Writing and Literature Theme Analysis

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.