Orlando ages, travels, and changes gender. As Orlando reflects in Chapter 6, there are thousands of different versions of the character presented on the written page. People change from moment to moment. But there is a core, to both Orlando and to Orlando. The core is "The Oak Tree" − Orlando's dreams and reflections. It is the inner life of the character that gives Orlando an identity, not the social trappings of clothing or physical features.
Woolf really hammers this point home when describing Orlando's transition: "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, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity. Their faces remained, as their portraits prove, practically the same."
Even though Orlando is a novel about shifting identities, Woolf acknowledges that you can't entirely throw off society's expectations of gender. Orlando's changing gender creates restrictions. As a woman, her sexual desire changes, and she is forced to deal with discrimination that she never encountered as a man.
Questions About Identity
- To what extent does Orlando have an essential self, and to what extent is that self constructed by the society Orlando is living in at the time? For example, the "biographer" sees Orlando’s desire to marry as a product of the Victorian era, rather than a desire innate to Orlando.
- In Orlando, how important is one’s gender identity to one’s overall identity?
- Does Orlando have one true self by the end of the novel? How can we tell?
Chew on This
Orlando’s sex change allows the character to come to a greater understanding of their essential identity.