ORLANDO: Week 3, Chapters 4 and 5

[Melissa_W Moderator]

Please use this thread for discussion of Chapters 4 and 5 of Orlando - please clearly mark a SPOILER WARNING if your post references points from later in the novel.

[Fozzie]

Here are few miscellaneous thoughts on this section of reading:

I was surprised that none of the characters in the book seemed shocked that Orlando switched sexes.  I had to chuckle at Mrs. Grimsditch's "knowing nods" and acknowledgement that "she had always had her suspicions" on page 170 of my edition.  I guess some people thought the man Orlando was just now dressing as a woman, not that he had been transformed into a woman.

There does seem to be social commentary in these sections.  I noted this comment on page 182:

"What's the good of being a fine young woman in the prime of life," she asked, "if I have to pass all my mornings watching blue bottles with an Archduke."

Orlando is becoming painfully aware of some of the restrictions placed on her now because of her sex, restrictions she didn't have as a man.  She solved that problem though --- by just switching clothes, being the sex that suited her at the time!  LOL!

Orlando decided she wanted to marry, and then she and her husband accused each other of being the opposite sex!  Too strange!  I guess that is commentary on how both men and women contain bits and pieces of both sexes within their personalities and/or beings.

This is really not my type of book, but I am going to see it through to the end.  It does have some entertainment value.  :-)

[Peppermill]

Orlando is becoming painfully aware of some of the restrictions placed on her now because of her sex, restrictions she didn't have as a man.  She solved that problem though --- by just switching clothes, being the sex that suited her at the time!  LOL!

Which is part of what Victorian women did.  There began to be fewer prohibitions on women wearing male-tailored clothes.  The recent exhibition the Met did on women's clothes showed what was happening for upper crust women.  (I don't know if pictures are still available on the Net.) I think we take wearing slacks so for granted that we forget how few years such was deeply frowned upon in many segments of people.

American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity  The examples here still show skirts for horseback riding and cycling, although my recollection is that the actual exhibit began to trace the change to the use of trousers and divided skirts.

[Fozzie]

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Peppermill wrote:

Orlando is becoming painfully aware of some of the restrictions placed on her now because of her sex, restrictions she didn't have as a man.  She solved that problem though --- by just switching clothes, being the sex that suited her at the time!  LOL!

Which is part of what Victorian women did.  There began to be fewer prohibitions on women wearing male-tailored clothes. 

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I had no idea!  I learned something new. 

[Peppermill]

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Fozzie wrote:

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Peppermill wrote:

Orlando is becoming painfully aware of some of the restrictions placed on her now because of her sex, restrictions she didn't have as a man.  She solved that problem though --- by just switching clothes, being the sex that suited her at the time!  LOL!

Which is part of what Victorian women did.  There began to be fewer prohibitions on women wearing male-tailored clothes. 

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I had no idea!  I learned something new. 

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You are pulling my leg, of course!

Wow, a Google search on the subject (of persecution of women for wearing men's clothes) today seems deeply linked to our contemporary discussions of homosexuality in ways that I would never expected even a few years ago.  In fact, than I expected just now.  Did women really set all this social turmoil in motion when they donned slacks?

This article refers to the 691 CE Council of Constantinople's statements of prohibition and claims that refusal to leave aside men's clothes was one of the justifications for burning Joan of Arc.  (The account here feels biased in its focus -- clothing may have been an excuse, but there were political and military reasons for opposing her.)

[Peppermill]

At first, I couldn't figure out what people said Virginia was challenging about biographies and biographers.  After about half a dozen commentaries, I think I finally "get it" -- that an "ideal"  biography should be as much about the thoughts and feelings and emotions of an individual as the "external facts" such as her father so professionally gathered and collated for so much of his life. 

But, such information often wasn't available in the usual resources and records relied upon by a biographer. 

Question -- has there been a shift towards biographers relying more heavily on personal letters as well as public papers since Virginia wrote these words?   I know virtually nothing about the "history" of writing biographies; indeed, I am not particularly a reader of them, although through the years books on reading and personal growth have exhorted their value.

[Fozzie]

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Peppermill wrote:

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Fozzie wrote:

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Peppermill wrote:

Orlando is becoming painfully aware of some of the restrictions placed on her now because of her sex, restrictions she didn't have as a man.  She solved that problem though --- by just switching clothes, being the sex that suited her at the time!  LOL!

Which is part of what Victorian women did.  There began to be fewer prohibitions on women wearing male-tailored clothes. 

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I had no idea!  I learned something new. 

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You are pulling my leg, of course!

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No, I'm really not!

[chadadanielleKR]

Hi,

 Georges SAND, a famous 19th C French writer, was one of those women, who sported man's clothing and created a great scandal because of her masculine behavior. She certainly was not the only one.

[dulcinea3]

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Peppermill wrote:

At first, I couldn't figure out what people said Virginia was challenging about biographies and biographers.  After about half a dozen commentaries, I think I finally "get it" -- that an "ideal"  biography should be as much about the thoughts and feelings and emotions of an individual as the "external facts" such as her father so professionally gathered and collated for so much of his life. 

But, such information often wasn't available in the usual resources and records relied upon by a biographer. 

Question -- has there been a shift towards biographers relying more heavily on personal letters as well as public papers since Virginia wrote these words?   I know virtually nothing about the "history" of writing biographies; indeed, I am not particularly a reader of them, although through the years books on reading and personal growth have exhorted their value.

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I also don't know that much about the evolution of biography.  I can see that one that offers the inner life and character of its subject would be more satisfying to read than one that simply lists the bare facts of the life.  I suppose that in the modern time it may be easier for biographers to probe this than in the past, with less inhibitions about prying.  Of course, Woolf is greatly helped here by the fact that she is writing fiction!  Also, there is a lot of intrusion by the 'biographer/narrator' into the story; we are very aware of him/her (in one passage, the biographer stated that biographers have no sex - once again bringing in the theme of sexual ambiguity).  I imagine that in the dry biographies that Woolf was opposing, there would have been none of that, and one would have been entirely unaware of the character of the person writing the biography.

[dulcinea3]

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chadadanielleKR wrote:

Hi,

 Georges SAND, a famous 19th C French writer, was one of those women, who sported man's clothing and created a great scandal because of her masculine behavior. She certainly was not the only one.

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Yes, I would have thought that a woman dressing as a man in Victorian times would have been looked upon more as an aberration or scandal than that it was becoming acceptable or mainstream.  I tried looking up info, and in the few references I found, people seemed shocked about it.  I would have guessed that it might have started becoming more acceptable perhaps around the 20s, although still not that common?

It was interesting in the novel that at one point Orlando seemed to suddenly realize that she was wearing men's clothing and be rather shocked by it.  The transition to a woman seemed to be getting more pronounced, and I believe it was around that time that she started to long for a husband.

(And I spoke too soon during the last section, when I said that Woolf was switching the genders of people based on real people, as it turned out that Lady Harriet was a man, after all!  But still just as insufferable to Orlando.  Her coming up with the bluebottle game to avoid being more actively courted, and then cheating more and more until he couldn't help but notice and be put off, was a very humorous interlude.  I could just feel her frustration when he didn't notice the cheating at first.)

[foxycat]

She put the frog into his shirt too!

[Peppermill]

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dulcinea3 wrote (excerpt):

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chadadanielleKR wrote:

Hi,

 Georges SAND, a famous 19th C French writer, was one of those women, who sported man's clothing and created a great scandal because of her masculine behavior. She certainly was not the only one.

---

Yes, I would have thought that a woman dressing as a man in Victorian times would have been looked upon more as an aberration or scandal than that it was becoming acceptable or mainstream.  I tried looking up info, and in the few references I found, people seemed shocked about it.  I would have guessed that it might have started becoming more acceptable perhaps around the 20s, although still not that common?

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Good points, Dulcinea.  I don't know when it became acceptable for women to wear slacks, et al.  What I did particularly notice at the gorgeous Met exhibit after the Brooklyn Museum collection was encorporated into the Costume Institute was the fine tailoring copied from men's wear for high fashion women's clothes, especially for horseback riding and for sports.  As I recall, there were a few split skirts in the exhibit, although I didn't see any in the link I provided earlier.  The early part of the exhibit was from the late 1800's into the first years of the new century.

I think we really, really forget how much things have changed in just a little over our lifetimes.  Let's see, now when were women first permitted to vote?  And, by the way, I'll put in a plug for going to the polls next Tuesday, even though I still need to figure out who will get my votes.  Must go find that local paper that featured local candidates.

Pepper

[dulcinea3]

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foxycat wrote:

She put the frog into his shirt too!

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  Yes, and just like the difficult-to-discourage Harry to have a jewelled frog pin made so that he could wear it to commemorate the occasion!

[dulcinea3]

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Peppermill wrote:

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dulcinea3 wrote (excerpt):

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chadadanielleKR wrote:

Hi,

 Georges SAND, a famous 19th C French writer, was one of those women, who sported man's clothing and created a great scandal because of her masculine behavior. She certainly was not the only one.

---

Yes, I would have thought that a woman dressing as a man in Victorian times would have been looked upon more as an aberration or scandal than that it was becoming acceptable or mainstream.  I tried looking up info, and in the few references I found, people seemed shocked about it.  I would have guessed that it might have started becoming more acceptable perhaps around the 20s, although still not that common?

---

Good points, Dulcinea.  I don't know when it became acceptable for women to wear slacks, et al.  What I did particularly notice at the gorgeous Met exhibit after the Brooklyn Museum collection was encorporated into the Costume Institute was the fine tailoring copied from men's wear for high fashion women's clothes, especially for horseback riding and for sports.  As I recall, there were a few split skirts in the exhibit, although I didn't see any in the link I provided earlier.  The early part of the exhibit was from the late 1800's into the first years of the new century.

I think we really, really forget how much things have changed in just a little over our lifetimes.  Let's see, now when were women first permitted to vote?  And, by the way, I'll put in a plug for going to the polls next Tuesday, even though I still need to figure out who will get my votes.  Must go find that local paper that featured local candidates.

Pepper

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I did enjoy that link to the exhibit, Pepper, thanks!  I think that in general the pieces I found most beautiful were from the 20s, but there was lots of lovely stuff.

I remember when it was so exciting that we were finally allowed to wear pants to school!  I guess that was when I was in junior high.

[Peppermill]

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dulcinea3 wrote (excerpt):

I remember when it was so exciting that we were finally allowed to wear pants to school!  I guess that was when I was in junior high.

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Isn't it fun to be part of living history!  I remember when I used to listen to my uncles around the dinner table and wonder what I would have to tell when I reached their age.  Now I know! 

I understand, too, why you could so quickly question the Victorian acceptance. 

Chanel Fashion Review  by Tom Tierney

I believe this shows Coco in slacks -- my copy was beside my reading chair a week ago.  Now?  Anyway, when was she in her hey-day?  (She lived 1883 -1971.  What a controversial figure!  I didn't  realize the Nazi connections called out in the Wikipedia article.  Note also "Her extraordinary influence on fashion was such that she was the only person in the couturier field to be named on Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century.")

[Melissa_W Moderator]

My mom, who graduated HS in 1967, remembers being allowed to wear pants to school when the weather was bad but she had to wear a skirt/dress at school.  She went to an itty, bitty semi-rural school in central IL so that's probably a more conservative take on the pants issue.

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dulcinea3 wrote:

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Peppermill wrote:

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dulcinea3 wrote (excerpt):

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chadadanielleKR wrote:

Hi,

 Georges SAND, a famous 19th C French writer, was one of those women, who sported man's clothing and created a great scandal because of her masculine behavior. She certainly was not the only one.

---

Yes, I would have thought that a woman dressing as a man in Victorian times would have been looked upon more as an aberration or scandal than that it was becoming acceptable or mainstream.  I tried looking up info, and in the few references I found, people seemed shocked about it.  I would have guessed that it might have started becoming more acceptable perhaps around the 20s, although still not that common?

---

Good points, Dulcinea.  I don't know when it became acceptable for women to wear slacks, et al.  What I did particularly notice at the gorgeous Met exhibit after the Brooklyn Museum collection was encorporated into the Costume Institute was the fine tailoring copied from men's wear for high fashion women's clothes, especially for horseback riding and for sports.  As I recall, there were a few split skirts in the exhibit, although I didn't see any in the link I provided earlier.  The early part of the exhibit was from the late 1800's into the first years of the new century.

I think we really, really forget how much things have changed in just a little over our lifetimes.  Let's see, now when were women first permitted to vote?  And, by the way, I'll put in a plug for going to the polls next Tuesday, even though I still need to figure out who will get my votes.  Must go find that local paper that featured local candidates.

Pepper

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I did enjoy that link to the exhibit, Pepper, thanks!  I think that in general the pieces I found most beautiful were from the 20s, but there was lots of lovely stuff.

I remember when it was so exciting that we were finally allowed to wear pants to school!  I guess that was when I was in junior high.

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