10.2.07

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Virginia and Vita: Explorations of their relationship viewed through the novel of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
Guinevere Shaw
It has been said the novel Orlando is the longest love-letter ever written; a celebration of the bond between women. The relationship between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West is well documented and known to have been intimate. That Virginia was passionate and giddy about her relationship with Vita is also known and displayed in Orlando. But Orlando also offers a rare intimate glimpse into the mind of Virginia Woolf. An unselfconscious work, it reveals her mind, talent at play. Orlando offers rich insights into her mind while keeping the rich prose that embodies her other great works. The novel demonstrates several of Virginia’s obsessions, the focus here on gender and sexuality. While presumptuous to assume an author’s life directly through her work, Virginia herself writes about this inevitable link in Orlando: “In short, every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works, yet we require critics to explain the one and biographers to expound the other” (Orlando 209). A good author usually writes what she knows; considering the background of this novel, the reader may draw parallels between Virginia’s life, her relationship with Vita and the writing of Orlando.
Who is Orlando? The common interpretation is Orlando is Vita. The book is dedicated to her and pictures of Vita are interspersed throughout the book. Vita herself was said to tell Virginia that she fell in love with herself after reading the novel. Vita’s mother was more acetic: “You have written some beautiful phrases in Orlando but probably you do not realise how cruel you have been. And the person who inspired the book has been crueler still” (Lee 548). The book was taken in Virginia’s time to be a snoopy insight of Vita and the Bloomsbury group’s lifestyles. Vita’s mother surely took exception to her daughter’s life being so openly flaunted. Though she herself was not a role-model of marital fidelity. In fact, for Vita’s parent’s extra-marital affairs was the norm. From this influence, Vita based her actions; a reason that caused Virginia much pain later in their relationship.
Virginia became fascinated with Vita’s family history. Vita’s family could be traced back to William the Conqueror. Vita’s ancestry and her own life-style differed greatly from Virginia’s. Vita was dramatic, exciting and thrilling; Virginia, mousy, quiet, intellectual. This difference between their personalities and family history captivated Virginia. “Part of the attraction was the story Vita had to tell. Virginia fell on it, dramatised and exaggerated it, long before she wrote Orlando” (Lee 481). The family house, central in Orlando, was Vita’s great love. Because she was a woman, she was prevented from inheriting the house. Virginia “always associated Vita with her house and ancestry; it was as much the inspiration for Orlando as Vita herself” (Lee 481). Therefore Orlando returns to England a woman and discovers a lawsuit against her. “The chief charges against her were (1) that she was dead, and therefore could not hold any property whatsoever; (2) that she was a woman, which amounts to much the same thing...” (Orlando 168). In Orlando, Virginia gives Vita (as Orlando) the power of her ancestors (by having her a collective immortal of them) and over injustice--Orlando eventually does win the legal right to keep her house. “Whereupon she appended her own signature...and from that moment into the undisturbed possession of the titles, her house and her estate...” (Orlando 255). This one plot line demonstrates several aspects on the melding between fact and fiction; and Vita and Virginia’s relationship. It reflects Virginia’s feminist beliefs that women are entitled to hold property. It demonstrates the semi-biography aspect of the novel; the influence of Vita’s life on Virginia in writing Orlando. It also shows the affection Virginia had for Vita. Vita was justly devastated about the lose of her house. What Virginia could not do for Vita in real life, she did for her in her fiction.
Vita’s ancestry was not solely what held attraction for Virginia. Virginia was interested in Vita’s life-style. Openly gay as one could be at the time, Vita demonstrated character strength for Virginia. Vita was free with her sexuality; free of gender-role constraints. “From the early 1920’s she was well known in her circles as a lesbian...She crossed-dressed...and she had a reputation for passionate and predatory affairs...” (Lee 483). Vita was also a writer and at that time more popular than Virginia. Her writings were often about young boys involved with very feminine women who’s affairs were doomed because of infidelity. “Mostly, though, like many other queer writers of the time, she kept her explicit lesbian writing in the closet, and in her published work encoded her desires as myth or romance...” (Lee 483). This sexual expression must have been attractive but scary to Virginia. She had a knowledge that she was sexually attracted to women and shared these feelings with her sister. Often, as with anything that makes someone uncomfortable, she joked about it.
Virginia reveals her attraction to Vita is part of the differences between them: “her being in short (what I have never been) a real woman” (Lee 484). And of course to Virginia, part of the definition of being a “real woman” was the ability to love freely other women. Virginia always felt strongly about the bonds between women; the friendships and level of emotional intimacy that can be attained only with women. She writes about the male misconception of women’s relationships in Orlando: “that women are incapable of any feeling of affection for their own sex and hold each other in the greatest aversion. What can we suppose that women do when they seek out each other’s society” (Orlando 220)? Beyond the sarcasm Virginia is so expert at lies a double entendre: women seek out from other women satisfaction that they cannot get from men; not only emotionally but physically as well. Virginia in a letter to a female friend expounds on this idea: “If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure--the relationship so secret and private compared with relationships with men. Why not write about it? Truthfully?” (Lee 485).
Therefore Virginia’s relationship with Vita empowered her to shake off gender restrictions more freely than she had previously done. While Vita veiled her lesbianism in her writing, Virginia exposed it in Orlando. “And as all Orlando’s loves had been women, now...though she herself was a woman, it was still a woman she loved; and if the consciousness of being the same sex had any effect at all, it was to quicken and deepen those feelings which she had had as a man” (Orlando 161). Yet Virginia must not have been entirely comfortable with lesbianism. She cannot commit to one way or the other--leading into having the character Orlando live as two sexes. “If Virginia Woolf was lesbian and Vita Sackville-West confirmed that identity, she accepted it only evasively and ambivalently” (Lee 487). The writings available about their relationship usually are irritatingly coy. Yet there are references that address this ambivalence Virginia held about the relationship. “‘What is the effect of all this on me?’ she asked herself after her first night alone with Vita...” (Lee 487). Her reply was that she was “very mixed”. She was attracted to Vita physically also, admiring her “full breastedness” and “voluptuousness”. Change is a scary thing as also exploring yourself and trying to discover who you are. It seems that Virginia responded to lesbianism in this way. On one hand, the relationship with Vita was a liberation, the other, something to be feared as it brought out truths in herself she needed to confront. She discusses her “secret” to a friend: “My aristocrat...is violently Sapphic, and contracted such a passion for a woman cousin, that they fled to Tyrol...together...To tell you a secret, I want to incite my lady to elope with me next” (Lee 486). This demonstrates several conflicts Virginia was having; she at once disapproves of Vita’s behavior, chastising her behavior, while in the next sentence revealing that she too wants to be that way. It is also interesting to note the possessiveness of her wording with “My aristocrat”; this playful name suggests that Virginia felt close and comfortable with Vita. As Hermione Lee points out, this ambivalence leaves the modern researcher unsteady: “She experiments with possibilities and adventures in the writing, but stops teasingly on the edge of confirming her own sexual identity” (Lee 485).
While Virginia may have been struggling with her sexual identity she was more comfortable blasting restrictive gender boundaries. She utilizes Orlando to discuss the what she believes are the restrictions society had set against women. The change Orlando undergoes from man to woman seems to happen easily: “He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but to confess---he was a woman” (Orlando 137). How easily Orlando transforms himself; it is as if Virginia is saying -- there is not so much difference between the sexes that cannot be easily overcome. At first there is no difference: “Orlando had become a woman--there is no denying it. But in every other respect Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex...did nothing to alter their identity...” (Orlando 138). But that does not change the feminist viewpoint; Orlando started out a man, then became a woman, and then began to improve. Orlando learns the disadvantages of being a woman, foremost the absence of a legal identity. And then she learns the advantages: “To fall from a mast-head...because you see a woman’s ankles...to deny a woman teaching lest she may laugh at you; to be the slave of the frailest chit in petticoats, and yet you go about as if you were Lords of creation...” (Orlando 158). Clearly it is better to be the noble woman rather than the oppressive beast. Women are more intelligent, practical, never would a woman risk death for a man’s ankle. Therefore, in Virginia’s eyes, Orlando is better, less foolish, than she was as a man. While dealing with the problems of having been a man, and having the nature of man cause Orlando some psychological distress; it is finally settled when she realizes she is more woman than man, and this outcome is beneficial: “Praise God that I’m a woman” (Orlando 160)! Interestingly, these views were disagreeable to Vita. She felt uncomfortable with Virginia continuously spouting her feminist views--one insight into the idea that Orlando was not solely Vita’s characterization.
Given that Virginia and Vita are both women, therefore more enlightened beings, what does Orlando tell us about their relationship? When Orlando meets Sasha, all other commitments are forgotten--he was engaged to be married. Sasha attracts him so completely and magically that he has no other choice but to be with her. Of course, both Virginia and Vita were married; and their affair as forbidden as Orlando’s is with a “foreigner”. Sasha is foreign as a nationality, Vita foreign as a woman. “Indeed as the days passed, Orlando took less and less care to hide his feelings. Making some excuse or other, he would leave the company...Next moment it would be seen that the Muscovite was missing too” (Orlando 43). Therefore Orlando and Sasha are established as parallels to Vita and Virginia’s relationship. Orlando’s first love was an intense love and he planned on eloping. Then he was cheated, first by seeing Sasha embrace with another man; then by her leaving him. “It was useless for the rational part of him to reason; she might be late;...she might be prevented;...The passionate and feeling heart of Orlando knew the truth...The whole world seemed to ring with the news of her deceit and his derision” (Orlando 61). The truth also was Vita had a reputation for infidelity: “Vita, who grew up in an environment of infidelity, continued to hold many extra-marital affairs, with men and women” (Bond 167). Vita was certainly not the most stable person Virginia could have got involved with.
The pain that Virginia must have felt at Vita’s inevitable betrayal is also displayed in Orlando. “Huge noises as of tearing and rending of oak trees could be heard. There were also wild cries and terrible inhuman groanings” (Orlando 61). As the great frost began when Orlando and Sasha’s relationship started, the great frost was over, ice breaking up at the moment of Orlando’s betrayal. The cries and groanings are not only of the people drowning but of Orlando (or anybody with a broken heart) himself. Orlando was so affected by Sasha that at another time love arrived, Orlando fled the country. “Love...has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two tails, two, indeed, of every member and each the exact opposite of the other. Yet so strictly are they joined together that you cannot separate them” (Orlando 117). The deception comes from Sasha, who represents Vita to Virginia. Virginia is at this point in the book, Orlando.
As stated previously, Orlando was supposed to be a satire of Vita. But in the genius hands of Virginia it went further. “The truth is I expect I began it as a joke and went on with it seriously” (Diary 128). This quotation, in Virginia’s words, can be applied further than the book, it may be she started her relationship with Vita with no intentions of getting involved with her -- but that is not what it became. Orlando begins to write: “dipping his pen in ink, saw the mocking face of the lost princess...All of which so drove their venom into him that, as if to vent his agony somewhere, he plunged his quill so deep into the inkhorn” (Orlando 79) and wrote a pretentious biography satirizing a cheating lover? It is not that unreasonable to conclude that Virginia’s jealousy and anger about Vita’s carefree liaisons should show in her writing. Orlando finally comes to a conclusion: “I am growing up...I am losing my illusion, perhaps to acquire new ones...Then...it was the effect of Sasha and her disillusionment perhaps...I will write...what I enjoy writing...” (Orlando 175). I like to believe that Virginia came to the same conclusion as Orlando: “I am a woman...a real woman, at last” (Orlando 253).
In conclusion, Orlando the novel is many things; it is a biography of Vita and Virginia’s relationship, a biography of Vita and an autobiography of Virginia. Mixing history, truths, reality and fantasy. Vita was the extrovert in the relationship. Demonstrating her homosexuality with abandon, carefree of the knowledge of it to the circle she ran in. Virginia was the opposite, quiet, the “mouse” of the relationship. Orlando was in a way her liberation. Carefully veiled through the pretense of a biography (and Orlando as Vita not Virginia) Virginia is able to expound on her emotions and liberty. She can be as carefree as Vita, yet remain true to herself. Yes, the novel is a satire but a satire of what? Primarily the reader is left to believe a satire of this part of her life; her relationship with Vita. Issues and concerns of women, her sexuality are apparent in her other books, yet they are glorified in Orlando. That she had delight is known, she practically beamed about the romp she was having in her diary. “Abandoned myself to the pure delight of this farce” (Diary 117). For once she could be liberated about her sexuality while still concealing her self. The energy of her relationship with Vita is apparent in the novel. She was to wrestle her demons in other books (To the Lighthouse as an example) in Orlando she celebrated. But in Virginia’s hands, even satire has its serious moments. “I am writing Orlando half in mock style very clear and plain, so that people will understand every word. But the balance between truth and fantasy must be careful” (Dairy 117). And now years later, critics are still trying to view in-between the truth and fiction and the enigma of Virginia Woolf.
Works Cited
Bond, Alma Halbert, Phd. Who Killed Virginia Woolf - a Psychobiography. Human Sciences Press, Inc.:New York, NY 1989.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.:New York, NY 1996.
Woolf, Virginia. A Writer’s Diary. The Hogarth Press:London 1953
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Harcourt Brace & Company:New York 1956.

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