REDEFINING GENDER THROUGH THE DIACHRONIC LENS IN ORLANDO (1928), BY VIRGINIA WOOLF

Abstract

The novel Orlando (1928), by Virginia Woolf, shows the presence of transvestism or cross-dressing as a constant, a fact that highlights the questioning of the normative in relation to female and male corporeality, according to exclusively biological parameters, in which the genitals are epicenter of the classification.

From a diachronic perspective, the vision of transvestism, mainly through androgyny, has shown how the dominant culture and thought has considered it to be a characteristic associated with divinity or the teratological, and is regulated by medical-legal committees in favor of a biological evolution in accordance with the dominant hetero-normativity.

Through an analysis of the novel the objective is to show gender issues that are practically a century ahead of the debate on gender and current identity. From a contemporary perspective, it is evident that through cross-dressing, the author proposes alternatives to the biological binary, questioning the morphology and behavior of socially imposed gender –a position in line with Foucault's biopolitics–, and opens the possibility to liquid ownership of gender constructed through physical appearance and behavior. The latter, moreover, is another pillar for gender analysis in Orlando through the concept of neo-androgyny, it serves to question androgyny as innate [or] learned gendered.