ORLANDO

Virginia Woolf's creation became a classical of debates on gender issues and reflexions about female and male social roles but, in my opinion, it also represents a prototypic metaphor addressing the possibility of putting oneself on the shoes of an Other. Orlando became an androgyne model for feminists, transsexuals and lesbians, maybe more thanks to the life of Vita Sackville-West, whose biography inspired Woolf's book, than to the literary work itself. Perhaps what Woolf wanted to emphasize in her book - more than androgyne behaviors as some kind of virtue which should be acclaimed over more extreme gender definitions - were, not only social class discrepancies and vices (often clearly satirized), but the irreconcilable differences between men and women in Elizabethan times as well, and the necessary effort (in former epochs, mainly on men's behalf...) to understand the perspective and be sensible to the problems of the other gender and face women as fellow human beings with brains, intellect and equal rights. Summarily, Woolf criticizes stereotypes of all kinds, including both gender and social class ones.

In fact, even if written during a short period of time and considered a light-handed work, the book is organized in a way which should be carefully examined: Woolf even added theatre play rehearsal-like, dramatic pictures of the main characters to the first edition's pages - there is a whole acting and discussion around the text, in some sort of book-play-performance with the engagement and connivance of several close accomplices.