Class Year
2025
Document Type
Student Research Paper
Date of Creation
Spring 2024
Department 1
English
Abstract
Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography details a centuries-long battle between Orlando and the sexual structures of repressive power in England. The biographical framework of the novel implies its contribution to objective, historical fact, while the miraculous nature of Orlando’s sexual transformation directly conflicts with constituted epistemologies of being. This paper examines these contrasting forces through Michel Foucault’s post-structuralist considerations of knowledge, power, and sexuality, in addition to the incorporation of other scholarship on Woolf’s conceptions of gender. I specifically follow the timeline of Foucault’s interpretation of the repressive hypothesis as it unfolds throughout the course of Woolf’s novel. By establishing a mythos of Orlando, one founded on the preternatural, that is supported by empirical evidence of self-proclaimed neutral institutions, Woolf challenges the severance of fact and belief that continues to influence our behaviors and identities.
Copyright Note
This is the author's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Recommended Citation
Cisney, Hayley R., "Mythos and Logos: Foucauldian Subjectivities of Virginia Woolf's Orlando" (2024). Student Publications. 1133.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/1133
Included in
Epistemology Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons
Comments
Written for ENG 299: Critical Methods