Or/And: The Sexual/Textual (Ex)Tensions in Orlando: A Biography

• Main Authors: Wang Shu-fang, 王淑雱
• Other Authors: Huang Hsin-ya
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/12194523853901738122

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 87 === The aim of this thesis is to (re)read Virginia Woolf's notorious writer's holiday, Orlando, as an (op)positional discourse to/in the (literary) his-story mandated by the oppressive phallogocentrism. And this (re)reading is realized in the (con)textualization of "mimicry and masquerade." "Mimicry and masquerade" are playful but subversive notions of "cross identifications" that challenge the phallic integrity or wholeness circumscribed by binary oppositions. The significance of category and identity is relied upon the visible difference within a binary opposition. And this either-or demarcation is presumed to be impermeable. Ironically, "mimicry" and "masquerade," by a mocking appropriation of the patriarchal orthodoxy, playfully cross and (con)fuse the imperious frontiers of the binary logos. This (con)fusion disables the masculine privilege to be shown in the binary opposition, and exposes the arbitrariness of the phallogocentric categorization and the unsteadiness of the bipolarized identities. This disclosure provokes an internal deconstruction because it illustrates that the identities determined by phallogocentrism are actually not as consolidated and believable as they are presented. These playful but subversive notions are particularly elucidated in Orlando's sexual/textual (ex)tensions. Who is Orlando? S/he is an imaginary hero(ine) textualized to questions the bipolar male/female, masculinity/femininity, and homosexuality/heterosexuality which are the underpinning of the oppressive phallogocentrism. "Orlando was a man till the age of thirty" (Orlando 98); however, after a seven-day trance, he wakes up to be a female without any discomposure. This cozy awakening discomforts the masculine authority. Should Orlando be categorized as a male or a female? Should Orlando identify with masculinity or femininity? With whom, or more properly said, with which sex, should Orlando fall in love? Although the English Court intends to resolve this controversy in sexuality by laws, Orlando's sexuality is still clouded by an obscurity. Orlando who is sentenced to a female is frequently mistaken as a man because of her masculine masquerade. This textualization of Orlando's ambivalent sexuality contributes to the re-vision of the relationship between gender and writing in which women are incomparably weaker. The sex change of Orlando exposes that literary history is never sexless; in an androcentric culture history is always sexualized as his-story. Yet, this historical text is resexualized from his-story into his- and her-story through Orlando's sex change. The sex change of Orlando makes the inclusion of the silenced her-story inevitable since Orlando is the hero(ine) of this biography. This inclusion exposes the phallacy of the phallic wholeness fabricated by the masculine authority and authorship. To sum up, Orlando is (op)positional because its textualization of sex change and masquerades deconstructs the oppressive phallogocentrism. And this textualization of Orlando's sex change in a mock-biography resexualizes the historical and literary authority and authorship. Thus, Orlando may be playful, but its laughter is subversive. Just as Woolf proposed that anger is not the only way to deconstruct phallogocentrism. Comedy can be more subversive.