From Gender Parody To Androgyny

Virginia Woolf is a prominent stream-of-consciousness writer in Britain and she is also an avant-courier of modernism and feminism in 20 th century. Influenced by Bloomsbury Set, she is one of those who first introduced the concept of androgyny into literature creation. She believes that only the androgynous spirits are great. The novel Orlando tells a story about a young nobleman, Orlando, born in 16 th century, changing from male to female, and spanning four centuries all his(her) life. Orlando’s blended personality of both masculinity and femininity reflects Woolf’s androgynous vision. And her life experiences in the worlds of men and women help to shape her multiple-gender identity. Judith Butler, an academic of postmodernism and an established queer theorist, holds the idea that behind gender expression there is no gender identity; gender expression refers to men’s masculine behaviors and ideologies and women’s feminine acts and ideas; gender has no alleged “inherent” essence, and the so-called “inherent” of gender is constructed by androcentric culture.With the emergence and activeness of sex groups of homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals, the current gender notion has been different from the traditional gender dualism. These new sex and gender types have made gender identity a multiple concept. The idea of writing the thesis originates from the diverse gender phenomenon. Based on Butler’s gender performativity theory and Woolf’s androgynous vision, the thesis discusses Orlando’s gender identity through Orlando’s legendary experience of sex change. With the methods of interdisciplinary research and textual analysis, the thesis draws the conclusion that Orlando acquires a multiple gender identity through her extraordinary life experiences. And it further pinpoints that gender identity is a social and cultural construction and one’s gender identity is alterable, which, to some extent, provides a different angle for the development of gender study.