Orlando

 

Finished on: 6/10/2026

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

 

_____________________

 

 

This novel preoccupies itself with the tension that exists between the public self and the interior self, between what is perceptible and everything that lies underneath perception. In that vein, it’s very much a novel about social custom: how gender identity and expression are culturally understood and enforced, and how that does and does not shape our view of ourselves. The trappings of Orlando’s life change when their gender identity does—their modes of expression and of moving through the world materially change—but their fundamental, interior understanding of themself remains constant. 

 

This is also very much a novel about art, particularly literature. The story focuses as much on Orlando’s artistic, authorial pursuits as it does Orlando’s experience of gender. From beginning to end, Orlando engages with the world through literature—struggling to express truth within the limitations of language, wanting to contribute to the “cloud of witnesses” who came before, and being disillusioned by the experience of literary fame and success. I really enjoyed Woolf’s attention to the significance of language, its simultaneous power and impotence to reflect our experience of the world.

 

“Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? […] What could have been more secret, she thought, more slow, and like the intercourse of lovers, than the stammering answer she had made all these years to the old crooning song of the woods, and the farms and the brown horses standing at the gate […]?”

 

Despite how weighty all those subjects sound, this is a funny book. The narrative tone is satirical and wry, poking fun at the social norms it describes, and even poking gentle fun at the characters for taking themselves a little too seriously. (The way the narrator occasionally jabs at a young, painfully earnest and melodramatic Orlando struck me right through the heart, because oh boy was I the same way as a teenager.) I was surprised but delighted by this comedic tone—it very effectively demonstrates the absurdities of social custom, and it also felt like the author sharing a little joke with me.

 

Woolf’s descriptive language was my favorite part of the book. The first chapter, particularly the scene of the frozen-over Thames river, is a glorious example of her skill in this. These such passages kept me most engaged throughout the novel. That said, I think the first half of Orlando is significantly stronger than the latter half. There is a focus and a momentum to the first half of Orlando’s story that gets lost by the end. Orlando’s experiences—including significantly life-altering events like marriage and childbirth—get progressively more hazy, muddy, and disorienting. Time seems to collapse on itself, and Orlando’s interior world becomes the sole locus of action as the exterior world becomes more and more unknowable. Woolf did this intentionally—the subjectivity of time is certainly an intentional theme here—but I’m not certain this choice succeeds for me. It strips a lot of power from the very thing I most enjoyed about the novel: the rich descriptive language and stage-setting. 

 

Finally, I would be remiss not to mention: Woolf’s racism and the racism of her time/culture are very much on display in this novel. Black people are dehumanized and objectified, treated as the trophies of a white ruling class. And while yes, it’s important to place the novel within its historical context, it’s equally as important to honestly acknowledge the harm of these depictions and this language. If readers choose to engage with this text, it should be an informed choice: all who enter here should be prepared to encounter these upsetting, dehumanizing depictions.