Virginia Woolf’s Orlando Essay -- Literary

Virginia Woolfs OrlandoBorn in the late nineteenth century, Virginia Woolfs visionary mind emerged in a affable climate that did not cultivate the intellectual development of women. In Englands waning Victorian era, the upper classes of women were encouraged to become nothing more than gentle wives, self-effacing mothers, servile hostesses, and cheerful, chattering tea-drinkers, expectations that Virginia Woolf shunned, renounced, and ultimately denounced in her writings. Beside being born into a patriarchal culture, Virginia Woolf was also born into a family headed by a small-arm who made it clear that he expected more from his sons than his daughters (Bazin 4). Although he considered Virginia as the darling, the pet (70) of the family, after the death of his second wife, her father Leslie Stephen fell into a qabalistic depression that commanded demands upon his children for pity and devotion that were almost unbearable (4). Woolf herself wrote in her diary that she would never have been able to produce as much work as she did had her father not died fairly early in her life His life would have entirely ended mine. What would have happened? No writing, no books-- inconceivable (Gilbert and Gubar 192). Although he allowed Virginia to read and write, Leslie Stephen can be attributed with only a little more than genetic contribution to his daughters genius.Orlando is the paragon of Virginia Woolfs literary genius. promulgated in 1928, the novel is a fictional biography of Woolfs friend Vita Sackville-West. The novel is dedicated to Vita and has been called the longest and most charming love letter in literature (Meese 469). This crucial biographical context is often overlooked, a displacement which hinders the f... ...a Woolf. Ed. Harold Bloom. bleak York Chelsea House, 1986. 223-230.Marder, Herbert. Feminism & Art A Study of Virginia Woolf. simoleons U of Chicago P, 1968.Meese, Elizabeth. When Virginia Looked at Vita, What Did She See or, Lesbian Feminist Woman- Whats the Differ(e/a)nce? Feminisms An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. saucy Brunswick Rutgers UP, 1997.Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics Feminist Literary Theory. New York Routledge, 1985.Walker, Nancy A. Feminist Alternatives Irony and Fantasy in the Contemporary Novel by Women. Jackson UP of Mississippi, 1990.West, Paul. Enigmas of Imagination Orlando Through the Looking Glass. Virginia Woolf. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York Chelsea House, 1986. 83-100.Woolf, Virginia. Orlando A Biography. 1928. New York Penguin Books, 1946.