Orlando

CHAPTER 1

Reading Check

1. “I am alone.” (Chapter 1)

2. “[I]ntricate” (Chapter 1)

3. Rainfall (Chapter 1)

Short Answer

1. The biographer spends a considerable part of the first chapter describing Orlando’s “youthful beauty,” “handsome body,” and “eyes drenched like violets.” (Chapter 1)

2. Orlando makes a good impression by kneeling before the Queen with “the finest legs,” “violet eyes,” “a heart of gold,” and “manly charm.” The Queen loves and appreciates these qualities “the more they failed her.” As a result, she decides to give Orlando’s father the “great monastic house” once owned by the Archbishop and then the King. She names Orlando her “Treasurer and Steward,” denies him nothing, and supports him and his career until her death. (Chapter 1)

3. “The Muscovite” is the term given to Princess Marousha Stanilovska Dagmar Natasha Iliana Romanovitch (i.e., Sasha), Orlando’s first love. While she is guarded and devious, Orlando loves her dearly and suggests they run away together. When she stands him up at their agreed meeting, he realizes that she is a “devil, adulteress, deceiver.” (Chapter 1)

CHAPTER 2

Reading Check

1. He sleeps for seven days straight. (Chapter 2)

2. “[D]eath and decay” (Chapter 2)

3. He wrote romantic plays, histories, and poems in French and Italian. (Chapter 2)

4. “[B]revity and diuturnity” (Chapter 2)

Short Answer

1. Orlando has always been fascinated with writing and poetry; however, after the incident with Sasha and the Great Frost, he falls to the “disease” of reading, which ultimately leads to writing. In his period of mourning his lost love, he turns to literature as a source of comfort. (Chapter 2)

2. Nicholas Greene is a poet who Orlando admires. Orlando invites Greene to his estate for an extended stay; however, after some weeks, Greene declares he is unable to write in the remote environment and returns to his crowded house in London, where he writes a satire based on Orlando. Orlando is ashamed and further becomes reclusive, yet he still offers to pay Greene the writer’s pension. (Chapter 2)

3. After the interaction with Greene, Orlando retreats into a period of solitude where he focuses on contemplation and writing in “The Oak Tree.” He does not age during this time period. Eventually, he decides to renovate his house and open it to the town for social gatherings. (Chapter 2)

4. The Archduchess Harriet Griselda is a noble lady who wanders onto Orlando’s property. Orlando is taken with her more stereotypical masculine qualities, but in a moment of brief attraction, he realizes that it is “Lust the vulture, not Love, the Bird of Paradise, that flopped, foully and disgustingly, upon his shoulders.” To avoid further interaction, he decides to leave England and requests to be made “Ambassador Extraordinary to Constantinople.” (Chapter 2)

CHAPTER 3

Reading Check

1. Because the revolution and a fire “damaged or destroyed all those papers” (Chapter 3)

2. Orlando’s sex is altered, but not their identity or personality. (Chapter 3)

3. Purity, Chastity, and Modesty (Chapter 3)

4. “[G]ood to eat” (Chapter 3)

Short Answer

1. In Constantinople, Orlando possesses a “romantic power” in which he creates a stir among women and men in the city. Despite his popularity, he does not create “attachments” and chooses to spend the majority of his time alone. (Chapter 3)

2. The biographer notes that there are limited accounts regarding Orlando’s party, but there is unrest when a crown is placed on his head. It is later discovered that Orlando married a “gypsy” girl at the end of the night. After the event, Orlando enters another week-long sleep trance, which allows him to be accidentally saved during a plummeting of the British embassy by locals. (Chapter 3)

3. After waking up and discovering her transition, Orlando lives with a nearby Roma (i.e., “gypsy”) community, where she is welcomed and accepted. She becomes enthralled with the “malady” of the local Nature, putting her at odds with the Roma community as she returns once again to her love of writing. Ultimately, her cultural differences and background cause too great a schism for her to permanently settle in the community, and she decides to sail back to England. (Chapter 3)

CHAPTER 4

Reading Check

1. “[H]er sex” (Chapter 4)

2. A toad (Chapter 4)

3. She “becom[es] a little more modest, as women are, of her brains, and a little more vain, as women are, of her person.” (Chapter 4)

4. At one of the social events at Lady R.’s house (Chapter 4)

Short Answer

1. Upon the ship to England, Orlando notices some differences between her prior life as a man and her new life as a woman. She sees how her new, English, and therefore more “gendered” clothes affect the men on the ship and realizes that her social position would change, particularly in regards to less freedom and more domestic duties. Although she is now a woman, she realizes that she still loves Sasha. (Chapter 4)

2. The biographer notes:

The chief charges against her were (1) that she was dead, and therefore could not hold any property whatsoever; (2) that she was a woman, which amounts to much the same thing; (3) that she was an English Duke who had married one Rosina Pepita, a dancer; and had had by her three sons, which sons now declaring that their father was deceased, claimed that all his property descended to them (Chapter 4).

As a result, she remains “incognito”/ “incognita” at her property in England, where her staff greet her with open arms and without “suspicion” that she was not the same Orlando as before. (Chapter 4)

3. Upon returning to her residence in the country, Orlando once again sees Archduchess Harriet Griselda, who has not changed. In their first encounter, the Archduchess reveals that she is really a man (i.e., an Archduke) who fell in love with Orlando after seeing a photo of “him” years prior. The Archduke pays her visits every day in order to hopefully secure her hand in marriage. These visits are dull for Orlando, and they spend the hours playing a game in which Orlando cheats. This perturbs the Archduke into leaving her. (Chapter 4)

4. The biographer provides an overview of Orlando’s daily life, which involves changing her clothes throughout the course of the day in order to engage in different activities that she is interested in. This begins after she dresses in clothes traditionally attributed to men and meets a sex worker. Orlando reveals herself as a woman, and the sex worker changes her approach and begins to confide in her. (Chapter 4)

CHAPTER 5

Reading Check

1. “[F]ecundity” (Chapter 5)

2. “[T]he manuscript of her poem, ‘The Oak Tree’” (Chapter 5)

3. “[N]ature’s bride” (Chapter 5)

Short Answer

1. The biographer opens the chapter with a discussion of the climate in the UK. The rain results in a “damp” that eventually changes both “outward” and “inward” mannerisms, the latter including a further division of the sexes. All of this leads to the transition into “the British empire.” (Chapter 5)

2. Linking to the change of climate in Britian, the rise of the British empire, and the reign of Queen Victoria, Orlando notices the social custom of marriage is particularly prevalent in the public sphere. She also feels within herself the urge for a “mate.” Coupled with the fact that women’s clothes are notably restrictive, Orland has a desire to find someone to support her. (Chapter 5)

3. Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, Esquire (i.e., “Shel”) is a sailor who finds an injured Orlando. The pair quickly connect and become engaged, where they learn from each other that they are both nonconforming to the traditional gender stereotypes. Upon realizing that Shel must return to sea soon, the pair quickly marry. (Chapter 5)

CHAPTER 6

Reading Check

1. “[L]ife” (Chapter 6)

2. “[A] man” (Chapter 6)

3. To publish it (Chapter 6)

4. “Orlando was safely delivered of a son on Thursday, March the 20th, at three o’clock in the morning.” (Chapter 6)

Short Answer

1. After finishing her manuscript, she returns to London, where she runs into Nicholas Greene, the same poet from the 16th century. Now “the most influential critic of the Victorian age,” Greene looks much sharper and cleaner than in the century prior; however, he makes many of the same remarks regarding the problems of contemporary literature and the nostalgia of past writers. (Chapter 6)

2. The passage of time once again begins to quicken, and Orlando is struck by the changes in people’s dress and modes of transportation, as well as the outward sky. Suddenly, “It was the eleventh of October. It was 1928. It was the present moment.” (Chapter 6)

3. In the present day, Orlando drives her car around London to run several errands. While browsing the department store and driving her car, she reflects on her past and present selves, as well as the variety of people she has met in her long life. She drives back to her house in the countryside, where she contemplates the history of the rooms and the variety of characters who had spent time in the abode, warping the past with the present. In the final scene, her husband Shel returns, and she sees a goose fly over his head. (Chapter 6)