Time period in Orlando

Hello,

       This Blog is an Assignment of paper no.: 106 The Twentieth Century Litrature: 1900 to World War 2. In this assignment I am discussing Analyze Woolf's use of time in Orlando. 

Personal Information 

Name:- Mansi B. Gujadiya

Roll Number:-12

Enrollment Number:-4069206420220013

Batch:-M.A SEM -2( 2022-23 )

Email ID:- mansigajjar10131@gmail.com

Paper Number:-106

Paper Code:-22399

Paper Name:- The Twentieth Century Litrature: 1900 to World War 2 

Submitted to:- English department MKBU

Topic:-Analyze Woolf's use of time in Orlando. 

Question:- Analyze Woolf's use of time in Orlando. What effect does it have on the story?

About Novel

Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. Inspired by the tumultuous family history of the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's lover and close friend, it is arguably one of her most popular novels; Orlando is a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. Considered a feminist classic, the book has been written about extensively by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender studies.

Introduction

 

                 Obviously, time perception is one of the clearest motifs of the novel. We are present to the birth of the boy Orlando in the 16th century, and then we are leaving her in her thirties in the first half of the 20th century. We sense that something with the time is different, or wrong. From our personal experience, we know that time is quite a subjective category even though we can measure it very precisely. 

            We know that the time can be really fast-moving if we have fun and enjoy ourselves, and on the contrary, the time can pass very slowly, if at all, when we need to do something boring. Virginia also experienced this, and she noted it a couple of times in her diaries, and she wanted to put this knowledge into her writing.

Time period in Orlando

            The length of Orlando´s life is one of Woolf´s time experiments, and in the course of the novel, it is interesting to follow how she depicts that time is passing.Even though she says in one passage that it is possible to express passing time very simply and briefly, she describes it very impressively and beautifully for us on almost half a page in the book:

            “Here he came then, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. He saw the beech trees turn golden and the young ferns unfurl; he saw the moon sickle and then circular; he saw – but probably the reader can imagine the passage which should follow and how every tree and plant in the neighbourhood is described first green, then golden; how moons rise and suns set; how spring follows winter and autumn summer; how night succeeds day and day night; how there is first a storm and then fine weather; how things remain much as they are for two or three hundred years or so, except for a little dust and a few cobwebs which one old woman can sweep up in half an hour; a conclusion which, one cannot help feeling, might have been reached more quickly by the statement that “Time passed” (here the exact amount could be indicated in brackets) and nothing whatever happened.”

             During the novel, Woolf describes the passing of time so very well that we can perfectly imagine the situation and we can see it in front of us. Even more so, she does not picture only the end of a year, but it is the end of the century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. She describes it not only as the end of one era,but at every end there is a kind of new start, a new chance. She follows the thoughts coming with each strike of the clock: 

           She heard the far-away cry of the night watchman - “Just twelve o´clock on a frosty morning”. No sooner had the words left his lips than the first stroke of midnight sounded. Orlando then for the first time noticed a small cloud gathered behind the dome of St. Paul´s. As the strokes sounded, the cloud increased, and she saw it darken and spread with extraordinary speed. 

             At the same time a light breeze rose and by the time the sixth stroke of midnight had struck the whole of the eastern sky was covered with an irregular moving darkness, though the sky to the west and north stayed clear as ever. Then the cloud spread north. Height upon height above the city was engulfed by it. Only Mayfair, with all its lights shining, burnt more brilliantly than ever by contrast. 

               With the eighth stroke, some hurrying tatters of cloud sprawled over Piccadilly. They seemed to mass themselves and to advance with extraordinary rapidity towards the west end. As the ninth, tenth, and eleventh strokes struck, a huge blackness sprawled over the whole of London. 

             With the twelfth stroke of midnight, the darkness was complete. A turbulent welter of cloud covered the city. All was darkness; all was doubt; all was confusion. The Eighteenth century was over; the Nineteenth century had begun.” 

               The above-mentioned examples were very colourful and captured also the mood of the moment. But sometimes, as a contrast, Woolf merely gave the list of months to show the time passing and it works well enough for the purpose:

             “It was now November. After November, comes December. Then January,February, March, and April. After April comes May. June, July, August follow. Next is September. Then October, and so, behold, here we are back at November againwith a whole year accomplished.”

              In another passage, she discusses the above-mentioned relativity of time. No matter how many minutes have passed, the length of the moment could occur totally differently to each person and these differences in the subjective perception of time cannot be precisely measured as the objective time depicted by hours and minutes.

             Human mind can play with us and with our perception of time:“But Time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and  fade with amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon the mind of man. The mind of man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second.”

            It is argued similarly in the following quotation. She brilliantly demonstrated the relativity of time on the life of Orlando. Some experiences made him/her much older, and some did not. Again, it is very close to our everyday experience. We often say that some incident or tragic event made us way older than we had been before.

             “Some weeks added a century to his age, others no more than three seconds at most. Altogether, the task of estimating the length of human life (of the animals´we presume not to speak) is beyond our capacity, for directly we say that it is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground.”

            It was difficult even for Orlando to find himself/herself in time, to realize which era does he/she lived in. Since he/she lived for three centuries, outlived several kings and queens, experienced various societies and saw the technological advancement, he/she was a bit confused about it and everything, every society and social order occurred to him/her as a normal situation:“Orlando had inclined herself naturally to the Elizabethan spirit, to the Restoration spirit, to the spirit of the eighteenth century, and had in consequence scarcely been aware of the change from one age to the other.”

           Orlando´s extraordinarily long life is part of the confusion expressed by the biographer in the next quotation. The narrator knows that the length of life can possibly be measured very precisely, it begins with birth and ends with death. But what is between these two definite points can be very different for every person. It depends on each of us how many things we do during our life-time. 

              Someone can be very passive, with no interest in new experiences and activities and, as a consequence, his/her life is almost empty and can be perceived as quite short without any excitement, and the biographer would then have nothing to report and to write about. 

            On the other hand, if someone lives life full of experiences, actively, it may seem to us that he/she lived many lives or an exceptionally long life. It is also the case of Orlando, the story has many historical references to different eras, kings or queens and historical events so it is clear that it takes places in the course of three centuries. But what if there were no such references? 

           Then, I believe, we could say that Orlando had lived a very active and full life with many experiences. So the length of someone´s life is very subjective when measured by experiences and knowledge and not by the clock.

         “The true length of a person´s life, whatever the Dictionary of National Biography may say, is always a matter of dispute.”

           Since Orlando is a biography, we usually listen to the voice of the narrator, of the biographer who clearly sees the limits of his work (as Woolf in her diaries, the narrator often questions the possibilities and limits of a biography as a genre). But sometimes we can also hear the voice of Orlando himself/herself speaking abouttime.

              Orlando does not seem to catch time, to notice the passing time until he/she is in the thirties. And he/she feels that the time flew over him/her before he/she could look around and he/she feels a bit uneasy about that:

              "Time has passed over me,” she thought, trying to collect herself; “this is the oncome of middle age. How strange it is!”

             Time is something of crucial importance for Woolf and that is the reason why she plays with it in her work. In Orlando, she adjusted the genre of biography to her purposes. She wanted to show the differences among various eras, and she also wanted to show the differences between the two sexes. 

            However, the time concept in this novel is very prominent from the beginning for the reader. Usually, if the writer wants to speak about the differences among eras, the author uses a kind of family chronicles as for example, John Galsworthy in his Forsyte Saga, and many others.But Woolf put all into one novel, into one story experienced only by a single person -Orlando.

               She probably wanted to shock the reader, and to make the perception clearer and more precise. Each of us is a different individual and no one perceives the same things in the same way. So if we want to record how people see the society and changes in it in their life-time, it is better to see it through the eyes and from the point of view of the same person.

Conclusion

           In reality, it is not possible to record the thoughts of one person about the things around us in the course of three centuries. But this is exactly what Virginia Woolf did. She recorded these big changes, which took place in the course of such a long time through the viewpoint of one person.