ORLANDO
by Virginia Woolf (1928)
WOMAN AND MAN

After living about two hundred years as a man, Orlando wakes up one morning and finds out he has become a woman. The passage below is set in the 18th century and shows Orlando facing the reality of the female sex while she is on a ship, sailing from Turkey to England.

With some of the guineas left from the sale of the tenth pearl of her string1, Orlando had bought herself a complete outfit2 of such clothes as women then wore, and it was in the dress of a young English­ woman of rank that she now sat on the deck3 of the Enamoured Lady. It is a strange fact, but a true one, that up to this moment she had scarcely given her sex a thought. Perhaps the Turkish trousers which she had hitherto4 worn had done something to distract her thoughts; and the gipsy5 women, except in one or two important particulars, differ very little from the gipsy men. At any rate, it was not until she felt the coils6 of skirts about her legs and the Captain offered, with the greatest politeness, to have an awning spread7 for her on deck, that she realised with a start8 the penalties and the privileges of her position. But that start was not of the kind that might have been expected.
It was not caused, that is to say, simply and solely by the thought of her chasti­ty and how she could preserve it. In normal circumstances a lovely young wom­an alone would have thought of nothing else; the whole edifice of female gov­ernment is based on that foundation stone; chastity is their jewel, their centre­piece, which they run mad to protect, and die when ravished of9. But if one has been a man for thirty years or so, and an Ambassador into the bargain10, if one has held a Queen in one's arms and one or two other ladies, if report be true, of less exalted rank, if one has married a Rosina Pepita11, and so on, one does not perhaps give such a very great start about that. Orlando's start was of a very complicated kind, and not to be summed up in a trice 12 . Nobody, indeed, ever accused her of being one of those quick wits13 who run to the end of things in a minute. It took her the entire length of the voyage to moralise out the mean­ing of her start, and so, at her own pace, we will follow her.
"Lord," she thought, when she had recovered from her start, stretching her­self out at length under her awning, "this is a pleasant, lazy way of life, to be sure. But", she thought, giving her legs a kick14, "these skirts are plaguey15 things to have about one's heels16. Yet the stuff (flowered paduasoy17) is the loveliest in the world. Never have I seen my own skin (here she laid her hand on her knee) look to such advantage as now. Could I, however, leap overboard18 and swim in clothes like these? No! Therefore, I should have to trust to the protection of a blue-jacket19. Do I object to that? Now do I?" she wondered, here encounter­ing the first knot20 in the smooth skein21 of her argument.

Dinner came before she had untied it, and then it was the Captain himself -Captain Nicholas Benedict Bartolus, a sea-captain of distinguished aspect, who did it for her as he helped her to a slice of corned22 beef.

'A little of the fat, Ma'am?" he asked. "Let me cut you just the tiniest little slice the size of your finger nail." At those words a delicious tremor ran through her frame. Birds sang; the torrents rushed. It recalled the feeling of indescrib­able pleasure with which she had first seen Sasha23, hundred of years ago. Then she had pursued24, now she fled25. Which is the greater ecstasy? The man's or the woman's? And are they not perhaps the same? No, she thought, this is the most delicious (thanking the Captain but refusing), to refuse, and see him frown 26 . Well, she would, if he wished it, have the very thinnest, smallest shiver27 in the world. This was the most delicious of all, to yield 28 and see him smile. "For noth­ing", she thought, regaining her couch29 on deck, and continuing the argument, "is more heavenly than to resist and to yield; to yield and to resist. Surely it throws the spirit into such a rapture as nothing else can. So that I'm not sure", she con­tinued, "that I won't throw myself overboard, for the mere pleasure of being rescued by a blue jacket after all.

(It must be remembered that she was like a child entering into possession of a pleasaunce30 or toy cupboard; her arguments would not commend themselves to mature women, who have had the run of it all their lives.)

"But what used we young fellows in the cockpit31 of the Marie Rose to say about a woman who threw herself overboard for the pleasure of being rescued by a blue jacket?" she said. "We had a word for them. Ah! I have it……. (But we must omit that word; it was disrespectful in the extreme and passing strange on a la­dy's lips.) "Lord! Lord!" she cried again at the conclusion of her thoughts, "must I then begin to respect the opinion of the other sex, however monstrous I think it? If I wear skirts, if I can't swim, if I have to be rescued by a blue jacket, by God!" she - cried, "I must!" Upon which a gloom fell over her"'. Candid by nature, and averse to all kinds of equivocation, to tell lies bored her. It seemed to her a roundabout" way of going to work. Yet, she reflected, the flowered paduasoy - the pleasure of being rescued by a blue jacket - if these were only to be obtained by roundabout ways, roundabout one must go, she supposed. She remembered how, as a young man, she had insisted that women must be obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled. "Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires," she reflected; "for women are not (judging by my own short experience of the sex) obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled" by nature. They can only attain these graces, without which they may enjoy none of the delights of life, by the most tedious discipline. There's the hairdressing," she thought, "that alone will take an hour of my morning; there's looking in the looking-glass, another hour; there's staying and lacing35; there's washing and powdering36; there's changing from silk to lace and from lace to paduasoy; there's being chaste year in year out...." Here she tossed37 her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf38. A sailor on the mast39, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he missed his footing40 and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth41. "If the sight of my ankles42 means death to an honest fellow who, no doubt, has a wife and family to support, I must, in all humanity, keep them covered," Orlando thought. Yet her legs were among her chiefest beauties. And she fell to thinking what an odd pass we have come to when all a woman's beauty has to be kept covered lest a sailor may fall from a mast-head. "A pox on them43"!" she said, realising for the first time what, in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child, that is to say, the sacred responsibilities of womanhood.

"And that's the last oath44 I shall ever be able to swear," she thought; "once I set foot on English soil. And I shall never be able to crack a man over the head, or tell him he lies in his teeth, or draw my sword and run him through the body, or sit among my peers, or wear a coronet 45, or walk in procession, or sentence a man to death, or lead an army, or prance down Whitehall on a charger46, or wear seventy-two different medals on my breast. All I can do, once I set foot on English soil, is to pour out tea and ask my lords how they like it. D'you take sug­ar? D'you take cream?" And mincing out47 the words, she was horrified to perceive how low an opinion she was forming of the other sex, the manly, to which it had once been her pride to belong. "To fall from a mast-head", she thought, "because you see a woman's ankles; to dress up like a Guy Fawkes48 and parade the streets, so that women may praise49 you; to deny a woman teaching lest she may laugh at you50 ; to be the slave of the frailest chit in petticoats51, and yet to go about as if you were the Lords of creation. - Heavens!" she thought, "what fools they make of us -what fools we are!" And here it would seem from some ambiguity in her terms that she was censuring both sexes equally, as if she be­longed to neither; and indeed, for the time being, she seemed to vacillate; she was man; she was woman; she knew the secrets, shared the weaknesses of each. It was a most bewildering and whirligig52 state of mind to be in. The comforts of ignorance seemed utterly53 denied her. She was a feather blown on the gale54. Thus it is no great wonder, as she pitted 55 one sex against the other, and found each alternately full of the most deplorable infirmities, and was not sure to which she belonged (...)

"Ignorant and poor as we are compared with the other sex," she thought, con­tinuing the sentence which she had left unfinished the other day, "armoured with every weapon as they are, while they debar56 us even from a knowledge of the alphabet" (and from these opening words it is plain that something had happened during the night to give her a push towards the female sex, for she was speak­ing more as a woman speaks than as a man, yet with a sort of content after all), "still-they fall from the mast-head." Here she gave a great yawn" and fell asleep. When she woke, the ship was sailing before a fair breeze so near the shore that towns on the cliffs' edge58 seemed only kept from slipping59 into the water by the interposition of some great rock or the twisted roots of some ancient olive tree. The scent of oranges wafted60 from a million trees, heavy with the fruit, reached her on deck. A score of blue dolphins, twisting their tails, leapt high now and again into the air. Stretching her arms out (arms, she had learnt already, have no such fatal effects as legs), she thanked Heaven that she was not pranc­ing down Whitehall on a war-horse, nor even sentencing a man to death. "Bet­ter is it", she thought, "to be clothed with poverty and ignorance, which are the dark garments of the female sex; better to leave the rule and discipline of the world to others; better be quit of martial ambition61, the love of power, and all the other manly desires if so one can more fully enjoy the most exalted raptures known to the human spirit, which are", she said aloud, as her habit was when deeply moved, "contemplation, solitude, love."

"Praise God that I'm a woman!" she cried, and was about to run into the ex­treme folly - than which none is more distressing in woman or man either62 - of being proud of her sex, when she paused over the singular word, which, for all we can do to put it in its place, has crept in63 at the end of the last sentence: Love. "Love," said Orlando. Instantly - such is its impetuosity - love took a hu­man shape-such is its pride. For where other thoughts are content to remain ab­stract, nothing will satisfy this one but to put on flesh and blood, mantilla and petticoats, hose and jerkin64. And as all Orlando's loves had been women, now, through the culpable laggardry65 of the human frame to adapt itself to con­vention, though she herself was a woman, it was still a woman she loved; and if the consciousness of being of the same sex had any effect at all, it was to quick­en and deepen66 those feelings which she had had as a man. For now a thou­sand hints67 and mysteries became plain68 to her that were then dark. Now, the obscurity, which divides the sexes and lets linger69 innumerable impurities in its gloom, was removed, and if there is anything in what the poet says about truth and beauty, this affection gained in beauty what it lost in falsity. At last, she cried, she knew Sasha as she was, and in the ardour of this discovery, and in the pur­suit of all those treasures which were now revealed, she was so rapt and en­chanted that it was as if a cannon ball had exploded at her ear when a man's voice said, "Permit me, Madam," a man's hand raised her to her feet70; and the fingers of a man with a three-masted sailing ship tattooed on the middle finger pointed to the horizon.

"The cliffs of England, Ma'am," said the Captain, and he raised the hand which had pointed at the sky to the salute". Orlando now gave a second start, even more violent than the first.

"Christ Jesus!" she cried.

Happily, the sight of her native land af­ter long absence excused both start and exclamation, or she would have been hard put to it to explain to Captain Bar­tolus the raging 72 and conflicting emo­tions which now boiled within her. How tell him that she, who now trembled on his arm, had been a Duke and an Am­bassador? How explain to him that she, who had been lapped like a lily in folds73 of paduasoy, had hacked heads off74, and lain with loose women75 among treasure sacks in the holds of pirate ships on sum­mer nights when the tulips were abloom76 and the bees buzzing off Wap­ping Old Stairs? Not even to herself could she explain the giant start she gave, as the resolute right hand of the sea-cap­tain indicated the cliffs of the British Is­lands.

 

 

 

1. string. Collana.

2. outfit. Corredo.

3. deck. Ponte (di nave).

4. hitherto. Fino ad allora.

5. gipsy. Gitane.

6. coil. Ingombro.

7. awning spread. Tenda per ripararsi dal sole.

8. start. Sussulto.

9. ravished of. Ne vengono private con la forza.

10. into the bargain. Per giunta.

11. Rosina Pepita. Donna sposata da Orlando nella sua ~ ita precedente.

12. in a trice. In un batter d'occhio.

13. quick wits. Spiriti superficiali.

14. giving her legs a kick. Calciando l'aria.

15. plaguey. Fastidiose.

16. heels. Tacchi.

17. flowered paduasoy. Broccato a fiori.
18. leap overboard. Saltare in acqua.

19. blue jacket. Marinaio.

20. knot. Nodo, difficoltà.

21. smooth skein. Facile matassa.

22. corned. Conservato sotto sale.

23. Sasha. Principessa russa amata da Orlando.

24. pursued. Inseguito, dato la caccia.

25. fled. Scappava.

26. frown. Accigliarsi.

27. shiver. Fettina.

28. to yeald. Cedere.

29. couch. Divano.

30. pleasaunce. Qualcosa di ambito.

31. cockpit. Quartiere di poppa.

32. a gloom fell over her. Si adombrò.

33. roundabout. Tortuoso.

34. apparelled. Vestite.

35. staying and lacing. Indossare il busto e strigerlo con i lacci.

36. powdering. Incipriarsi.

37. tossed. Agitò.

38. calf. Polpaccio.

39. mast. Albero (di nave).

40. missed his footing. Perse l'equilibrio.
41. by the skin of his teeth. Per un pelo.
42. ankles. Caviglie.

43. A pox on them! U diavolo!

44. oath. Promessa, giuramento.

45. coronet. Corona, diadema.

46. prance .., charger. Cavalcare impettito sul mio destriero lungo Whitehall.

47. mincing out. Pronunciando con affettazione.

48. Guy Fawkes. Burattino.

49. praise. Lodare.
50. to deny ... you. Negare ad una donna l'istruzione per paura che possa ridere di te.
51. the frailest chit in petticoats. La più fragile civetta in sottoveste. .
52. bewildering and whirligig. Sorprendente e da far venire le vertigini.
53. utterly. Totalmente.
54. a feather blown on the gale. Una piuma portata dal vento.
55. pitted. Paragonava.
56. debar. Precludono.
57. yawn. Sbadiglio.
58. on the cliffs' edge. Sull'orlo delle scogliere.
59. slipping. Scivolare.
60. wafted. Si diffondeva portato dal vento.
61. quit of martial ambition. Priva di ambizione guerresca.
62. than…either. Ella quale nessuna è peggiore sia pert l’uomo che per la donna.
63. has crept in. Si è intrufolata.
64. mantilla…jerkins. Scialli e sottovesti, calzamaglia e giustacuore.
65. culpable laggardry. Colpevole pigrizia.

66. to quicken and deepen. Rinvigorire e approfondire.

67. hints. Dubbi.

68. plain. Evidenti

69. lets linger. Lascia indugiare.

70. raised her to her feet. L'aiutò ad alzarsi.

71, to the salute. In segno di saluto.

72. raging. Violente.

73. lapped like a lily in folds. Avvolta come un giglio tra le pieghe.
74. had hacked heads off. Aveva tagliato teste.
75. lain with loose women. Giaciuto con donne dissolute.
76. abloom. In fiore.