Problematizing Gender in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

Abstract

Orlando, the protagonist of Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando, as a male continuously reshapes his space in the society. But when he undergoes into a female bearing the same qualities of male Orlando, she continuously loses her space due to the existing social gender discrimination in the male canonical society. Generally, in male oriented society, a female cannot acquire a broad space, and if by chance, she gets, she is pulled down. In the novel, the patriarchal society gives every opportunity to male Orlando to progress but when he undergoes the sex change as a female, her space is problematized.