雌雄同体《奥兰多》中时代精神的体现(2)
Orlando, a mature and fascinating work, is a sparking example of the so-called 'high' modernism of the early twentieth. Though Woolf herself conceived it as a `holiday' and a 'joke', we are going to take it seriously. Orlando is much easier to understand than Woolf's other stream-of-consciousness novels, however, it is full of controversy. Its title, Orlando: A Biography, has aroused many discussions among the scholars and critics. Is it really a biography? Many scholars dispute the genre of the book. Then more attention moves to the relationship between Orlando and the real life model Vita. However, no matter what the scholars pay attention to, Orlando arouses perse discussions at home and abroad.
1.1 The Brief Introduction of Woolf’s Literary Achievements
For Virginia Woolf, writing was a form of self-exploration or even self-creation. In her article: A Room of One's Own, Woolf states women writers' mental and social dilemmas through her conceived experience in Oxbridge. She also raises a method for woman writers to overcome these problems and realize their writing ideals. She advocates women writers to liberate their thoughts and write with their own wills. Among Woolf's works, Orlando: A Biography may be a very perting fiction. The protagonist's changing gender identity often gets a lot of critics' attention. However, in our opinion, the different gender identities of Orlando are just tools for her (not him) to understand men and women thoroughly so that she can write with an androgynous mind. In another word, the theme of this novel is to explain how Orlando gets self-realization and becomes a successful woman writer. From Orlando's self-discovery, self-examination to self-identification as a woman writer, this process proves women writers' transformation from silence to voice. So Orlando: A Biography is not only a book for fun, but also a book records and reflects women writers' pilgrimage seriously.
1.2 Research Design and Methodology
This article will use literary research method to get enough information from the literatures especially Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Freud's psychoanalysis, and then compare them with each other to get the similarities.
By studying Freud's psychoanalysis and Woolf's androgyny theory, we will explore the significance and impact of this fantastic work and the characteristics of personality of Orlando's protagonist. Meanwhile, the author of the study will research some of Woolf's other works and the historical literature to learn more about the background of Orlando, in order to better explore the Orlando era significance.