Virginia Woolf’s fantastical fictional biography Orlando is one of those stories whose central image seems to have escaped into the wider world. Even people who have neither read the original novel nor seen the beautiful 1992 film by Sally Potter will know that this is the one where the hero starts out in life as a gorgeous young Elizabethan aristocrat – and then wakes up at the age of 30 to discover that he has become a woman.
What is less well known about the story is in just how prescient a way Woolf then goes on to play with that already dizzying conceit. As her hero costume-changes first his, and then her, way through 300 years of English history, Woolf makes sure that they (yes, Woolf did sometimes use that word) get to sample just about every kind of sexuality known to woman. Orlando’s story starts with – spoiler alert – a blind date with Elizabeth I and ends with her in the arms of a dashingly masculine yet beguilingly feminine “husband”.
