Jan-Maat’s Reviews > Orlando > Status Update

But the spirit of the 19th century was antipathetic to her in the extreme, & thus it took her & broke her, & she was aware of her defeat at its hands as she had never been before. For it is probable that the human spirit has its place in time assigned to it; some are born of this age, some of that...

Reference to Madame du Deffand, quick I must loosen my clothes, fan myself and pray that somebody brings me smelling salts because Woof reveals herself to be at least a degree less insular than I had thought!

Orlando was a man till the age of thirty...

- he was present at the court of Elizabeth I (ie before 1603) and is ambassador during the reign of Charles II (ie after 1660) so he ought to be between 80 and 90 years old rather than thirty. I wonder if it would help to read puck of pook's hill to contextualise this, or is she simply dynamiting her father's lifetime work on the Dictionary of National Biography?

Orlando had become a woman there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been.

- is this the jumping off point for Harpman's Orlanda?

Hmph. Second mention of tunbridge wells. Which didn't exist as a tiwn at the time when the narrative is unfolding. Presumably like the illustrations stressing the fictional potential of biography and history?

The illustrations of this book also annoy me.

This whole Muscovite princess business annoys me too. The Muscovites practused the seclusion of their elite women in the terem and they weren't allowed out until the time of Tsar Peter I in the 18th century

Given the Ottoman connection in the story wouldn't a Bulgarian or Circassian princess been more congruent? Grghhhh.

It was very high, so high indeed that nineteen English counties could be seen beneath; and on clear days thirty or perhaps forty, if the weather was very fine.

- I suppose this is whimsy or comic hyperbole or something, i find it annoying; unfortunately for me this the narrative voice.

"Orlando was unaccountable disappointed. She had thought of literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be her excuse) as something wild as the wind, got as fire, swift as lightning; something errant, incalculable, abrupt, & behold, literature was an elderly gentleman talking about duchesses."

"This method of writing biography, though it has its merits, is a little base, perhaps, & the reader, if we go on with it, may complain that he could recite the calendar for himself & so save his pocket whatever sum the Hogarth press may think proper to charge for this book."