, and of the crabbed streets of the neighbourhood, but of the primitive manners of the people. For it has it has to be remembered that crime and poverty had none of the attraction for the Elizabethans that they have for us. They had none of our modern shame of book learning;none of our belief that to be born the son of a butcher is a blessing and to be unable to read a virtue;no fancy that what we call 'life' and 'reality' are somehow connected with ignorance and brutality;nor, indeed, any equivalent for these two words at all. Chapter 1, Orlando

Very nicely sums up our times...

But if sleep it was, of what nature, we can scarcely refrain from asking, are such sleeps as these? Are they remedial measures -trances in which the most galling memories, events that seem likely to cripple life for ever, are brushed with a darkwing which rubs their harshness off and gilds them, even the ugliest and basest, with lustre, an incandescence? Has the finger of death to be laid on the tumult of life from time to time lest it rend us asunder? Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living? And then what strange powers are these that penetrate our most secret ways and change our most treasured possessions without our willing it? Had Orlando, worn out by the extremity of his suffering, died for a week, and then come to life again? And if so, of what nature is death and of what nature life? Chapter 2, Orlando

Can't help wondering if Woolf was talking from experience. Being susceptible to depression and emotional breakdowns herself, she knew only too well how it felt. And what an interesting way of looking at sleep: 'Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living?' Very nice indeed.


How are you enjoying the book so far? I find it a little hard work and slow (definitely not a picnic), but still a good read;like 'Portrait'.

[Sitaram]

If I tell you that the last words of the story are "The End" have I spoiled it for you? My edition does not say "The End". Movies, in the 1950s, always seemed to flash "The End" on the screen.

I like the book. I would never have chosen it on my own. Participation in this reading group is beneficial.

Yesterday, I began to wonder about the significance of Woolf casting her character as a male, who one day wakes up as a female. Woolf herself seems like a woman who would prefer to be male if only for the fact that males are more free to pursue writing and access university library resources. What does it mean that Woolf has Orlando progress from male to female? What if Orlando had progressed from female to male? I suspect such questions may be useful and revealing.

It seems like Woolf intends for her book to have a happy ending. I am wondering at the significance of the final date in the final sentence being the date of the books publication. I almost get the feeling that Woolf herself marries her book.

This book is not considered science fiction, and yet a person who lives 400 years changes from a male into a female. Ursula LeGuin used the term "speculative fiction" for her work.

[Scheherazade]

My copy does not end like that either but with a date. Did you read it on the net that the book ends like that? Does anyone have a copy that ends with those words? Wondering if it was an addition by the publisher (like in the movies) rather than by the author.

I think more or less all movies end like with 'The End'? It is one of the first things I learnt in English because I saw it ever so often at the end of the movies

[Sitaram]

As a little kid, I would fall in love with whatever movie I was watching, and get all sad when it was over, and my mother and I would both say together "THeeeee Eeeennnnddd" and stretch out the two words. I remember feeling so attached to "Beau Jeste" which I watched as an old rerun on late night television.

I guess I was too sentimental as a child.

Just now, out of curiosity, I glanced at my bookshelves, and randomly opened a "Scribner Library" paperback of "Look Homeward, Angel" by THomas Wolfe, which I purchased around 1965. The last page says "The End".

I keep thinking about the issue raised yesterday (above) which I shall attempt to restate as: "Is the so-called essential difference between male and female real or imagined?"

I think Virginia Woolf would disagree with the notion that "what obstacles women face come from the 'intricacy' of their hearts."

As we see from the following link, Woolf envisions some sort of Platonic "form" or Jungian archetype of "maleness" and "femaleness" between which individuals pass back and forth freely under various circumstances.

http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.p...=true&UID=2988

What Woolf called in her diary “a change about from one sex to another” opens up into a comical-but-serious examination of the role of women in historical and contemporary society: a project she would continue in A Room of One's Own (1929). After she becomes a woman, Orlando sees the folly of much of her behaviour as a man; and, because she has once been a man, her present situation now serves to highlight the quite unreasonable expectations that men appear to have imposed upon women through the ages. Quite subtly, and with great humour, the arbitrary and “unnatural” status of gender roles is exposed. The presentation of gender in Orlando can be summed up as an anticipation of the argument Simone de Beauvoir would later put forward in The Second Sex (1949): “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature”.

One particularly interesting question raised by Orlando's change of sex is the question of sexuality. In a diary entry that prefigures both Orlando and The Waves, Woolf describes her plan for a book entitled “The Jessamy Brides”. One of its key features, she notes, is that ”Sapphism is to be suggested”. Writing about same-sex desire in England in the 1920s was not something that one did lightly. Critics frequently make the link between Orlando and another “Sapphic novel” published in 1928, Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. Hall's novel, notoriously and shamefully, was banned for “obscenity” (seemingly on account of the line, “and that night they were not divided”, which refers to the nocturnal activities of its two female protagonists). The prosecution of The Well of Loneliness spoke volumes about the misogyny and patriarchal bias of early twentieth-century British society. Even Woolf's own friends were not immune. She noted in her diary that the novelist E. M. Forster (who was, incidentally, homosexual), “thought Sapphism disgusting: partly from convention, partly because he disliked that women should be independent of men”. But the fact remained, as Woolf was moved to point out in A Room of One's Own (written in the aftermath of the Well of Loneliness trial), “sometimes women do like women”.

Look at this passage from "Orlando":

Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a
vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only
the clothes that keep the male and female likeness, while underneath
the sex is the very opposite of what it is above. Of the complications
and confusions which thus result every one has had experience; but
here we leave the general question and note only the odd effect it
had in the particular case of Orlando herself.

And here is what Sparknotes says about the above passage:

In this passage from chapter four, the narrator draws a general
statement from the particular situation of Orlando. She suggests that
gender identity is not fixed, but can change throughout life
independently of biological makeup. The novel explores many
permutations of this idea. Woolf believes that sexes are intermixed,
that though an individual may seem a woman, she really has the
qualities of a man, and vice versa.

This idea applies not only to the literal gender of individuals, but more
broadly to the gender roles within society. Once Orlando becomes a
woman, she realizes all the opportunities and rights that are now
closed to her. Though she feels no different at all, society treats her
differently because of the clothes she wears. Encouraging the equality
of gender roles is a point that Woolf makes in many of her novels.

[papayahed]

I have a question for the writers out there: In chapter 2 Woolf spends several paragraphs descibing the writing process, she makes it sound like it is very difficult. Is this true for other writers, or does this come from her emotional state?

[Sitaram]

I heard that "Red Badge of Courage" was written by Stephen Crane in 10 days flat.

[Scheherazade]

"Is the so-called essential difference between male and female real or imagined?"

As I mentioned earlier, I do believe that culture, hence, society, plays a gret role in shaping our gender identites and what is expected of us. The differences are very much there;they are not imagined, in my opinion. Whether they stems from the individual or are impressed upon us by the society, they are there.

I think Virginia Woolf would disagree with the notion that "what obstacles women face come from the 'intricacy' of their hearts."

I am not sure if Woolf would really disagree. In my opinion, there are gender differences, which show themselves from birth. What Woolf disagrees with, and I humbly too, is the different treatment due to these differences. People should have equal rights regardless of their gender or sexual tendencies, which I think is the idea heavily explored and debated in 'Orlando'.

And if Woolf disagrees... She is entitled to her opinion, just like I am to mine

I have a question for the writers out there: In chapter 2 Woolf spends several paragraphs descibing the writing process, she makes it sound like it is very difficult. Is this true for other writers, or does this come from her emotional state?

I remember reading while at university that for Woolf writing was a painful process and she worked very hard, painstakingly trying to get everything right. If you have read further, there is mention of Greene writing his piece about Orlando and he seems to be working with ease and finishes it quickly once he gets the inspiration.

[Sitaram]

Of course there are real differences between the genders, but are they the result of nature or nuture? Is gender a difference of degree, or a difference of kind? One expects to find a y chromosome in the cells of males, and two X chromosomes in females. But is there some essential difference in the heart and spirit and mind of a male, in contrast to a female?

I guess we are all entitled to be wrong... in fact, I am certain that "being wrong" or mistaken is a common state of being for most of us, myself included. A few are concerned with "truth" and the vast majority are concerned with "entitlement".

[Scheherazade]

Sitaram,
I respect your opinions and I sincerely do hope that you can do the same for the others as well.
Thank you.

[mono]

I have a question for the writers out there: In chapter 2 Woolf spends several paragraphs descibing the writing process, she makes it sound like it is very difficult. Is this true for other writers, or does this come from her emotional state?

Similar to many eclectic writers, both modern and classical, Virginia Woolf suffered extensively from mental illness, suspected bipolar disorder. I have heard elsewhere that Woolf wrote almost her entire collection of books standing, due to a constant energy, most likely from the 'manic' episodes specified in a certain mental disorder; accomodating this restlessness, one could easily determine that her attention could drift. Chapter 2 I find brilliantly written, but I cannot imagine how much effort and time Woolf had to devote to its extensive detail and rhetoric.