Virginia Woolf's Orlando - Lecture Two (Chapters III-IV) (Patreon)

‘Society is everything and society is nothing. Society is the most powerful concoction in the world and society has no existence whatsoever.’

Today we are continuing to explore and appreciate Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and we are discussing solitude, society, time, gender, clothing, modernity, linguistic relativity, satire, and much more.

Timestamps:

• 0:00 Woolf’s compressed panorama
• 2:00 the idea of nothing existing
• 4:00 biographer vs subject matter
• 7:00 on modern metatextuality
• 9:00 ‘is this what people call life?’
• 10:00 when the other becomes the self
• 11:00 on public vs private life
• 14:00 the disease of artistic genius
• 18:00 disease vs intoxication
• 20:00 Woolf as moralistic writer
• 23:00 ‘the poet’s is the highest office’
• 26:00 on the three kinds of satire
• 27:00 Alexander Pope in Orlando
• 29:00 mortality & the poet’s anxiety
• 30:00 ‘there is nothing to venerate in you’
• 31:00 playing parts on the world’s stage
• 33:00 is time/age a social construct?
• 35:00 what does becoming a woman mean?
• 36:00 when Orlando forgets her part
• 38:00 ‘women should be shocked’
• 40:00 Orlando becomes a woman
• 45:00 ‘for convention’s sake…’
• 47:00 when time becomes tactile
• 48:00 clothes as symbol for the hidden
• 50:00 on language influencing thought
• 53:00 deep reading my favourite passage
• 55:00 ‘everything was something else’
• 59:00 on society vs solitude
• 1:00:00 the self in the modern world
• 1:03:00 why do we want heroes?
• 1:04:00 let us know your thoughts

Reading Assignment:

Congratulations on continuing to savour and relish Virginia Woolf's Orlando. The next discussion will be on chapters five to six. This takes us through to the end of the work.

Questions to Consider:

1) Would the novel be different if Orlando had begun as a woman and then become a man?

2) Do you enjoy satirical literature? Or works with a strong message? 

3) What is the self without society? What determines our identity? 

And please do share with us your impressions and favourite passages from these chapters of Virginia Woolf's Orlando.

Happy reading, everybody!