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Orlando is a biography written about a fictitious character, Orlando, which was inspired by Virginia's real-life friend and lover Vita Sackville-West. The story spans over 400 years where Orlando's life changes from man to woman, from century to century.

Gender difference is the main focus of the story. Through Orlando's transformation from man to woman, Virginia subtly exposes the gender difference or in her view the "gender neutrality". Virginia believed in gender neutrality, affirming that there is a male and female side in every human being irrespective of sex, and varying in degree. When Orlando wakes up as a woman, she feels no difference or any awkwardness; but, when she finally must confront society as a woman, Orlando understands there is a difference in self, at least outwardly. Thus the author hints that the inward self of man and woman are more or less similar, and it is the society's rules of conduct that make them different and categorize them into different genders.

As a subplot, Virginia dwells on the changes of literature and artists over the span of 400 years. Orlando could not publish his work in the early centuries, but the social changes and the difference of style and forms of literature over the years make once unpublished work to be finally published. Virginia is being satirical here, for she was a devotee of the great poets of the past and their strictly kept quality of writing. She points out how the quality is reduced and rules relaxed as the poets became the victims of publishing houses who wished to publish those that sell fast. She was quite sad over the plight of modern poets, for she firmly believed that poetry should be "a voice answering a voice".

Virginia has adopted a narrative style of writing for the most part of the story, but toward the end, this style is slowly changed into a conscious stream of writing. When I first attempted Virginia Woolf, I shied away immediately, as I couldn't get into the rhythm of her stream of consciousness. But in Orlando, since it was a gradual descent to the conscious stream from the narrative style, I was able to grasp the story and understand it better. And I was surprised to find that I liked her conscious stream of writing.

In this second reading, I found that I've completely missed yet another theme that Virginia has exposed through the story of Orlando. And that is the concept of change. It is one of Virginia's favourite themes and has been used in almost all the books I've read of her. Here, Virginia discloses the change of British society over four centuries, and how the lives of men and women have changed over the span of years. The story runs from the 16th century to the early 20th century, and Virginia describes in detail the change of the role of men and women. She specifically refers to 19th-century British society and its role of women. The dawn of the 19th century is described by her thus: "All was darkness; all was doubt; all was confusion". This is how Virginia saw Victorian society, with its heavy chains of convention, which unmercifully victimized women more than men. In no period of life than in the 19th century that Orlando regrets becoming a woman. But it is inevitable that Orlando cannot escape from what society expects from her; she must submit and adapt as best as she could to the change. And Orlando does this by taking a husband! :)

The whole story was a satirical account, and I had such a fun time rereading it. The word "fun" was something I never imagined attributing to a work of Virginia Woolf. But certainly, Orlando is the most entertaining work written by her.