Orlando's journey to find life and love is an experience to discover him/herself. Not only being a fictional incarnation of Vita, Orlando is also the representation of human, who, obviously, include both male and female. His/her sex transformation grants him/her great power to overcome all the obstacles in the life, raises him/her above common people, and enables him/her to find the true self, the nature of a human being. By creating this hero/heroine, Virginia Woolf successfully expresses her idea of androgyny.
2. Androgyny in Orlando.
2.1. The root of Virginia Woolf's androgyny.
2.1.1. The ancient source of androgyny and its influence on Woolf.
Virginia Woolf's theory of androgyny is deeply-rooted in the ancient legend. The conception of androgyny is firstly raised by Plato, who expresses it in a Greece legend. It is said that in the ancient time, there are three genders for humans: male, female, and androgyny, among which androgyny is the strongest and the cleverest for sharing the advantages of male and female. However, they are so proud of their abilities that they disobey the God, who is irritated and split each of them into two halves. From then on, each half has been searching for another half of itself, and that is the origin of love. In this legend Plato expresses two important ideas: first, androgyny is the nature of human beings; second, it is the perfect combination of the two sexes. These two ideas are inherited and developed by Woolf's theory of androgyny, which is aimed to achieve the harmony of the two sexes.
2.1.2. The Abused sexual childhood's impact on Woolf.
Besides the influence of Plato, the childhood experience is also an important factor for the formation of the theory of androgyny. As Louise Desdvo says in Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work : Virginia Woolf is a sexually abused child, she is an incest survivor. The sexual violence and abusive behavior, or even rape from her brother leave childhood trauma in her heart.
