Humor and Tragedy in Virginia Woolfs Orlando Essay -- Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolfes Orlando uses both humor and tragedy to observe humanitys frequently absurd and eccentric superficial constructions, both of class and gender. Woolfe creates the distinctions between male person and female but continuously shatters them to reveal the illusions we create about gender. As George Meredith suggests, comedy is created when The comic poet dares to show us men and women coming to this common likeness (15). Woolfe, however, goes beyond simply bringing men and women together as equals she blends them together as one androgynous individual, the effect of which causes us to express feelings at the artificial way in which society attempts to define gender. after Orlandos matter-of-fact reaction to discovering he is a woman, the narrator with tongue-in-cheek explains how apt such a transformation is despite peoples desire to define it as abnormal Many people, taking this into account, and holding that such a variegate of sex is against nature, have been at g reat pains to prove (1) that Orlando has perpetually been a woman, (2) that Orlando is at this moment a man. Let b...