Chapter 2

[WildCityWoman]

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.

[Ashleigh]

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*

[Ashleigh]

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.

[WildCityWoman]

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.

[WildCityWoman]

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?

[Ashleigh]

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.

[Rose Kolarich]

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.

[Rose Kolarich]

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.

[Ashleigh]

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?

[WildCityWoman]

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?