Virginia Woolf’s Orlando Essay -- Literary

Virginia Woolfs OrlandoBorn in the late 19th century, Virginia Woolfs visionary mind emerged in a social temper that did not cultivate the intellectual development of women. In Englands decrease Victorian era, the upper classes of women were encouraged to become nothing more than pliant wives, self-effacing mothers, servile hostesses, and cheerful, chattering tea-drinkers, expectations that Virginia Woolf shunned, renounced, and ultimately denounced in her writings. Beside being natural into a patriarchal culture, Virginia Woolf was also born into a family headed by a man who made it clear that he expected more from his sons than his young womans (Bazin 4). Although he considered Virginia as the darling, the pet (70) of the family, after the death of his second wife, her father Leslie Stephen shed into a deep depression that commanded demands upon his children for pity and devotion that were almost unbearable (4). Woolf herself wrote in her diary that she would never eat bee n able to produce as much work as she did had her father not died fairly proto(prenominal) in her life His life would have entirely ended mine. What would have happened? No writing, no books-- inconceivable (Gilbert and Gubar 192). Although he allowed Virginia to read and write, Leslie Stephen can be attributed with only a little more than genetic contribution to his daughters genius.Orlando is the paragon of Virginia Woolfs literary genius. Published in 1928, the new is a fictional biography of Woolfs friend Vita Sackville-West. The novel is dedicate to Vita and has been called the longest and most charming love letter in belles-lettres (Meese 469). This crucial biographical context is often overlooked, a displacement which hinders the f... ...a Woolf. Ed. Harold Bloom. new-made York Chelsea House, 1986. 223-230.Marder, Herbert. Feminism & Art A Study of Virginia Woolf. kale U of Chicago P, 1968.Meese, Elizabeth. When Virginia Looked at Vita, What Did She See or, Lesbian Fem inist Woman- Whats the Differ(e/a)nce? Feminisms An Anthology of literary speculation and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. invigorated Brunswick Rutgers UP, 1997.Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics Feminist Literary Theory. New York Routledge, 1985.Walker, Nancy A. Feminist Alternatives Irony and Fantasy in the Contemporary unexampled by Women. Jackson UP of Mississippi, 1990.West, Paul. Enigmas of Imagination Orlando Through the Looking Glass. Virginia Woolf. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York Chelsea House, 1986. 83-100.Woolf, Virginia. Orlando A Biography. 1928. New York Penguin Books, 1946.