Orlando: A Biography | Topics for Discussion & Projects

Orlando: A Biography Key Questions

Woolf kept a diary spanning a time period of twenty-six years. In Orlando, Orlando is allowed to exist over four hundred years, returning to visit her/ his beloved oak tree in the many stages of her/his life. In Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Clarissa is visited with many figures and memories from her past; in To the Lighthouse (1927), the Ramsay summer house is visited by the same people at two different time periods.

1. How does Virginia Woolf conceive of time? What are some of the major themes she associates with time? How does "home" play an important role in relation to time in these novels?

2. Given Woolf's own privileged status as one of the English elite and her strict avoidance of writing politically for the feminist movement, there is much critical debate over how and why Virginia Woolf can be read as a feminist writer;...
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