Breaking the Boundaries of Time and Gender

Seminar paper from the year 2024 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,7, LMU Munich (Anglistik), course: Bloomsbury Group, language: English, abstract: This paper investigates how Virginia Woolf's Orlando employs magical realism and temporal fluidity to portray gender identity as a dynamic and socially constructed phenomenon. By blending fantastical elements-such as Orlando's seamless gender transformation and immortality-with historical and biographical realism, Woolf dismantles binary gender constructs and critiques essentialist views of identity. Drawing on queer theory, particularly Judith Butler's concept of gender performativity and theories of queer temporality by Halberstam and others, the analysis demonstrates how Woolf's narrative resists linear time and fixed gender roles. Orlando's mutable gender and timeless body serve as a critique of patriarchal expectations tied to both biology and life stages. Woolf's use of magical realism allows her to normalize gender fluidity, challenge heteronormative temporal structures, and envision a more inclusive framework for understanding identity. Ultimately, the paper argues that Orlando offers a radical reimagining of gender through its defiance of chronological and categorical constraints, anticipating key ideas in contemporary queer thought.