Gender As Performance In Orlando
Gender as Performance in Orlando.
Normally, we use the terms gender and sex in a very synonymous manner. Feminist critics would say that they are two different concepts. Sex of a person can be male or female. But the gender of a person is either masculine or feminine. This concept of gender is considered as constructs of the society. Virginia Woolf parodies this experience of being masculine and feminine gender constructs in her biography, Orlando. Woolf does not mock the feminine itself but rather the idea of the feminine that was held in society and had become a stereotype in her era [2004: 83]. Woolf thus sees gender as a performance which she portrayed through the character of Orlando in her book. Esther Sanchez put it in a clear and crisp manner:
It would then be interesting to consider Orlando’s sexuality as governed by his/her gender and thus determine if he respectively behaves as a “man-womanly” and as a “woman-manly’” or as a genderless being whose gendered sexuality has been neutralized [2004:77].
The book itself begins with a description of Orlando who may seem to be feminine but is a boy. “The red of the cheeks … do we rhapsodize [1942:10].” We also get a masculine description of Sasha in the words of Orlando, but to his amazement Sasha is indeed a woman [1942:26]. The love story itself reveals a lot of Orlando’s past as to how he didn’t perform the required activities with the women in his life except when Sasha entered his life. The love sequel with Sasha gave Orlando the opportunity to show case his masculinity and bravado. This didn’t turn out to do good to him, as Sasha ended up cheating on him and he was left alone. He then lost all interest in the exercises of noble men and his love for poetry resurfaced.
Our main concern here is about the time Orlando came to Constantinople. It was here that after a very dramatic turn of events that we have before us an Orlando, who is old yet new. Woolf makes it clear that “Orlando had become a woman –
Normally, we use the terms gender and sex in a very synonymous manner. Feminist critics would say that they are two different concepts. Sex of a person can be male or female. But the gender of a person is either masculine or feminine. This concept of gender is considered as constructs of the society. Virginia Woolf parodies this experience of being masculine and feminine gender constructs in her biography, Orlando. Woolf does not mock the feminine itself but rather the idea of the feminine that was held in society and had become a stereotype in her era [2004: 83]. Woolf thus sees gender as a performance which she portrayed through the character of Orlando in her book. Esther Sanchez put it in a clear and crisp manner:
It would then be interesting to consider Orlando’s sexuality as governed by his/her gender and thus determine if he respectively behaves as a “man-womanly” and as a “woman-manly’” or as a genderless being whose gendered sexuality has been neutralized [2004:77].
The book itself begins with a description of Orlando who may seem to be feminine but is a boy. “The red of the cheeks … do we rhapsodize [1942:10].” We also get a masculine description of Sasha in the words of Orlando, but to his amazement Sasha is indeed a woman [1942:26]. The love story itself reveals a lot of Orlando’s past as to how he didn’t perform the required activities with the women in his life except when Sasha entered his life. The love sequel with Sasha gave Orlando the opportunity to show case his masculinity and bravado. This didn’t turn out to do good to him, as Sasha ended up cheating on him and he was left alone. He then lost all interest in the exercises of noble men and his love for poetry resurfaced.
Our main concern here is about the time Orlando came to Constantinople. It was here that after a very dramatic turn of events that we have before us an Orlando, who is old yet new. Woolf makes it clear that “Orlando had become a woman –
Cited: Primary Text Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. 1942. Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd. Secondary Texts: From Jstor: Gonzalez, Esther Sanchez-Pardo. December, 2004. “What Phantasmagoria the Mind Is”: Reading Virginia Woolf’s Parody of Gender. Atlantis. Vol. 26. No. 2. AEDEAN: Asociaciόn española de estudios anglo-americanos. Pgs 75-86. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41055162 . Accessed on: 08/10/2013 04:08 pm. Wiley, Christopher. August, 2004. “‘When a woman speaks the truth about her body’: Ethel Smyth, Virginia Woolf, and the Challenges to Lesbian Auto/Biography.” Music & Letters. Vol. 85. No. 3. Oxford University Press. Pgs 388-414. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3526233. Accessed on: 08/10/2013 04:20 pm.