Chapter 2

Please use this thread for discussing Chapter 2.

I've only just started chapter 2 but thought I'd get the discussion going. I feel that the narrator is far more distanced from what is going on in the second chapter with Orlando than in Chapter 1. Orlando's though about memory and Princess Sasha indicates that soon there is to be a shift in his life - the idea of memory feels very important in this section.

I will post more when I finish the chapter.

You seem to know what you're doing here, Ashleigh.

I found the first chapter to be a bit tedious, though once I applied myself, tried not to drown in all the descriptive and metaphoric material, I moved into the story.

So he fell madly in love, this time for real. And she sailed away (at the first sign of trouble) without him.

Though I'm not one to look for symbolism in stories, this is obvious - there was a big storm, the river overflowed and many were killed. He stood watching as her ship sailed away from it all.

It is to be assumed that she was on it.



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I'll keep reading . . . like I said to Thomas, in the thread for Ch 1, I don't know if I like this story all that much, but I will give it a fair throw.

And now it seems he's been banished from the lovely life the Queen bestowed on him and has gone home.

He sleeps for a long time - they cannot get him up - this goes on for a week, then he rises, like nothing's happened.

But he seems to have walked into a new life. Does he remember his affair with Sasha? The Princess?

It seems not.

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But the doctors were hardly wiser then than they are now, and after prescribing rest and exercise, starvation and nourishment, society and solitude, that he should lie in bed all day and ride forty miles between lunch and dinner, together with the usual sedatives and irritants, diversified, as the fancy took them, with possets of newt's slobber on rising, and draughts of peacock's gall on going to bed, they left him to himself, and gave it as their opinion that he had been asleep for a week.

Now what kind of prescription is that? Ride forty miles in the afternoon - but lie in bed all day?

What's that going to do for him - draughts of peacock's gall on going to bed - well, sleeping pill, I guess - so why not just take the sleeping pill at night, then spend the day normally.

How can you lie in bed 'all day' and ride forty miles between lunch and dinner?

Now Orlando gave himself up to a life of extreme solitude. His disgrace at Court and the violence of his grief were partly the reason of it, but as he made no effort to defend himself and seldom invited anyone to visit him (though he had many friends who would willingly have done so) it appeared as if to be alone in the great house of his fathers suited his temper.

I thought he didn't remember anything? He doesn't remember Sasha, so how does he remember having been 'disgraced' at Court?

Ya' got me!



Anyway, I'll just read on.

[i]None dared follow him, for the house was haunted by a great variety of ghosts, and the extent of it made it easy to lose one's way and either fall down some hidden staircase or open a door which, should the wind blow it to, would shut upon one for ever

See? It says at the beginning of this chapter that he didn't remember her, yet now it says . . .

Forgetting the bones of his ancestors and how life is founded on a grave, he stood there shaken with sobs, all for the desire of a woman in Russian trousers, with slanting eyes, a pouting mouth and pearls about her neck. She had gone. She had left him. He was never to see her again.

Maybe at the beginning of the chapter, when he first woke up, he didn't remember - maybe he remembered more as he went on. I dunno' . . .

It's confusing.

It is a confusing book, and you're right, Chapter One was a little tedious. But Chapter two does move faster - and he does seem to have memory loss in this chapter.

'This is the face of that rather fat, shabby man who sat in Twitchett's room ever so many years ago when old Queen Bess came here to dine; and I saw him,' Orlando continued, catching at another of those little coloured rags, 'sitting at the table, as I peeped in on my way downstairs, and he had the most amazing eyes,' said Orlando, 'that ever were, but who the devil was he?'

Is this the poet who visited when he was a child?

Now here's a far flung though . . . does it so happen that this man is 'him' in a future life?

Just ignore that if you like - it was a wild supposition I just made . . .

Just reading that quote, he does seem rather childlike, as opposed to the adult he is. He is physically a young man, and in most places, mentally like the aimless teen or young person of today, trying to find themselves. But here, as you pointed out, it is like a child's reaction, something I never picked up on [yet I studied it for English].

I'm still only at the start of Chapter 2; it seems that ten years have passed since Chapter One - so we must have been at the start of Elizabeth I's reign there, but here, maybe nearer the middle or end [I can't remember the dates]. So, going by my memory; that comes after where I am. So the event he refers to possibly referred to when he was younger and he still regards it with that child like awe.

What do you make of the poet that Orlando speaks to?

PS It's a book discussion, and in literature everyone interprets everything differently sometimes, especially theorists. What one may see as positive the other negative and so forth.

His muse?

Perhaps he's right . . . I think it really is a poet, and he's become infatuated with him.

From what I understand, he's frustrated - he wants to write and does but he can't get anywhere with his work because of his position.

Nobody would take him seriously as a poet.

Whenever I hear that some famous star has written a book, I think 'oh, somebody wrote for him - he couldn't have - he's an actor'.

It's like being stereotyped.

I find if I actually know the writer of something I have a hard time reading it. Unless it's read aloud to me at a workshop or something.

If somebody I know publishes a book of fiction, I cannot help identifying with the person as I'm reading and get blocked.

Maybe this is why the poet isn't interested in his work - maybe Orlando knows this and is frustrated by it.

This story is way too wordy.

Good point. What I thought about the poet was that maybe it was Shakespeare - if we consider the time that Orlando is in currently. Shakespeare as regarded as the best poet of the time, upon meeting Orlando, dislikes Orlando's work possibly.


*Must finish chapter two*

So moving on a little - the poet could be his muse or Shakespeare. The good old bard gets a mention a little later on by name.

What do you make of the time transitions Orlando goes through, making him age at unusual rates? Perhaps it is a part of his need to find himself, because by this point he is thirty years old, and one party says that he can breakfast at age thirty and return home for dinner aged 55 [or around that age].

And his sailing away on the final page of chapter two - I feel this is a transition for him into the next century and the start of him evolving into a woman on the surface.

If we dig deeper with this, it is a way for him to grow, and find his true self, an exploration much like backpacking in this day and age for young people. Also, sailing away represents I think a severing of his bonds with the Renaissance age that he has started out in, and places him in limbo until he reaches his next destination.

I imagine you're right . . . he's hinting of his next transition.

I'm going to start chapter 3 and see it through - but if I still feel as boggled as I do now, I'll be dropping this book.

There so many other books I want to read before my life is over - I'm not blowing any more of my reading time on books I don't really like.

Maybe the movie would be better.

Then again, I could get pleasantly surprised - I could get into Ch 3 and really like it.

We'll see.

Maybe I shouldn't be so lazy and do a little research . . . was he a real person who thought he'd lived these lives?

Is he really 'Virginia Woolf'? Did she herself think she'd lived for 400 years?