I don't know. I learnt that she wrote it as a testimony to Vita Sackville-West. But I can't remember more about that. As a mock biography, she's been bold in its execution, because its not conventional like many biographies.

I skimmed the introduction to the internet copy of Orlando, and it said something like Orlando's life is a combination of Vita Sackville West's and her ancestors (it's Vita in the photographs posing as Orlando through the different ages). Vita came from an aristocratic family, one of her ancestors was granted an estate by Elizabeth I (like O in Ch 1) and her grandfather was an ambassador and involved with a Spanish dancer called Pepita of gipsy origin (O in Ch 3).

I think Woolf was satirizing the conventional subject and subject-matter of biographies by making Orlando have "every experience that life has to offer". I agree Ashleigh that she's been very bold in its execution, do you think she seriously meant this book to fall under the genre of biography rather than that of fiction, in spite of its outrageousness?

"What do you make of the time transitions Orlando goes through, making him age at unusual rates?"

For me, Woolf is suggesting that time is subjective rather than something which can be controlled objectively by clocks and calendars. Everyone (obviously) has slightly or very different personal experiences. These personal experiences (and our attitudes to these experiences) make it seem to ourselves that we are sometimes older, sometimes younger than how we appear to others.

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

This is an interesting idea WildCity Woman. I think he's a sort of weird Vita/ Virginia composite (combining fabulous pins with a gift for metaphor).

Through Orlando's elaborate metaphors and similes (e.g. Fame is like "a braided coat which hampers the limbs; a jacket of silver which curbs the heart?"), I think that Woolf is making fun of her own elaborate metaphors in her serious novels such as Mrs Dalloway.

I'm not sure, because its classed as fictional biography, or at least thats what I could class it as. Perhaps she meant it to fall under both?

Rose, how about you?

Does the story flow smoothly for you? Do you find it a bit wordy - to the extent that it's a 'hard read'?

Maybe it's just me?