Gender in Orlando

The character of Orlando stands in front of a mirror and we see her obviously female form reflected back. But the film Orlando, named after its main character, is more than half over, and up till now Orlando has not just portrayed a man, but has been a man. And as she, for Orlando is undoubtedly she, looks at her own reflection in the glass, she quips, “Same person - no difference at all. Just a different sex.” This fantastical film is based on the book of the same name written in 1928 by Virginia Woolf, and it follows Orlando over four centuries. Never aging a day, Orlando is a man for the 17th and most of the 18th century. After almost two hundred years, in the mid 18th century, an aversion to war and violence, and a mans duty to partake of the two, lead Orlando to make a choice to change genders, and she continues as female into the present day. Throughout this amazing life and miraculous transformation the film shows us that there are unwritten rules for what makes a man, or woman, and that these rules generally lie only on the surface. When she claims that she is the same person, regardless of sex, Orlando “highlights [the] instability of gender” and the “signifiers of fashion for gender . . . are exposed and

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The film Orlando illustrates the idea that gender identity is dictated by cultural conditioning, and that there is a kind of freedom in androgyny. This raises the question: do the trappings truly convey what is concealed beneath? What is it on the surface that suggests what sex we are, and are these assumptions always correct? If a person is truly androgynous and could pass physically for either sex, then the trappings they wear would be the only visible indication of their gender.

As Orlando enters the 1990’s at the end of the film, we do see a change in the categorizing of what is feminine, and what is masculine, and experience a sense of true freedom for the character that we did not feel earlier in the film. Does this portray a sense of androgyny? A character is not viewed for their manliness or womanliness, but by their heroism and moral fibre. In the original novel, Woolf addresses this change of costume, and speculates on the identity it presents:

Thus, there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking. We know she is female because of our knowledge of her historical presence, because of the distinctly female attire, and because of the way other characters in the scene treat her. Throughout the film, Orlando is considered rather feminine for a man, and rather masculine for a woman. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what is above. Even though the various styles of male dress Orlando wears are rather feminine by today’s standards, when he wears these clothes he is expected to act male. Orlando, now riding a motorcycle and publishing a book of her life, is no longer at the mercy of her sex; as a present day woman she is free to explore any option for lifestyle she desires. But Sally Potter has added an ingenious twist by casting Quentin Crisp, a rather flamboyant male actor, to play the role. Yet the closer to the bottom of the pendulum a man or woman gets, the more freedom he or she will truly have to explore their gender identity.

Sally Potter brings these gender and cultural issues to life on the big screen in a beautifully stylized way.

Approximate Word count = 1498
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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