Gender Inequality By Virginia Woolf s Orlando Essay

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando offers a pointed critique of gender inequality through its usage and portrayal of androgyny and fashion. The common perception of gender is threefold; people define gender through physical difference, behavior, and a visual perception of sex. Gender is inherently unstable because it is dependent more upon an onlookers’ reality than scientific difference. Woolf uses androgyny and fashion in order to illustrate the insignificance of physical body: If a woman acts like a man and dresses like a man, does she become a man? What about to the strangers who see her? Are these interpretations different? Is either one more valid than the other? When people perceive gender based upon behavior and perception incorrectly, they prove indirectly that gender inequality is illogical because the difference of sex is superficial. Woolf uses and references androgyny throughout Orlando in order to prove its insignificance: the characters remain essentially the same regardless of their visual descriptions and other characters’ impressions of their sex. Androgyny forecloses prejudgement based upon sex and forces the reader to rethink his conceptualization of a binary gender system. When Orlando first sees Sasha, the Russian Princess, she is ice skating. Orlando watches a figure skating and is enamored by its beauty and grace. The figure’s â€Å"legs, hands, carriage, were a boy’s, but no boy had ever had a mouth like that; no boy had those breasts; no boy had those eyes