Posted on February 5th, 2012 – Copyright 2012
Editor’s Note: To see more pictures of Brittany Reese, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon.
.
Posted on February 1, 2012 – Copyright 2012
Posted on January 18, 2012 by Elizabeth Southward
.
……….Gender discrimination is revealed through the transformation of a male to a female. Orlando is brought up in an aristocratic society and is exposed to famous philosophers and poets like Nicholas Greene. Orlando has the capability to choose a woman and ability to be an ambassador to Constantinople as well. Orlando has the capability to compose poems and express himself through writing. Orlando has the upper hand in society as a male in society, but even if he were of the middle class he would still be in the same position. Orlando’s transformation shocks, yet excites the town, especially with the trumpets blaring. In effect Woolf hypothesizes what would happen in society if she were to come out as well as demonstrates her own hesitations with her true nature. A critic named Toni A. H. McNaron focuses on Woolf’s homosexuality within her article A Lesbian Reading when she claims, “The whole question of identification became central to my evolving connection with Virginia about seventeen years ago” (McNaron 15). McNaron characterizes Woolf’s sexuality as a way of characterization. Woolf demonstrates the transformation of Orlando as her own attempt to express empowerment with women.
.
.
Orlando realizes once he is a woman that she does not have the advantages she once did. Orlando attempts to reconcile her writing ability and does so successively. She travels with a tribe of gypsies and Orlando recognizes the separation between the socio-economic classes. Men from the tribe observe her intellect and as a reaction plot her murder. In Woolf’s excerpt, she illustrated men’s disapproval of women’s discernment, when she clarifies, “…There was an enormous body of masculine opinion to the effect that nothing could be expected of women intellectually. Even if her father did not read out loud these opinions, any girl could read them for herself; and the reading, even in the nineteenth century, must have lowered her vitality, and told profoundly upon her work” (Woolf 54). Men’s opinion of women’s discernment was extreme disgust and denied women’s capability of intellectual expression. Woolf stresses the major disadvantage of women and subservience in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Orlando is a prime example of Woolf’s contempt with societal standards in the eighteenth century and difficulty with her own sexual desires.
.
About The Author: Elizabeth Southward currently studies English at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She hopes to pursue the field of Public Relations upon her graduation. She sought out modeling at the end of May 2011, and currently spends her free time partaking in shoots. She was signed to Reinhard Agency in Philadelphia in August of 2011. She hopes to continue modeling full-time upon graduation and model internationally.
.
Her interests include volunteering at the Camden County Animal Shelter in Blackwood, NJ. She specifically nurtures felines in preparation for adoption. Other interests include: tutoring elementary age children, fashion, reading the classics, baking, traveling, and attending cultural events in the Philadelphia area.