The Spouter-Inn

48. Orlando.


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The chief charges against her were (1) that she was dead, and therefore

could not hold any property whatsoever; (2) that she was a woman, which
amounts to much the same thing; (3) that she was an English Duke who had
married one Rosina Pepita, a dancer; and had had by her three sons, which
sons now declaring that their father was deceased, claimed that all his
property descended to them.... Thus it was in a highly ambiguous
condition, uncertain whether she was alive or dead, man or woman, Duke or
nonentity, that she posted down to her country seat, where, pending the
legal judgment, she had the Law’s permission to reside in a state of
incognito or incognita as the case might turn out to be.

Virginia Woolf’s genre-bending Orlando: A Biography is not quite a novel,

and not quite a biography of Woolf’s lover Vita Sackville-West. But it is a
playful text, thick with possibilities. The book covers the long life of
Orlando, a young man born in the sixteenth century, who somehow continues
living up to the present day (that is, the 1920s)—and who unexpectedly
transforms into a woman halfway through her life. Suzanne and Chris explore
how the book’s playfulness both interferes with and enables its depictions of
wreaking havoc on perceived gender binaries and its vital considerations of
the relationship between sex, gender, history, and identity.

Show Notes.

Virginia Woolf: Orlando.

[Bookshop.].

Sally Porter’s film adaptation of

Orlando [trailer].

Other books by Virginia Woolf: To The Lighthouse.

Mrs. Dalloway. The Common
Reader. The Second Common
Reader.

Our episode on To The Lighthouse.

Our episode on the Metaphysical poets.

Thomas Browne, author of

Religio Medici and other works.

Radclyffe Hall: The Well of Loneliness.

Mark Doty: What Is the Grass? Walt Whitman in My

Life.

Prick Up Your Ears [trailer].

Chris talks about Prick Up Your Ears for another

podcast.

Joe Orton: Complete Plays. The Orton

Diaries.

Next: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons: Watchmen.

[Bookshop.]

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The Spouter-InnBy Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris Piuma

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