Reading readers in Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography

Style, Summer, 1994 by Kathryn N. Benzel

In chapter 2, the narrator continues to address the authorial audience's concerns by calling into question the biographer's authority and offering signals to the reader: "The biographer is now faced with a difficulty which it is better to confess than to gloss over" (O 65). The emphasis on confession is important here. What is there to confess? Some trick? Sleight of hand? Hasn't the biographer told the truth? And why "better" to confess? Better for whom? The biographer? The reader? Or Orlando? And would a more conventional biographer bring up the issue of authenticity? How does this authorial movement distinguish the reader? All of these questions are implied in the first paragraph of chapter 2 and signal the narrator's uncertainty about both her purpose and the subject of this biography and widen the gap between the narrative and authorial readers.

For instance, the description of the biographer's task as some kind of path or route to meaning is made light of by its manner of presentation. "Up to this point in telling the story of Orlando's life, documents, both private and historical, have made it possible to fulfil the first duty of a biographer, which is to plod, without looking to right or left, in the indelible footprints of truth; unenticed by flowers; regardless of shade; on and on methodically till we fall plump into the grave and write finis above our heads" (O 65; Woolf's emphasis). The rhythm suggests a rather solemn progression, plodding along like a funeral march. The methodical marching toward the subject's goal/grave without looking right or left and the idea of falling plump into the grave suggest a kind of conclusion, but this march to the grave is ironically ambiguous, implying both the literal death of the subject and his figurative death in the conclusion of the biography. Likewise while the biographer suggests that she must utilize a "dead" approach to the subject in order to maintain the objectivity of truth necessary to biography as representation, by the end of this sentence, the art of biography is parodied in its portrayal as a funeral march.

The suggested progression is further interrupted by a conflicting statement: "But now we come to an episode which lies right across our path, so that there is no ignoring it" (O 65). This oppositional statement suggests that a "dead end" may not be the fate of this text. An "episode" in Orlando's life cannot be explained by the traditional biographical means; in fact, this episode obstructs the regular progression the biographer is making toward characterization of the subject. Thus, Orlando is characterized by his potential to be other than representational, other than male, other than biographical subject. The phenomenal episode--whatever it is--is so powerful as to pose a threat to the reading of this story. It will prompt interpretation (will need explanation) and may even create new religions (new systems of truth and reality). The question embedded in the introduction of this episode is how will the biographer, this biographer who must plod, represent this aspect of Orlando's life if it is neither fact nor explainable by fact? An additional question embedded, of course, is how is the reader to read this disruption? The particular narrative tension resulting from this future instability is problematized by the obvious disruptive impulse of the word episode; it threatens Orlando's characterization and the telling and reading of the story in ways that are yet unknown until we get to the "episode" itself.