Assignment Paper 110(A)

• Name: Divya Sheta 
• Paper Name: 110(A)History Of English Literature – From 1900 to 2000 
• Assignment Topic: Theatre of Absurd 
• Subject Code No:22403
• Roll No.:06
• Enrollment No :4069206420210033
• Email ID: divyasheta@gmail.com
• Batch:2020-23 MA SEM-II
• Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University. 

• Introduction:

After two World Wars, whole world suffered from the dark trauma of existential thoughts. There were such a huge complicated era that leads people towards their identity crisis and how to know oneself. Such a huge dark era ends with many ideological aspects like, Existentialism, Nihilism, Nothingness, Meaninglessness, Absurdity along with artistic movements like, Surrealism, Dadaism, Expressionism which were leads as the part of particular movement at twentieth century era. 

The twentieth century was one of particular worldwide upheaval, ranging from wars to economic downturns to radical political movements. No one can disagree that the years between 1900 and 2000 were years of extreme change for artists all over the world. These changes were boldly reflected in the works of avante-garde artists throughout the century. Classical art was being challenged more and more as waves of nationalism and imperialism spread over the world in the early half of the twentieth century.

• What is Absurdity:    

Absurdity is the state or condition in which human beings exist in an irrational and meaningless universe and in which human life has no ultimate meaning —usually used with ‘The’. It is ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous and also having no rational or orderly relationship to human life and dealing with the absurd or with absurdism

Absurd contains the rarer related adjective surd, which, like absurd, derives from the Latin surdus ("deaf, silent, stupid") Surd can mean "lacking sense or irrational," much like absurd:

Absurd stresses a lack of logical sense or harmonious agreement, of parts (such as a premise and a conclusion) not fitting together. In philosophy, it describes the problem of trying to distill meaning from one's experiences. In A Discourse on Novelty and Creation (1975), Carl R. Hausman writes, "There is an incongruity, an inconsistency, a conflict with a context that appears as lawful, orderly experience. As [Albert] Camus points out, absurdity 'springs from a comparison,' a comparison between two aspects of reality which seem to be out of harmony."

An ''absurd'' definition encompasses any concept that is nonsensical or bizarre. Absurdities can be incorporated into literature to create a specific mood or to express political ideas. The word absurd comes from the Latin absurdus, meaning ''out of tune'' or ''discordant.''

• Absurdism in Literature

Absurdism in literature has a long history, with writers creating and codifying the absurdist literature definition to suit their purposes. Often, writers use absurdism to point out the bizarre randomness of life. They might use it to describe a world that has been abandoned by any higher power, or a world where people are alienated from society. Existentialism is a particularly important philosophy that is associated with absurdism. Existentialism argues that people are alienated from one another and the world, that they must create their own moral codes as no universal morality exists, and that as a result of alienation, people may be more susceptible to control and manipulation.

Different approaches to absurdity and absurdism can include the following:

• Rhetoric: absurdity is a negative outcome of an argument, to be avoided whenever possible.
• Philosophy: philosophical approaches like existentialism and nihilism explore absurdity as a negative, neutral, or positive force.
• Literature: writers use absurdity and absurdism for a variety of reasons.
• Language: absurdity can impede communication but can be used for humor, as in the case of malaphors and malapropisms.
• Theater: Theater of the Absurd is a particular theatrical genre with its own conventions and themes.
• Theology: different religions approach the concept of absurdity from varying perspectives, sometimes associating the absurd with evil and at other times considering it to be an aspirational concept.

It is important to understand the difference between absurdity and absurdism. Absurdity is the concept of the absurd in any form and in any context. Absurdism, on the other hand, is the deliberate exploration of and use of the absurd in art and literature for effect.

• Theatre of the Absurd: Background: 

In 1942, the French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus published his work "The Myth of Sisyphus," examining humanity's desire for rationality and purpose in the face of the inherent irrationality and emptiness of the universe. From this, Camus developed his Theory of the Absurd: that this juxtaposition is something that all free-thinking and honest people must eventually come to accept. According to Camus, human beings should not strive to find purpose where there is none, and that true contentment can only be felt once this is acknowledged. To explain this, he uses the Greek myth of Sisyphus, an ancient king who fought against death and was condemned for all eternity to move a massive stone up a hill, only for it to roll back to the bottom immediately. Camus argues that Sisyphus, rather than experiencing torment, must instead experience satisfaction, having come to terms with the absurdity and inescapability of his position and persisting despite it.

According to Martin Esslin, the four defining playwrights of the movement are Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov. Beckett is a prime example of an existentialist writer for the Theatre of the Absurd. His plays, Waiting for Godot and Endgame, are perhaps the finest examples of the Theatre of the Absurd. Endgame is a play where ‘nothing happens, once’, whereas in Waiting for Godot, ‘nothing happens, twice’. These plays are read as fundamentally existentialist in their take on life. The fact that none of the characters retain any memory of their past clearly indicates that they are constantly struggling to prove their existence.

This Theory of the Absurd posed a challenge to the artists and writers of the day, drawing into question what kind of art, if any, could be produced if one accepted that the universe was a fundamentally absurd and meaningless place. For the playwrights of the time, this meant examining the constructs and narratives that made up the traditional understanding of theatre and doing away with them. The first absurdist play is Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, first performed in 1950, with other seminal productions such as Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Jean Genet's The Balcony, and Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party being produced over the next ten years. In 1960, a name was given to the movement by British drama critic Martin Esslin, who formally categorized the plays and their authors for the first time in his seminal essay "The Theatre of the Absurd." Over the next decade, the movement's influence would steadily wane. However, the ideas and conventions it had explored would continue to transform and shape the theatrical landscape for years to come.

• Theatre of the Absurd: Characteristics

The most important characteristics of the Theatre of the Absurd are as follows:

1. There is often no real story line; instead there is a series of ‘free floating images’ which help the audience to interpret a play.

2. The main focus of an Absurdist play is on the incomprehensibility of the world, or the futility of an attempt to rationalize an irrational, disorderly world.

3. The Theatre of the Absurd is, to a very considerable extent, concerned with a critique of language (which has become devoid of meaning) as an unreliable and insufficient tool of communication.

The Theatre of the Absurd examines the fundamental absurdity of choosing to live one's life normally when confronted with an uncaring and meaningless universe. Absurdist plays recontextualize these two aspects of existence, presenting the characters as either behaving routinely in absurd situations, behaving absurdly in routine situations, or any combination of the two. While Theatre of the Absurd is, by definition, absurd, themes of futility, anxiety and isolation are commonly present throughout these works, and much critical discussion is still dedicated to studying and interpreting these plays.

• Plot in Absurdist Plays

Plays belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd typically function as demonstrations of traditional human rationality and expectation gone awry. They often begin from the point of familiarity for the audience, such as Estragon and Vladimir's evocation of the classic vaudevillian double-act in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot or the use of the preestablished Shakespearean characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. This establishment of familiarity is then either immediately or steadily subverted, challenging the audience's understanding of theatrical and narrative norms and confronting them with a dramatic representation of life's inherent absurdity.

Theatre of the Absurd actively rejects conventional notions of narrative, opting instead for chaotic and seemingly nonsensical plots. Characters may react to certain statements or events with uncharacteristic levity or gravity or disregard cause-and-effect altogether. Time and space are typically mutable, ill-defined, or absent. Many plays are cyclical, ending at the same place they began, such as in the case of Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano or Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, with all preceding action either disregarded, forgotten, or rendered irrelevant by the production's conclusion. Other plays follow the conventional dramatic structure of action rising to a climax. However, the reasons for these rising actions are often unclear or actively inscrutable, such as in Eugene Ionesco's The Chairs and Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party. By the narrative's conclusion, the audience is typically left with a sense of uncertainty, prompting them to examine their own lives for examples of absurdity and existential confusion.

Another important feature of the Theatre of the Absurd is that it does not situate man in a historical, social, or cultural context; it is not merely a commentary on the general condition of human life. Instead, it delineates human condition the way man experiences it. For example, in Waiting for Godot, the tramps have a very blurred sense of time and history. This lack of knowledge of one’s own culture and past symbolizes the breakdown of culture and tradition in the twentieth century.

• Conclusion: 

Absurd theatre is the way that one can find the real essence of the life in practical way and of course theatres were again start to present the change in people’s life during and aftermath of World Wars. Absurdity is very close to Existential philosophy and it relates that why, how, for what and for whom you live. It also leads huge change in narrative techniques in literature. 

Work Citation:

“Absurd.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/absurd. Accessed 9 May. 2022.

Shanna. “20th Century Art Movements with Timeline.” Owlcation, Owlcation, 26 Mar. 2012, owlcation.com/humanities/20th-Century-Art-Movements-with-Timeline. 

“Take Online Courses. Earn College Credit. Research Schools, Degrees & Careers.” Study.com | Take Online Courses. Earn College Credit. Research Schools, Degrees & Careers, study.com/learn/lesson/absurdity-in-literature-examples-concept.html.

“Take Online Courses. Earn College Credit. Research Schools, Degrees & Careers.” Study.com | Take Online Courses. Earn College Credit. Research Schools, Degrees & Careers, study.com/learn/lesson/theatre-absurd-playwrights-characterisitcs-examples.html. 

Assignment Paper 109

• Name: Divya Sheta 
• Paper Name: 109. Literary Theory & Criticism and Indian Aesthetics 
• Assignment Topic: Archetypes in Hamlet 
• Subject Code No:22402
• Roll No.:06
• Enrollment No :4069206420210033
• Email ID: divyasheta@gmail.com
• Batch:2020-23 MA SEM-II
• Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University. 

• Introduction: 

Archetype described as the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies. Northrop Frye defined an archetype as a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one’s literary experience as a whole.  

An archetype is a literary device in which a character is created based on a set of qualities or traits that are specific and identifiable for readers. The term archetype is derived from the studies and writings of psychologist Carl Jung who believed that archetypes are part of humanity’s collective unconscious or memory of universal experiences. In a literary context, characters (and sometimes images or themes) that symbolically embody universal meanings and basic human experiences, independent of time or place, are considered archetypes.

For example, one of the most common literary archetypes is the Hero. The hero is generally the protagonist of a narrative and displays ubiquitous characteristics such as courage, perseverance, sacrifice, and rising to challenge. Though heroes may appear in different literary forms across time and culture, their characterization tends to be universal thus making them archetypal characters.

Another way of thinking about archetypes is to imagine that in some way it is possible to plot the important aspects of a story onto a graph. If enough points from several stories were plotted a pattern would start to appear. If one then drew a line that approximated the pattern that emerged in the points, that best fit line would be an archetype. No story perfectly matches the archetype, and some stories will diverge from the archetype more than others. Still, recognizing that a pattern exists can be a powerful tool in understanding and comparing literature

• Archetypes in Hamlet:

Hamlet sits at the crossroads of three archetypes: the Child, the Tragic Hero, and the Trickster. As the title suggests, Hamlet is the main character and his evolution from innocent child to avenging killer is the focus of the play.

• The Child: aspects include growing to potential, growing up, realizing self
• The Tragic Hero: involves facing a fatal flaw, neither good nor evil, and suffering more than they 'deserve'
• The Trickster: involves breaking rules, destroying conventions, and promoting chaos to pursue one's own goals.

• The Child Archetype:

As a perennial student, Hamlet is an idealistic innocent or child archetype. While there is some debate about how old Hamlet is supposed to be in the play, he is called "young Hamlet" or "noble youth" several times. And despite its elements of ghosts and intrigue, the plot of the play revolves around the question of whether Hamlet can stop brooding, grow up, and avenge his father's murder. This archetype is universal in coming-of-age novels. It can also involve wise-beyond-their-years children, and it's opposite, adults who never grow up.

• The Tragic Hero Archetype:

After witnessing his father's ghost and the “immoral” relationship between his uncle and his mother, Hamlet is cast in the role of the Avenging Tragic Hero. This archetype almost always dies at the end of his or her story. This is because the task he or she desires to complete is beyond mortal justice. It becomes a fatal flaw that leads to a tragic end. By seeking to avenge his father by murdering his uncle, Hamlet subverts the natural order and causes several unintentional deaths, including that of a pure innocent, his love-interest Ophelia. Other tragic heroes include Oedipus from Oedipus Rex, Gatsby from The Great Gatsby, and Okonkwo from Things Fall Apart.

• The Trickster Archetype:

One of the enduring mysteries surrounding Hamlet is whether the main character is insane. Some claim that his misogynistic outbursts at his mother and Ophelia prove that he is actually mad. Others see these attacks and other statements as proof that Hamlet was, as he claims in the play, pretending to be crazy. And there's also a hybrid idea that Hamlet's mock madness eventually drives him really insane. A writer who has experts scratching their heads and debating character motivations centuries later is doing something right.

• This is Hamlet in his guise as the Trickster archetype. 
• The Trickster archetype is clever and usually uses evasion and tricks instead of a more straightforward tactic like fighting. Hamlet employs his trickster guise to find out the truth about his uncle, Claudius, and Ophelia's father, Polonius. Unfortunately, this doesn't save him from a bloody death at the end of the play.
• The King: The King archetype embodies control, power, and leadership. People choose to follow him.
• The Shadow King: There are two versions of the Shadow King: Weakling and Tyrant. The Weakling King uses lies and deceit to rule. The Tyrant using excessive force and violence.

• Old King Hamlet:

The King archetype is focused on matters of state. He wants to exercise power and control. The idealized King archetype inspires others to follow him rather than forcing them to do his bidding. Old Hamlet, as the appointed King, embodies this masculine persona. In the first act of the play, the ghost of Old Hamlet appears in full military regalia. The ghost commands his son's friends to swear upon the sword and keep his secrets. When the King archetype commands, his followers immediately obey.Old Hamlet is also described as a warrior, successfully leading his army against Norway and defeating its King in hand-to-hand combat, showing his strength and command on the battlefield.  

• Claudius:

Claudius embodies the weakling shadow of the King archetype. Unlike Old Hamlet, Claudius is a smooth-talking diplomat, not a warrior. He is compared poorly to the old King throughout the play, using sly and underhanded methods to accomplish his goals. First, he poisons his brother in his sleep. Then, he spies and plots against Hamlet, until finally, he attempts to have Hamlet killed instead of confronting face-to-face. 

• The Maiden and Mother Archetypes: Ophelia and Gertrude:

Interestingly, there are no positive female archetypes in Hamlet. Hamlet spurs the seemingly genuine affection of both Ophelia and his mother, Queen Gertrude. These two characters may represent some aspects of Hamlet's twisted anima—the unconscious feminine sides of a man.

This negative light forces Ophelia and Gertrude into the shadows of their archetypes: the Maiden and the Mother.

The Maiden: The Maiden archetype embodies innocence and growth. She is beginning her journey and is full of idealistic hope.

The Shadow Maiden: The Shadow Maiden is stalled in her growth and has left her powerless. Someone else has stolen her agency.

The Mother: The Mother archetype embodies nurturing, love, and gentle governance.

The Shadow Mother: The Overbearing Mother is possessive and oppressive. Her attempts to nurture end up driving her literal or symbolic child away.

• Ophelia:

The Maiden archetype is an innocent young woman who is at one with nature. Snow White and Cinderella are excellent fairy tale examples. They sing to birds and dream of true love.Ophelia, as the Shadow Maiden archetype, is put in an untenable position. She cares for Hamlet, but she must help her father spy on him. Hamlet also rebuffs her love and says cruel things to her. In the famous Nunnery scene (Act 3, Scene 1), Hamlet tells her to "Get thee to a nunnery." This statement exemplifies the dual archetype of Ophelia. This is a double entendre—at the time, a nunnery was both a convent for religious nuns and slang for a brothel. 

The jaded harlot is the exact shadow archetype of the innocent maiden. Hamlet sees her as faithless, like a harlot that offers her favors to anyone with money. After her father's death, Ophelia goes mad. She sings, but her songs are twisted. Her death is also a dark fairytale; she drowns after falling into a stream.

• Gertrude:

Gertrude takes on the shadow of the Mother archetype. The Mother archetype nurtures her family and puts their well being ahead of her own. As written, Queen Gertrude tries to embody this archetype. She wasn’t involved in her first husband's murder. Her hasty marriage to her husband's brother appears to have been for the good of Denmark. 

But, in Hamlet’s eyes, Gertrude becomes the shadow of the Mother archetype: the Overbearing Mother. Every time she attempts to help her son, it ends up hurting one or both of them. She tries to comfort Hamlet in his grief, but he treats her relationship with Claudius as incestuous. By believing in Hamlet's insanity, she nearly gets him assassinated by her villainous new husband. And finally, she ends up drinking the poisoned wine intended for her son.

Hamlet’s twisted view of his mother can be clearly seen in an archetypal reading of Hamlet Act 3, Scene 4. Here, Hamlet confronts his mother about her relationship with Claudius, asking her why she would forsake her noble husband (Old Hamlet) for his “mildewed” brother. Even after murdering Polonius, Hamlet claims that his deed is only “almost as bad” as hers.

Hamlet is hyper-focused on his mother’s relationship with Claudius, ranting about “the rank sweat of an enseamed bed” and how it is “stewed in corruption.” In Hamlet’s view, the Mother archetype should limit her romantic relationships to her husband (even if he has died). Anything beyond that is a gross sin. This scene is an Oedipal reaction from Hamlet, where he is more offended than his ghostly father who appears later in the scene and takes pity on Gertrude. (3.4.113-115) 

• The Sage Archetype: Polonius

The Sage archetype is a wise advisor, able to guide the protagonist on his or her quest.

• Shadow Sage:

The Old Fool provides bad advice that puts the hero in danger. The Dogmatic Judge holds the hero back with restrictive rules and laws. The Sage represents spirituality or knowledge and acts as a mentor or adviser to the protagonist. Polonius embodies the shadows of this archetype: the doddering fool and the dogmatic judge. Hamlet describes him as a "tedious old fool." (Act 2, Scene 2) He speaks in cliched proverbs or maxims and is generally wrong about everything. The character wields a dual nature: naivete and cunning. Some experts suggest that, like Poirot or Columbo, he hides his cunning beneath an outward appearance of foolishness. Like Claudius, Polonius has his servants spy on his son, Laertes, suspecting that his son is gambling and behaving immorally.

• Conclusion: 

In literature, we study economics, science, social-science, etc. Like in Phonetics we studied biologically also. As Fry said that Literature is the center in 'Humanities' It is covered up all disciplines from different sort of humanities. We can identify many archetypes in particular literary text. From Shakespeare to J.K.Rowling, we can find many archetypal reading. It is quite wide area to read as particular model of story. 

Work Citation

“Archetype - Examples and Definition of Archetype.” Literary Devices, 29 Sept. 2020, literarydevices.net/archetype/. 

“Archetypes in Hamlet - the Narrative Arc: Learn the Secrets of the World's Best Writers.” The Narrative ARC | Learn the Secrets of the World's Best Writers, thenarrativearc.org/hamlet. 

neoenglish, Author. “Northrop Frye's Theory of Archetypes.” NeoEnglish, 1 Dec. 2010, neoenglish.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/northrop-frye%E2%80%99s-theory-of-archetypes/#:~:text=Northrop%20Frye%2C%20working%20in%20the,literary%20experience%20as%20a%20whole. 

Assignment Paper 108

Name: Divya Sheta

Paper Name: 108. The American Literature

Assignment Topic: Long Day’s Journey as a Semi-Autobiographical Play 

Subject Code No:22401

Roll No.:06

Enrollment No :4069206420210033

Email ID: divyasheta@gmail.com

Batch:2020-23 MA SEM-II

Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University. 

• Introduction: 

There are such a great autobiographies in the literature. It’s written in real based life events of author’s life. However, it is also quite difficult to reveal oneself among the world who will read the particular work. But this is what perhaps the only a certain way to declare one self that about what happened in the life, about tragic events, comic as well absurd experiences with family, friends and what one can felt that how he or she adjust with society also. Their reactions and projections of ideas about personal life. 

• About the Author:

Eugene O’Neill was born in October 16th, 1888, in New York City. He said while receiving Nobel Prize. Son of James O’Neill, the popular romantic actor. First seven years of my life spent mostly in hotels and railroad trains, my mother accompanying my father on his tours of the United States, although she never was an actress, disliked the theatre, and held aloof from its people.From the age of seven to thirteen attended Catholic schools. Then four years at a non-sectarian preparatory school, followed by one year (1906-1907) at Princeton University.

After expulsion from Princeton I led a restless, wandering life for several years, working at various occupations. Was secretary of a small mail order house in New York for a while, then went on a gold prospecting expedition in the wilds of Spanish Honduras. Found no gold but contracted malarial fever. Returned to the United States and worked for a time as assistant manager of a theatrical company on tour. After this, a period in which I went to sea, and also worked in Buenos Aires for the Westinghouse Electrical Co., Swift Packing Co., and Singer Sewing Machine Co. Never held a job long. Was either fired quickly or left quickly. Finished my experience as a sailor as able-bodied seaman on the American Line of transatlantic liners. After this, was an actor in vaudeville for a short time, and reporter on a small town newspaper. At the end of 1912 my health broke down and I spent six months in a tuberculosis sanatorium.

Began to write plays in the Fall of 1913. Wrote the one-act Bound East for Cardiff in the Spring of 1914. This is the only one of the plays written in this period which has any merit. In the Fall of 1914, I entered Harvard University to attend the course in dramatic technique given by Professor George Baker. I left after one year and did not complete the course.

The Fall of 1916 marked the first production of a play of mine in New York – Bound East for Cardiff – which was on the opening bill of the Provincetown Players. In the next few years this theatre put on nearly all of my short plays, but it was not until 1920 that a long play Beyond the Horizon was produced in New York. It was given on Broadway by a commercial management – but, at first, only as a special matinee attraction with four afternoon performances a week. However, some of the critics praised the play and it was soon given a theatre for a regular run, and later on in the year was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. I received this prize again in 1922 for Anna Christie and for the third time in 1928 for Strange Interlude.

The following is a list of all my published and produced plays which are worth mentioning, with the year in which they were written:

Bound East for Cardiff (1914)	The Dreamy Kid (1918)	The Fountain (1921-22)
Before Breakfast (1916),	Where the Cross is Made (1918)	The Hairy Ape (1921)
The Long Voyage Home (1917)	The Straw (1919)	Welded (1922)
In the Zone (1917)	Gold (1920)	All God’s Chillun Got Wings (1923)
The Moon of the Carabbees (1917)	Anna Christie (1920)	Desire Under the Elms (1924)
Ile (1917)	The Emperor Jones (1920)	Marco Millions (1923-25)
The Rope (1918)	Different (1920)	The Great God Brown (1925)
Beyond the Horizon (1918)	The First Man (1921)	Lazarus Laughed (1926)
Interlude (1926-27)	Dynamo (1928)	Mourning Becomes Electra (1929-31)
Ah, Wilderness (1932)	Days Without End (1932-33)

After an active career of writing and supervising the New York productions of his own works, O’Neill (1888-1953) published only two new plays between 1934 and the time of his death. In The Iceman Cometh (1946), he exposed a «prophet’s» battle against the last pipedreams of a group of derelicts as another pipedream and managed to infuse into the «Lower Depths» atmosphere a sense of the tragic. A Moon for the Misbegotten (1952) contains a strong autobiographical content, which it shares with Long Day’s Journey into Night (posth. 1956), one of O’Neill’s most important works. The latter play, written, according to O’Neill, «in tears and blood… with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones», had its premiere at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. Sweden grew into an O’Neill centre with the first productions of the one-act play Hughie (posth. 1959) as well as A Touch of the Poet (posth. 1958) and an adapted version of More Stately Mansions (posth. 1962 ) – both plays being parts of an unfinished cycle in which O’Neill returned to his earlier attempts at making psychological analysis dramatically effective.

• Semi-autobiography: 

Semi-autobiography is a work (such as a novel or film) that is partly autobiography and partly fiction : a fictionalized account of the author's life. Semi-Autobiographical Fiction (SAF), also known as roman à clef , is any work of fiction wherein the central elements of both the narrator and the plot are based on the author themselves. The “semi” exists in the definition because the author may explore fictional hypotheticals, introduce fictional characters, or else digress from what happened in real life.

Many literary experts consider Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar to be an example of a semi-autobiographical novel. Much of the plot, as well as many of the characters, resemble Plath’s own life and struggle with mental illness. Plath may have chosen to write this story as SAF because, sometimes, it is easier to tell one’s own story when it has the façade of fiction.

• Long Day’s Journey into Night:

Aspiring writers are often told, “Write what you know.” Writers are thus encouraged to draw on their personal experiences to craft their narratives. Experienced authors often choose to create semi-autobiographical works, which contain a blend of some elements of their real lives and some of their own fictional creation. Irish-American playwright Eugene O’Neill is one such author who drew largely from personal experience to create his plays. Long Day’s Journey into Night is widely considered to be his finest literary achievement and also his most personal play. This drama has many autobiographical elements but with some important fictional characteristics. An understanding of how O’Neill draws on personal elements in the creation of this text can deepen our appreciation of this powerful work.

Long Day’s Journey into Night is a truly unique play in the way that it differs from most semi-autobiographical works. Many works in this genre are initially based on life events, but then the author chooses to veer the work in another direction. O’Neill, however, remains largely true to the events of his life. As O’Neill scholar Michael Hinden explains, O’Neill had “no need to fabricate family incidents for his plot” and actually “pruned additional family troubles from the finished play”. In fact, compressing the events into a twenty-four hour period is arguably the most fictional part of the production.

 As Michael Hinden writes, “The play fixes a moment of time shared equally by its protagonists, reaches into the past to illuminate that moment, and presents it without editorial comment”. 

We can pin down some facts about the O’Neills’ lives in the moment, but we as the audience are left to speculate about the remainder of the characters’ lives. When examining the O’Neills’ lives, we must remember that several events and details were intentionally left out of the production. With an acknowledgment of the unusual nature of O’Neill’s writing, we can begin to examine the autobiographical elements in the play.

The four central characters in the play are based on O’Neill’s immediate family. First, James Tyrone is based on Eugene’s father, James O’Neill (1846-1920). Like his character in the play, James was an actor best known for the role of Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo. Despite this being his most successful role, it also became the “fatal turning point in his career” He was typecast and could not find another role after it. The O’Neills spent much of their life traveling and living out of hotels due to James’s acting career. Eugene believed that this led to his mother’s morphine addiction. While Eugene’s portrayal of his father’s career appears accurate, James’s personal traits in the production may have been biased, particularly in regards to James’s handling of money. 

Michael Hinden argues:

“Friends who remembered James O’Neill protested that his presentation as a miser in the play was inaccurate. They recalled the actor as an open and generous man who always was happy to provide a handout”. Eugene portrays his family from his own personal lens, which is subject to bias. His characters thus closely resemble but do not completely reflect the members of his family.

Mary Tyrone is based on Eugene’s mother, Mary Ellen Quinlan O’Neill (1857-1922). Like her character in the play, Ella met her future husband backstage at one of his New York performances. The two were married on June 14, 1887, and their first son James Jr. (Jamie) was born a year later. Five years later their son Edmund was born. He quickly died, however, after contracting measles from his older brother. Ella lived in conflict between blaming herself and blaming Jamie for the baby’s death. Eugene chose to exchange his name in the play with his brother’s. His character is named Edmund Tyrone in the play, and the dead brother is referred to as Eugene. Some scholars speculate that Eugene made this choice to emphasize how he felt living in the shadow of a “ghost child”. Some believe that the play suggests Eugene’s birth indirectly led to his mother’s drug addiction. A doctor prescribed her morphine after a painful and traumatic childbirth. However, “whether the doctor who introduced her to morphine was a cheap hotel quack, as Mary charges in the play, or a respectable practitioner, cannot be ascertained”. Her drug addiction spanned many years and deeply troubled the O’Neill family. Her addiction is central to the plot of the play. Her unusual behavior in the play, such as wearing her wedding dress, is also true. However, what is left out of the play is Ella’s surprising recovery. In 1914 she retired to a convent and found the strength to give up morphin. In the play Eugene chose to focus on her earlier life which was still ravaged by addiction.

Jamie Tyrone in the play is based on Eugene’s older brother James O’Neill, Jr. (1878-1923). Scholars claim that Jamie’s character is the most lifelike in the productionql[. As Hinden writes, “The measles episode, school expulsions, bitterness, drinking, whoring, and the train ride are the legacy of James O’Neill, Jr.” In real life, Jamie was a troubled soul who could not find a healthy way to cope with his problems. He cared deeply for his younger brother, but he was always afraid his troubles would bring his brother down. In the play and in life, he was addicted to alcohol for almost all his life. In fact, after his mother’s death in 1922, he “never had another sober day”. His drinking eventually became so terrible that Eugene had to distance himself from his brother in real life. Jamie actually tells his brother to keep his distance in the play. His character warns, “At the first good chance I get, I’ll stab you in the back”. As is predicted in the play, Jamie slowly drank himself to death and died at age forty-five.

Edmund Tyrone is O’Neill’s self-portrait, and as Hinden describes is “somewhat disingenuous” O’Neill looks back on his younger self from a place of experience. Many details of his own life are intentionally left out. Hinden argues, “Edmund’s inexperience in the play is crucial: through his passivity the family’s aggression comes sharply into focus” Edmund in the play is a sensitive person but with a dark edge, friends of the true O’Neill seem to agree that he had a sensitive but dark personality. What is left out of the play is his failed marriage to Kathleen Jenkins and his strained relationship with his son Eugene O’Neill, Jr. His character would have already experienced his marriage and the birth of his son by the time the play took place. As was his character, O’Neill was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium in 1912. It appears as though his character may die in the play, but the real O’Neill did recover within a year. His time dealing with illness actually inspired him to pursue a career in writing. Though he received success as a writer, he lived to see a grim life. He could not escape the influence of his older brother and became a chronic alcoholic. O’Neill experienced multiple failed marriages, the suicide of his eldest son, and a Parkinson’s-like tremor which kept him sick for many years. He died of pneumonia in 1953, and his last words were, “Born in a hotel room– and God damn it– died in a hotel room”. His character Edmund is a version of O’Neill isolated in time, written by an experienced O’Neill looking backward. He intentionally removes his character from the tarnish of his own experience.

Long Day’s Journey into Night was birthed out of O’Neill’s experience in a broken family that was ravaged by pain and addiction. His portrait of his family is grim, but the O’Neill family did not experience only darkness.

Michael Hinden explains:

Each of the four O’Neills lived to see a wish fulfilled. James watched his son develop into the fine artist he might have been, Ella conquered her addiction, and for a few years Jamie finally had his mother all to himself. As for O’Neill, his third marriage was a fulfilling one despite its stormy quarrels.

It is important to acknowledge that, despite what the play suggests, not every moment of the O’Neills’ lives was depressing. They experienced their own moments of love and of triumph. O’Neill’s semi-autobiographical work may be a criticism of his family and the pain they inflicted upon him, but it is also his way of remembering his family and paying tribute to them. A better understanding of O’Neill’s life helps us see the way the work actually honors his family. The characters in the production as well as the members of O’Neill’s family are broken and beautiful, and because of the success of O’Neill’s work, they will always be remembered.

• Conclusion:

O’Neill presented the story at the very close sight of his dark life. We can conclude his biographical work by quoting his very famous line said by Marry while she wrote the letter to her husband that,

Dearest: I give you the original script of this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood. A sadly inappropriate gift, it would seem, for a day celebrating happiness. But you will understand. O’Neill not changed the names of characters he used in the play which symbolized that he was highly depressed with his family members. 

Worked Citation:

 Eugene O’Neill – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. Sun. 8 May 2022. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1936/oneill/biographical/

“Semi-autobiography.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semi-autobiography.Accessed 8 May. 2022.

“The Autobiographical Truth in Long Day's Journey into Night.” Literatureessaysamples.com, 1 Mar. 2019, literatureessaysamples.com/the-autobiographical-truth-in-long-day-s-journey/. 

 

Assignment Paper 107

• Name: Divya Sheta
• Paper Name: 107.The Twentieth Century Literature: From World War II to the End of the Century
• Assignment Topic: Language and Ideology in George Orwell’s 1984
• Subject Code No:22400
• Roll No.:06
• Enrollment No :4069206420210033
• Email ID: divyasheta@gmail.com
• Batch:2020-23 MA SEM-II
• Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University.

 

• Introduction: 

“My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience.”-George Orwell, Why I Write.

Nineteen Eighteen Four-1984 considered one of the best dystopian novella, respectively written by English novelist George Orwell. Along with his contribution towards dystopian literature, he successfully wrote about political ideology, heavily presented by political ideology like, Totalitarianism. An adjectives he gave like ‘Orwellian’. 

• About George Orwell:

George Orwell was born Eric Blair in India in 1903 into a comfortable ‘lower-upper-middle class’ family. Orwell’s father had served the British Empire, and Orwell’s own first job was as a policeman in Burma. Orwell wrote in “Shooting an Elephant” (1936) that his time in the police force had shown him the “dirty work of Empire at close quarters”; the experience made him a lifelong foe of imperialism.

By the time of his death in 1950, he was world-renowned as a journalist and author: for his eyewitness reporting on war (shot in the neck in Spain) and poverty (tramping in London, washing dishes in Paris or visiting pits and the poor in Wigan); for his political and cultural commentary, where he stood up to power and said the unsayable (‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’); and for his fiction, including two of the most popular novels ever written: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Orwell Foundation maintains a wealth of Orwell resources, free to access online, from Orwell’s essays and diaries, to a library of work about Orwell and his writing. Read on for an extended biography written by D.J. Taylor. Taylor is an author, journalist and critic. His Biography of Orwell, Orwell: the Life won the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award.

As part of our wider commitment to promote knowledge and understanding of Orwell’s life and work, the Foundation also regularly releases new short educational films. These are free to access on YouTube and include contributions from Orwell’s son Richard Blair, D. J. Taylor, and previous winners of the Orwell Prizes:

1. The Night Orwell Died

2. George Orwell and the Battle for Animal Farm

3. ‘Some Thoughts on the Common Toad’: 75th anniversary film

• About the Novel: 

Nineteen Eighteen Four novella follows the life of Winston Smith, a low ranking member of ‘the Party’, who is frustrated by the omnipresent eyes of the party, and its ominous ruler Big Brother.

‘Big Brother’ controls every aspect of people’s lives. It has invented the language ‘Newspeak’ in an attempt to completely eliminate political rebellion; created ‘Thoughtcrimes’ to stop people even thinking of things considered rebellious. The party controls what people read, speak, say and do with the threat that if they disobey, they will be sent to the dreaded Room 101 as a looming punishment. Orwell effectively explores the themes of mass media control, government surveillance, totalitarianism and how a dictator can manipulate and control history, thoughts, and lives in such a way that no one can escape it.

The protagonist, Winston Smith, begins a subtle rebellion against the party by keeping a diary of his secret thoughts, which is a deadly thoughtcrime. With his lover Julia, he begins a foreordained fight for freedom and justice, in a world where no one else appears to see, or dislike, the oppression the protagonist opposes.

Perhaps the most powerful, effective and frightening notion of 1984 is that the complete control of an entire nation under a totalitarian state is perfectly possible. If the world fell under the control of one or even multiple dictators, the future could easily become a twisted, cruel world where every movement, word and breath is scrutinized by an omnipotent, omnipresent power that no one can stop, or even oppose without the fear of death.

• Linguistic Ideology: 

In Nineteen Eighteen Four the Party’s linguistic ideology is paradoxically anti-linguistic: there are several reasons that why it become anti-linguistic:

1.It uses language to mask a hatred of language

2.It rewrites history to destroy man’s history and heritage 

3.It prepares new dictionaries so man cannot express himself through language.

The Party's attempt to control man through language, to control time and history, is subverted, however, by the oldspeak narrator who asserts the linguistic "past" (embodied in a series of allusions) against the Party's anti-historical "present."

In a novel about the destruction of the linguistic past, the oldspeak narrator grounds the text in a series of allusions which assert the linguistic "past" and hence qualify the Party's anti-linguistic present. Allusions call up events from the past, and the narrator's use of allusion thematically subverts the Party's effort to destroy the textual past. Indeed, the novel's major symbols are about books, and Orwell emphasizes their relation to the oldspeak past. For instance, Smith keeps a "secret" diary to record his free and intimate thoughts with an old pen ("an archaic instrument") on "smooth creamy paper.. that had not been manufactured for at least forty years past."! Goldstein's "secret" book is written in the quasi-style of Trotsky and read by Winston and Julia in a "secret" room that is "paradise" (124). For a brief time this room suggests a return to Eden, a return to a prelapsarian linguistic world where unfallen lovers can read and talk in blissful safety. The fact that Goldstein's book has probably been fabricated by O'Brien makes the latter a tempter and the fatal book a "forbidden book" (164), as the allusions to forbidden knowledge and O'Brien's forbidden "apple" suggest Winston and Julia's "fall." There are also the ephemeral newspeak dictionaries continually being superseded by "definitive" editions, one of which Julia throws at the televised image of Goldstein, incongruously conjuring up. I suggest, Thackeray's Becky Sharp impetuously flinging Dr. Johnson's dictionary into Miss Pinkerton's garden (see Chapter I, Vanity Fair). The tacit contrast between Becky and Julia is also a contrast between the relative innocence of Becky's nineteenth century world and the world of 1984.

Orwell specifically associates the 1984 world with a perverted Puritanism, obliquely expressed in the incongruous statue of Oliver Cromwell (95) and the reference to a civil war (135). Moreover, Julia is mutatis mutandis Hester Prynne while Winston is Dimmesdale. In Julia's case the allusions are not subtle. She wears a "scarlet sash" which is an "emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League" (12) an inversion of Hester's sexual emblem. To Winston the sash is an "odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity" (17), and he passionately hates Julia because she seems to represent the Party's sexual sterility. Later, when Winston and Julia escape into the "golden country," the celebrated forest scene in The Scarlet Letter is evoked when they make love.

In addition, the allusions to the past crystallize the narrator's linguistic self-consciousness. One of the novel's fictions is that the narrator writes in oldspeak English in order to explain and describe the new, radical linguistic revolution embodied in newspeak. In this context, both the narrator and the reader are "prelapsarian" users of oldspeak: we are conscious of language before the "fall" into newspeak. This fiction allows the oldspeak reader to assess the perversion of language into its newspeak form. The allusions to Eden and the Fall also suggest a fall of language. As the reader's language is oldspeak, he is aware of the special irony in words like minitrue, minipax, miniluv, and miniplenty-an irony which escapes even Winston who only sees the words as simple abbreviations. Although oldspeak is still the lingua franca of the 1984 world. Winston and others are ignorant of the historical meaning of words, as the Party's assault on oldspeak slowly removes the accumulated historical meanings of the pre-newspeak words. In contrast, the reader sees the prefixal "mini" as a thematic abbreviation of the Party's linguistically compressed world, and he also sees the irony by which the Party unwittingly tells the truth about "mini" or "little" truth. peace, love and plenty. Winston misses the significance of mini because it no longer exists in its earlier oldspeak sense. What Orwell documents is a thematic fall of language, not a second Babel with a proliferation of tongues and words, but a new fall of language in which language is narrowed and reduced to the Party's circumscribed meaning. 

• Conclusion:

To sum up the point, Orwell also believed that the health and sanity of a society could be preserved through the health and sanity of it’s language. In context, perhaps Orwell’s enduring gift was to make us self-conscious that in a world where people are still assaulated and murdered in the name of high-sounding words our real labor is still to preserve the dialect of the tribe. 

Work Citation

“About George Orwell.” The Orwell Foundation, 10 Nov. 2021, www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/about/about-george-orwell/. 

 

Blakemore, Steven. “Language and Ideology in Orwell’s 1984.” Social Theory and Practice, vol. 10, no. 3, 1984, pp. 349–56, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23556571. Accessed 8 May 2022.

“1984 By George Orwell – Review.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 29 May 2016, www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2016/may/29/1984-george-orwell-review. 

Assignment: Paper 106

• Name: Divya Sheta 
• Paper Name:106.The Twentieth Century Literature: From World War 1900 to World War II.
• Assignment Topic: A Reading of Gender Identity and Sex conflict in Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando: A Biography’
• Subject Code No:22399
• Roll No.:06
• Enrollment No :4069206420210033
• Email ID: divyasheta@gmail.com
• Batch:2020-23 MA SEM-II
• Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University. 

• Introduction: 

Twentieth century literature of English history openly described the subjects such as Gender and Sex. England become more freely to discuss about those subjects after such a religious and ethical ages. Traditionally, literature produced more in ethical and religious, but after 1900s and first World War, they started to write on this direction which speaks openly about humans Gender Identity in both Men and Women. Main noticeable thing is that, women writer such as Virginia Woolf, who was considered one of the greatest female writers of twentieth century. She lead as inspirational female writer in todays time also. With her distinct style of narration and poetic language, Woolf produced some of the most influential novels of the first half of the twentieth century.

The Novel, Orlando is considered as Woolf’s an experimental work or an experimental. She also considered as the pioneer of the term of Stream of Consciousness in literature. Her mostly works about the voice of feminist perspective, Gender identity crisis and many more trending subjects of twentieth century society. 

• About Virginia Woolf:

Adeline Virginia Stephen was born on 25 January 1882 at 22 Hyde Park Gate, London. She was the third child of Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), a London man of letters and founding editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, and his second wife, Julia Prinsep Duckworth, née Jackson (1846–1895) [see Stephen, Julia Prinsep], whose soulful, large-eyed beauty had made her a frequent subject for the pioneering Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, her great-aunt. 

The niece wrote Cameron's biography for the Dictionary of National Biography, and drew on her own nursing practice for her Notes on Sickrooms (1883). The Stephen forebears were evangelicals, part of the Clapham Sect around the reformer William Wilberforce; Leslie Stephen was the son of Jane Catherine Venn (daughter of John Venn [see under Venn, Henry], rector of Clapham) and Sir James Stephen, the colonial under-secretary who framed the bill to abolish slavery in 1833. As lawyers, writers, and educators, the Stephens belonged to the professional élite—the intellectual aristocracy, so called—in nineteenth-century England. 

Julia Jackson grew up in a different set, that of the Pre-Raphaelite artists who gathered at Little Holland House in London. Though artists, including Holman Hunt, proposed to her, she chose to marry a polished gentleman, Herbert Duckworth. She was a grieving young widow with three children when she married Leslie Stephen and produced four more: the artist Vanessa Bell (1879–1961), (Julius) Thoby Stephen (1880–1906), Virginia, and the psychoanalyst Adrian Stephen (1883–1948).

Virginia was largely self-educated, and continued with a programme of reading throughout her life. Her only sustained formal study was in Greek. At fifteen she attended a few Greek classes at King's College in London, and at eighteen wrote to a cousin, Emma Vaughan, in June 1900: 'Greek … is my daily bread, and a keen delight to me.' In October that year she began private lessons with old Clara Pater, sister to Walter Pater, in an atmosphere of Persian cats and Morris wallpaper, but these lessons proved too undisciplined, and in 1902 Miss Pater was replaced by Janet Case, one of the first women to pass through Girton College, Cambridge, who gave Virginia the only systematic tuition she ever had and introduced her to the feminist cause.

• About the Novel: 

Orlando, novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1928. The fanciful biographical novel pays homage to the family of Woolf’s friend Vita Sackville-West from the time of her ancestor Thomas Sackville (1536–1608) to the family’s country estate at Knole. The manuscript of the book, a present from Woolf to Sackville-West, is housed at Knole.

The novel opens in 1588. Young Orlando, a 16-year-old boy, writes a poem called “The Oak Tree.” He finds favour at the Elizabethan court and love in the arms of a Russian princess.

A garrulous poet, Sir Nicholas Greene (said to be modeled on Sir Edmund Gosse), discusses literature with him. During the reign of Charles II (1660–85), Orlando is named ambassador to Constantinople and is rewarded with a dukedom. One night he stays with a dancer and cannot be awakened. Seven days later Orlando rises, now a beautiful woman. She returns to England and savours intellectual London society in the age of Addison, Dryden, and Pope but turns to bawdy street life for relief from this cerebral life. She marries to achieve respectability during the Victorian years, and by 1928 she has returned to London, where she is reunited with her friend Greene, who offers to find a publisher for “The Oak Tree.” Back at her country estate, she stands under the great oak and remembers her centuries of adventure.

The novel is also an affectionate portrait of Sackville-West, who, because she was a woman, could not inherit Knole. Written in a pompous biographical voice, the book pokes fun at a genre the author knew well: her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, had edited the Dictionary of National Biography, and her friend Lytton Strachey had written the revolutionary Eminent Victorians. Woolf also parodies the changing styles of English literature and explores issues of androgyny and the creative life of women. Orlando marked a turning point in Woolf’s career. Not only was it a departure from her more introspective works, but its spectacular sales also ended her financial worries. Readers praised the book’s fluid style, wit, and complex plot.

• Orlando’s Gender and Sex Conflict: 

According to  the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “The main factors driving gender inequalities, conflict and fragility are: prevalence of discriminatory gender norms and practices, widespread sexual and gender-based violence, weak institutions and women’s lack of access to justice and basic services, women’s exclusion from political and economic decision making, and a narrowing space for opposition or civil society organisations.” Gender performativity, as theorized by Judith Butler, seems to be particularly relevant in Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando: A Biography. It is an in-depth exploration of what it means to be a man and a woman, that might threaten to challenge and alter the reader’s preconceived notions of what qualifies to being male or female characteristics by highlighting the differences between socially structured gender and biological sex.

Orlando promotes the concept that gender and sexuality are not exclusively linked to sex, thereby normalizing and promoting a more androgynous reality as an arguably more natural state. Orlando is written in the form of a mock-biography and spans approximately 400 years in duration, starting with the Elizabethan era, and ending, notably, in 1928, although the eponymous protagonist ages only 36 years over the course of the narrative. Judy Little writes, “Orlando arrives as an adult on the scene of each era, she escapes normal childhood socialization” that evolved her as “a self who is free of the major illusions of many eras and the stereotypes of both sexes”.

The book starts off by describing Orlando slicing at the severed head of a Moor with his blade and imagining himself engaging in battle beside his grandfather and father. This masculine image is almost immediately juxtaposed with a description of him that is phrased predominantly in feminine terms like “the red of his cheeks”, “the lips themselves were short”, “the ears small”, “eyes like drenched violets”, etc. At the onset of the novel, the narrator introduces the male Orlando stating, “He- for there would be no doubt of his sex”. Yet, following up the narrator claims that the fashion of that time made him appear woman-like.

Karin Elise suggests that,

WOOLF MOCKS THE MASCULINIST SUBLIME BUT ALSO THAT THROUGH ORLANDO WOOLF CELEBRATES AN ALTERNATIVE AESTHETIC, AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL OF SELF IN ORLANDO, THAT RESEMBLES THE ANDROGYNOUS MODEL IN WOOLF’S A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN.

The next poignant event is Orlando’s initial observations regarding princess Sasha. Orlando’s inability to immediately discern “the name or sex” of that person of “extraordinary seductiveness” , is imperative to note that his attraction is not limited by the boundaries of sex. Orlando’s conclusion after a more prolonged observation- “…a boy it must be- no woman can skate with such speed and vigour” refers to the boundness by conventions to reject the possibility of a homo-erotic connection”.

After seven days of existing in a trancelike sleep, Orlando awakens to find that his body has been transformed into that of a female and “we have no choice but confess- he was a woman”. The narrator ergo begins to address Orlando as “she”. When Orlando is transformed, she simply arises in her new form, stark naked and proceeds by taking a bath. She does not seemed to have suffered during this drastic change and neither is she shocked by it.

In this context, Sharron E. Knopp in her essay If You Saw Me Would You Kiss Me?, claims

ORLANDO IS NOT A WOMAN ACTING LIKE A MAN. ORLANDO IS A MAN. AND A WOMAN. […..] AND THERE IS NOTHING UNNATURAL ABOUT IT.

Woolf writes,

ORLANDO HAD BECOME A WOMAN THERE IS NO DENYING OF IT. BUT IN EVERY OTHER RESPECT, ORLANDO REMAINS PRECISELY AS HE HAD BEEN. THE CHANGE OF SEX, THOUGH IT ALTERED THEIR FUTURE, DID NOTHING WHATEVER TO ALTER THEIR IDENTITY.

When in Constantinople amongst the natives, Orlando did not experience gender differences due to her changed sex. However as soon as she boards the Enamoured Lady to return to England, appropriately dressed as a “young Englishwoman of high rank”, she realized that English “women are not […..] exquisitely apparelled by nature”.

Woolf writes:

CLOTHES HAVE, THEY SAY, MORE IMPORTANT OFFICES THAN MERELY TO KEEP US WARM. THEY CHANGE OUR VIEW OF THE WORLD AND THE WORLD’S VIEW OF US.

Cross-dressing in Orlando occurs fairly frequently. Archduke Harry dresses as a woman, but later reveals himself as a man. Similarly, even after Orlando’s sex change, she continues to switch between clothes of both gender. This motif functions in the novel to emphasize the similarities between men and women, underneath their clothes, and hence, that genders should be allowed more freedom in their actions.

As England comes into view, the impropriety of female authorship of the time strikes Orlando. Orlando would restrain “the tears came to her eyes”, but remembering herself becoming a woman, “she would let them flow”. She also recollects “that men cry as frequently and as unreasonably as women” from her own experience as a man. Orlando particularly feels the oppression of gender conformity during the Victorian period, in the form of “a ring of quivering sensibility about the second finger of the left hand” and the “weight of the crinoline that Orlando has submissively adopted”.

Seeing Orlando in light of A Room of One’s Own, Rognstad explores:

ORLANDO AS A PERSONIFICATION OF THE IDEAL STATUS OF ANDROGYNY; SOMEONE WHO KNOWS THE SECRETS OF BOTH SEXES AND CAN ACCESS THE WHOLE SPECTER OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

The novel exuberantly conveys its message of the urge of gender equality in our society. Ergo, my feminist reading of Orlando salutes Woolf as an author, who so beautifully cultivates the fluid identities of the notions of sex and gender in her piece.

• Related with Woolf’s real-life Incidents:

Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West were lovers. Does that mean they had sex? It probably does, because Vita liked sex and was a pursuer of women. She also enjoyed a long and successful marriage to Harold Nicolson. He too had his affairs. Virginia and Leonard Woolf were largely compatible and certainly affectionate. It seems unlikely from all that we know that she was interested in sex with Leonard, but sexless marriages were, and are, common enough. The thing about passion is that it is much more than a sexual encounter. And that is worth keeping in mind in the case of Woolf’s novel Orlando. What Vita and Virginia did or didn’t do in bed is much less important than the effect of Vita on Virginia’s imagination.

Is Orlando the first English language trans novel? It is, yet in the most playful way. Orlando manages his transition with grace and a profound truth. On seeing himself as a herself for the first time in the mirror, she remarks: “Different sex. Same person.”

That difference of sex, though, had legal and social implications. Many of the men Woolf knew, including her husband Leonard, and her sister Vanessa’s husband, Clive Bell, had been educated at Cambridge. Virginia and Vanessa had been home schooled; the usual method for upper class girls. Other girls were barely schooled at all.

Less than a fortnight after the publication of Orlando, Woolf went to Girton to deliver the second of her two lectures, entitled Women and Fiction. A week earlier she had been at Newnham. Woolf reworked her lectures into her splendid polemic A Room of One’s Own published in 1929. She included the details of two starkly contrasting experiences: an opulent lunch at King’s College with some of her men friends, followed by a threadbare dinner at Girton. She wrote in her diary: “Starved but valiant young women … Why should all the splendour, all the luxury of life be lavished on the Julians and the Francises and none on the (Elsie) Phares and the (Margaret) Thomases?” Woolf was preoccupied by the social and economic differences between the sexes – differences, she believed, that were gender biases masquerading as facts of life. Orlando had paved the way for this more serious and disturbing exploration. The protagonist spends hundreds of years trying to reclaim his own property and cash, legally sequestered after he wakes up as a woman.

“Did you feel a sort of tug, tug, as if your neck was being broken on Saturday last at five minutes to one?” Woolf wrote to Sackville-West, as she finished the book on 20 March 1928. Woolf, of course, dedicated the book to her and sent her a copy on publication day, 11 October 1928. The love affair was nearly over by then. It had lasted three years, beginning at Christmas 1925, and Sackville-West had altered Woolf’s mind. The author had used every ounce of the affair to propel her own writing, and to alter how fiction could be written – and, in A Room of One’s Own, to discuss how women might soon alter the world with their writing. Not bad, for what she called “a little book.”

• Conclusion: 

The study of her trans-novel is quite worthy to understand that how Woolf’s wrote her novel regarded her love affair and perhaps her Idea to make Orlando as Transgender on that time is quite new in literature. Her most of works included the study of Phycology also. Gender and Sexual conflicts are still we faced Woolf’s work gives us to raised the voice among to search Identity and other Conflicts also. 

Work Cited:

Das, Shreya. “A Feminist Reading of Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography.” Feminism In India, 31 July 2015, https://feminisminindia.com/2015/07/31/feministic-reading-virginia-woolfs-orlando-biography/. 

“'Different Sex. Same Person': How Woolf's Orlando Became a Trans Triumph.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 3 Sept. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/03/different-sex-same-person-how-woolfs-orlando-became-a-trans-triumph. 

“Gender Equality in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations.” OECD, https://www.oecd.org/dac/gender-development/gender-equality-and-womens-empowerment-in-fragile-and-conflict-affected-situations.htm#:~:text=The%20main%20factors%20driving%20gender,economic%20decision%20making%2C%20and%20a. 

“Orlando.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/Orlando-by-Woolf. 

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