Blurring Reality and Blurring Gender: Fashion and Attire in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
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Alberto García García-Madrid
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to investigate the interplay between narrative style, gender and fashion within Woolf’s Orlando. This study delves into how Woolf’s use of a biographical narrative approach in a fantasy novel facilitates the exploration of gender stereotypes and their subsequent blurring. In this regard, through a meticulous analysis of Orlando, Woolf ingeniously employs the biographical style to transcend traditional literary boundaries. This stylistic choice allows for a deliberate blurring of reality and fantasy, prompting a transformative narrative experience. Within this narrative framework, the significance of fashion and attire emerges as essential tools for challenging conventional gender norms: clothing serves as a powerful vehicle for destabilising preconceived notions of gender. By situating Orlando’s fluid identity and evolving gender presentation within the context of clothing choices, the novel portrays the malleability of gender constructs. The blurring of genders is skilfully intertwined with the blurring of reality, forging a narrative tapestry that offers profound insights into societal perceptions of identity. In conclusion, this paper illuminates how Woolf’s novel enables a thoughtprovoking exploration of gender stereotypes, ultimately advocating for a more inclusive and fluid understanding of identity through the lens of fashion and attire.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Disturbing the Sedimentations of Nineteenth-Century Environments
- “In the Midst of Smoke and Flame”: Extraction Ecologies and Industrial Tourism in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press
- Florence Marryat’s Sensational Ecologies of Empire, 1865–1897: Imaginary Tropics, White Proto-Feminism, and a Comforting Plantationocene
- “She is the Great Outside”: Ecofeminist Potentiality in H. G. Wells’s The Sea Lady
- “Slippy with Rot”: The Irish Potato Famine and Neo-Victorianism’s Colonial Roots
- “Thy function was to heal and to restore”: The Sounds and Rhythms of the River Ecosystem in William Wordsworth’s The River Duddon Sonnets
- Blurring Reality and Blurring Gender: Fashion and Attire in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
- The Narrative Ordeal of Enduring Love: A Divine Comedy Recast
- Treading the Spiral: Intermediality, Spatiality, and Materiality in Lance Olsen’s Theories of Forgetting
- The Inability to Mourn: Representation of Collective Psychology in the “We”-Narrative of Yiyun Li’s “Immortality”
- Reviews
- Claire Hansen. 2017. Shakespeare and Complexity Theory. New York: Routledge, xi + 222 pp., 10 illustr., 1 table, £35.99.
- Mathias Mayer. 2022. King Lear – Die Tragödie des Zuschauers: Ästhetik und Ethik der Empathie. Göttingen: Wallstein, 184 pp., €20.00.
- Eva Ries. 2022. Precarious Flânerie and the Ethics of the Self in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction. Anglia Book Series 76. Berlin: De Gruyter, 298 pp., €114.95.
- Helmut Pfeiffer. 2021. Das zerbrechliche Band der Gesellschaft: Diagnosen der Moderne zwischen Honoré de Balzac und Henry James. Paderborn: Brill, xxix + 375 pp., €79.00.
- Sämi Ludwig. 2020. Resurrecting the First Great American Play: Imperial Politics and Colonial Ambitions in Frontier Detroit. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, xiii + 270 pp., 20 illustr., $79.95.
- Mahshid Mayar. 2022. Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, xiii + 239 pp., $32.95.
- Marie-Laure Ryan. 2022. A New Anatomy of Storyworlds: What Is, What If, As If. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, x + 226 pp., 6 illustr., 3 tables, $89.95.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Disturbing the Sedimentations of Nineteenth-Century Environments
- “In the Midst of Smoke and Flame”: Extraction Ecologies and Industrial Tourism in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press
- Florence Marryat’s Sensational Ecologies of Empire, 1865–1897: Imaginary Tropics, White Proto-Feminism, and a Comforting Plantationocene
- “She is the Great Outside”: Ecofeminist Potentiality in H. G. Wells’s The Sea Lady
- “Slippy with Rot”: The Irish Potato Famine and Neo-Victorianism’s Colonial Roots
- “Thy function was to heal and to restore”: The Sounds and Rhythms of the River Ecosystem in William Wordsworth’s The River Duddon Sonnets
- Blurring Reality and Blurring Gender: Fashion and Attire in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
- The Narrative Ordeal of Enduring Love: A Divine Comedy Recast
- Treading the Spiral: Intermediality, Spatiality, and Materiality in Lance Olsen’s Theories of Forgetting
- The Inability to Mourn: Representation of Collective Psychology in the “We”-Narrative of Yiyun Li’s “Immortality”
- Reviews
- Claire Hansen. 2017. Shakespeare and Complexity Theory. New York: Routledge, xi + 222 pp., 10 illustr., 1 table, £35.99.
- Mathias Mayer. 2022. King Lear – Die Tragödie des Zuschauers: Ästhetik und Ethik der Empathie. Göttingen: Wallstein, 184 pp., €20.00.
- Eva Ries. 2022. Precarious Flânerie and the Ethics of the Self in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction. Anglia Book Series 76. Berlin: De Gruyter, 298 pp., €114.95.
- Helmut Pfeiffer. 2021. Das zerbrechliche Band der Gesellschaft: Diagnosen der Moderne zwischen Honoré de Balzac und Henry James. Paderborn: Brill, xxix + 375 pp., €79.00.
- Sämi Ludwig. 2020. Resurrecting the First Great American Play: Imperial Politics and Colonial Ambitions in Frontier Detroit. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, xiii + 270 pp., 20 illustr., $79.95.
- Mahshid Mayar. 2022. Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, xiii + 239 pp., $32.95.
- Marie-Laure Ryan. 2022. A New Anatomy of Storyworlds: What Is, What If, As If. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, x + 226 pp., 6 illustr., 3 tables, $89.95.
