Orlando

And as she drove, we may seize the opportunity, since the landscape was of a simple English kind which needs no description, to draw the reader’s attention more particularly than we could at the moment to one or two remarks which have slipped in here and there in the course of the narrative.

“I will write,” she had said, “what I enjoy writing”; and so had scratched out twenty-six volumes. Yet still, for all her travels and adventures and profound thinkings and turnings this way and that, she was only in process of fabrication. What the future might bring, Heaven only knew. Change was incessant, and change perhaps would never cease.... See more

“I am growing up,” she thought, taking her taper. “I am losing my illusions, perhaps to acquire new ones,” and she paced down the long gallery to her bedroom. It was a disagreeable process, and a troublesome. But it was interesting, amazingly, she thought, stretching her legs out to her log fire (for no sailor was present), and she reviewed, as if... See more

“I am growing up,” she thought, taking her taper at last. “I am losing some illusions,” she said, shutting Queen Mary’s book, “perhaps to acquire others,” and she descended among the tombs where the bones of her ancestors lay.

Perhaps the protagonist of her novel Orlando , who lives for centuries, slipping from one gender to another, embodies her ideal of absolute freedom to roam, in consciousness, romance, identity, and place.