SOURCE: "Tradition and Revision in Woolf's Orlando: Defoe and 'The Jessamy Brides'," in Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2,1986, pp. 167-77.

In the following excerpt, Squier analyzes Orlando as Woolf's challenge to the tradition of realistic novels initiated by Daniel Defoe.

On March 14, 1927 Virginia Woolf recorded in her diary the symptoms of an "extremely mysterious process … the conception last night between 12 & one of a new book."

I sketched the possibilities which an unattractive woman, penniless, alone, might yet bring into being… It struck me, vaguely, that I might write a Defoe narrative for fun. Suddenly between twelve & one I conceived a whole fantasy to be called "The Jessamy Brides"—why, I wonder?… No attempt is to be made to realise the character. Sapphism is to be suggested. Satire is to be the main note—satire & wildness.

That Woolf's sixth novel represents an act of comic tribute to...