The excitement, the seduction, the adventure stems from the liminal. One is neither one thing nor the other, but both.
29/11/25
‘The excitement, the seduction, the adventure stems from the liminal. One is neither one thing nor the other, but both.’ Sandra Gilbert
It's my English A-Level NEA.
Compare and contrast how the liminality of gender is portrayed in ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf and ‘How To Be Both’ by Ali Smith.
In ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf and ‘How to be both’ by Ali Smith, the liminality of gender can be seen to be presented as ever present and reflective of a natural ‘truth’ or state of being which can be found through rejection of society’s suppressive conventions and the gaining of a greater insight.
A highly important theme in both books is androgyny, which is the liminal state between the mascuIine and feminine, existing both between and outside the gender binary. In ‘Orlando’, Woolf celebrates the concept of androgyny. The angle at which gender is discussed changes considerably from the start of the text to the end, from when the novel opens in 1588 to Orlando as a mildly misogynistic sixteen-year-old boy holding stereotypical oppressive beliefs of women, to its end in 1928 when Orlando has changed into a sensitive, contemplative woman of middle age. Orlando, in this awkward state as a young man, finds herself greatly attracted to the Russian Princess Sasha. She confuses Orlando with her gender presentation at first leading us to believe she presents androgynously, as shown in ‘...trousers of the Russian fashion served to disguise the sex, [which] filled him with the highest curiosity’. Furthermore, androgyny is further praised as Orlando finds herself stunned by her. ‘These details were obscured by the extraordinary seductiveness which issued from the whole person.’ The use of ‘extraordinary seductiveness’ by Woolf frames Sasha and her androgyny as a kind of rare, transcendent beauty in contrast with Orlando’s betrothal to the Lady Euphrosyne who merely ‘hung upon his arm’ in plain language and nothing more. Orlando is attracted to the androgynous, and we see her embody this attraction and take it onto her character more and more within the novel later on. This can be compared to Francesco’s first impression of George in ‘How to be both’. At this point in the novel, Francesco has been projected into George’s time from purgatory by God so that he can come to a very specific realisation. In his thoughts Smith writes ‘A boy in front of a painting. ‘Good : I like a good back : The best thing about a turned back is the face you can’t see stays a secret’. He does not see George’s face for a few pages yet and believes her to be a boy the entire time, and he chooses not to question George’s appearance, instead admiring her from this liminal purgatory state between dead or alive. Their relationship is not romantic like Orlando and Sasha, as they never even fully interact, but Francesco finds her to be relatable and endearing and similar to himself when he was alive as she studies his work. Through George, he discovers that things are not one thing nor the other; but both.
The theme of androgyny links back to the theme of being both, as liminality is not something only seen between the two genders but in life and death with Francesco and George’s struggle to understand that her mother was alive but now only exists in her state of loss, as Miller writes ‘A mother, once lost, can never be either forgotten or recovered: she is both always there and completely gone’. Lastly, this is shown in Orlando’s form of a pseudo biography - it is a biography of a fictional character, both real and false while it deliberately disobeys and satirises the male biographical style of the time in order to use more extravagant, feminine language all throughout the novel. Woolf combines masculine and feminine writing styles in order to satirise the plain, masculine form, and this use of satire indicates that Woolf meant the highlighting of differences between genders in the novel is ironic and does not actually exist.
Then, it is worth acknowledging that both books hold the opinion and argue that gender is a social construct, which is an important context for the social angle these books take on the subject. Woolf stresses that Orlando is exactly the same person whether male or female, but is compelled to act differently depending on the clothes she’s wearing, implying that, as Judith Butler writes ‘gender is a performance’ and ‘there is no gender behind the expressions of identity’. This can be supported by the lines ‘If we compare Orlando… as a man with that of Orlando as a woman…Had they both worn the same clothes, it is possible that their outlook might have been the same.’ but also that ‘Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep beneath’ and that Orlando may choose to play the part of a woman due to deep feelings of femininity and gender euphoria that comes from it. Clothes too play such a role in How to be both, as Francesco embodies and acts to the clothes he wears, however for much different reasons than Orlando. Francesco at the request of his father becomes transmasculine to reach the specific goal of becoming a painter, which it was not acceptable for a woman to be during the Italian Renaissance. He is not necessarily a victim to this however; His thoughts are genderless compared to Orlando’s, and he appears to have no strong feelings towards being masculine or feminine, as if being a painter resonates with him more than being male or female. This can be seen in a conversation between Francesco and his father early into the Eyes section of the book, where Francesco perks up at the suggestion of ‘Colours. Pictures.’ and is being asked to ‘wear his brother’s clothes’, that ‘You can’t even be an apprentice to me, wearing the clothes of a woman’. Interestingly, Francesco is never explicitly told to become a man, this is told to us using the metaphors of ‘brother’s clothes’ over ‘clothes of a woman’ implying that Francesco is somewhat of a genderless body, and that gender can be fluid to one’s advantage and completely liminal, and clothing can be a symbol of this.
One method used to illuminate freedom and internal fluidity of gender is the modernist staple of free indirect discourse. Lodge writes ‘Modernist fiction rejects … the use of a reliable omniscient and intrusive narrator. It employs, instead, either a single, limited point of view, or a method of multiple points of view’, which we can see in the way Woolf looks at Orlando’s inner feelings while maintaining distance as she plays the role of a male biographer, who attempts to analyse Orlando and her behaviours whilst narrating her story and feelings at the same time. This omniscience and intrusivity can be seen in ‘Whether, then, Orlando was a man or a woman…cannot now be decided. She was entering her father’s house at Blackfriars’, which immediately cuts a speculative statement short with the fact of Orlando’s immediate whereabouts. Additionally, Woolf satirises this style of dry, factual biography with expressions like ‘It was now November. After November, comes December. Then January, February, March and April’, and contrasts it with moments of great emotion and significance, such as Orlando’s almost divine transition. Woolf writes ‘the austere gods who keep watch and ward by the inkpot of the biographer cry No! Putting their silver trumpets to their lips they demand in one blast, Truth!’, in the same voice, referring to Orlando’s true gender in this liminal state between male and female.
This shares some similarities to the writing style of ‘How to be both’ although both books were written almost a hundred years apart and Modernism, and by extension free indirect discourse does not have the same significance in 2014 as it did in 1928. The form of ‘How to be both’ is mixed even to its punctuation, though one the most noticeable aspects of it is that upon release, ‘How to be both’ was sold in two forms - The camera section belonging to George first, followed by the eyes section for Francesco, and vice versa. There is no correct order to read the book, thereby creating some liminality and ambiguity as to the true nature and events of each book, and it’s always unclear as to how intertwined each story is until one has read their copy of the book whichever way they received it. The palazzo scene can be interpreted as a metaphorical meta analysis of the form of the novel as Smith seems to reference it in the text; Francesco's art that George’s mother explains is ‘In layers. Things happen right at the front of the pictures and at the same time they continue happening, both separately and connectedly, behind and behind that, and again behind that’. This can be seen to mirror the form of the book, as Day writes ‘The two narratives twist around each other like complicated vines’ and that ‘Why, Smith seems to ask, should we expect a book to run from A to B, by way of a recognisable plot and subplot, peopled by characters who are easily understood to be one thing or another?’.
Alternatively, it can be interpreted to have some objectivity to it as well - This can be noticed in how George is omnipresently referred to as George instead of Georgia, a masculine shortening of her name, which suggests her androgyny perceived by the omnipresent narrator is the ‘truth’. Across both texts, gender can fluctuate; It is never as it seems, and the form can be an effective method of conveying this.
Both books were very daring for their time, especially that of Virginia Woolf, as up to that point, the liminality of gender had rarely been discussed in such an open and accessible way, presenting homosexuality, androgyny and transgenderism as something that could be normalised. The society of Woolf’s time was that of an incessantly strict patriarchy, and the topic of gender seemed to be completely fixed and immovable. It also served as a ‘writer’s holiday’, where Woolf let herself write freely without constraints of time or gender - which, even through its satirical mocking of male biographical styles - was able to reflect on important issues like gender, self awareness and truth. While Virginia Woolf grew up in a house heavily enforcing the gender roles at the time, she wrote ‘Orlando’ from an attachment to her lover Vita Sackville-West. ‘How to be both’ was published at the dawn of a new era - gay marriage had just been legalised in the UK and was the first time that queerness had been this celebrated and visible before. This eventually paved the way for the British public to become more aware and understanding of being queer, and this movement can be said to be a major factor in the progress and understanding of queer identities and especially those under the transgender umbrella until today. ‘Non-binary’ became a more popular term for people that identify outside of male and female from the 2010’s onwards, and is now somewhat of a synonym with androgynous. It could also be speculated that Vita Sackville-West may have identified with this term if she existed in the modern world, as she saw herself as ‘Half-man’ and was a crossdresser. It is worth noting both authors themselves are queer and their writing was heavily influenced by their experiences, as both Woolf and Smith were in same-sex relationships at the time of writing.
In conclusion, both books are a love letter to the androgynous, the liminal state between male and female, both and neither, which is presented as a divine truth that all three characters discover in their experiences of love, life and their respective forms of creative expression. Both books in many ways can be seen as joyous celebrations of the liminality of gender, and serve as uplifting and hopeful pieces of literature for feminists and members of the LGBTQ+ community from the 1920’s until today, where we look to a time in the future where ideas of gender liminality, androgyny, and queer relationships will be fully intergrated and accepted into society.