Her reluctance to conform is expressed in the act of sudden death in the exotic space

Chapter Three

Woolf’s Traveling Women in Exotic Space:

Empire, Homecoming Desire, and the Travel Tradition

In The Voyage Out and Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s device of exotic spaces successfully enables the two heroines to liberate themselves from spatial confinement in England and to enjoy temporary freedom in the exotic lands. The two heroines’

travels to the exotic spaces mark a seeming departure from the gender and sexual system of English society. Also, female travels serve as a revision of the tradition of adventure tales. In the exotic spaces, the two heroines have undergone

transformations: Rachel, originally ignorant, becomes a mature woman, whereas the male Orlando is fantastically changed into a female. Their contacts with exotic cultures all seem to imply their defiance against English patriarchy. Rachel Vinrace learns the truth of female self, which leads to her resistance against the institution of marriage. Her reluctance to conform is expressed in the act of sudden death in the exotic space. On the other hand, the exotic space and culture energize and even

empower the female Orlando with the enlightening androgynous experience. She later comes home to confront the limitations on the female gender role. It is evident that Virginia Woolf employs exotic spaces to criticize gender ideology and empower her two heroines to challenge mainstream English culture.

Woolf’s focus on the two heroines’ transformations in the exotic lands makes a huge difference from the male-dominated tradition of travel writing. Traditionally, travel writing hardly incorporates gender issues into the travel stories of male adventurers. Traveling in exotic space is considered exclusively male activities.

Exotic spaces are the theater in which the lead character, the white man, can act out the ambition of exploration and conquest. Also, exotic spaces serve as a principal

device that helps to fulfill the white men’s imagination of conquest. Andrea White defines the adventure tradition as:

[T]he story of the white men in the tropics, sorting out who those Others were who inhabited the foreign lands, who the tellers and readers of the story were, what their relationships were, what was civilization and what was savagery, the overall stance was largely interpretive and as such served as the culture’s dominant fiction, arguing that the benefits of civilization justified the white man’s—especially the Englishman’s—incursions into the other lands. (6) The above passage indicates that the white men’s writing about foreign spaces primarily constitutes the production of imperial knowledge. The white men’s travel writing thus becomes an essential instrument to reinforce imperial rules. As White notes, travel narrative is composed of a series of binary oppositions that aim to define sameness and otherness. The male colonizers and their culture are associated with civilization, whereas racial others and exotic cultures are defined as degenerate nature or savagery. Being culturally inferior, racial others are destined to be defeated and colonized. Woolf’s representation of exotic space, however, hardly involves white male adventurers’ successful conquest and imperial glory. Instead, she represents colonial space as a site for the white women’s self-development.

Regarding Woolf’s unconventional representation of exotic spaces, I aim to explore why Woolf represents exotic space so differently from men. Does Woolf’s travel writing challenge the traditional travel writing by males? Moreover, I will look into the way Woolf represents the colonial enterprise undertaken by men. I will particularly explore her traveling women’s attitude toward exotic cultures and racial others. Do women travel writers or the traveling women in their works act like their imperialist male counterparts? Do white women travelers take any advantage of exotic spaces for the growth of their individuality? And why do the two heroines in

Woolf’s novels long for a returning journey after the intimate contact with exotic cultures?

In this chapter, I focus on Woolf’s travel writings of the two novels, and the function of Woolf’s traveling women in exotic spaces. In the first place, I aim to examine how Woolf exposes the uneven power relation between men and women under the Empire. In The Voyage Out, both male and female characters are imperial-minded, but it is white men who dominate the imperial enterprise and

colonial expansion. In Orlando, the significance of male adventurers is acknowledged and emphasized, while white women’s role in colonial space is nearly erased from white men’s travel accounts. Secondly, I will look into the ways Woolf represents colonial activities in the foreign lands, and also explore why Woolf’s travel writings are deviant from the travel tradition. The narrator in The Voyage Out and the

biographer in Orlando tend to examine imperial enterprises with sarcastic overtones.

It suggests that Woolf does not adopt imperialist perspective thoroughly. Lastly, I will explore how Woolf employs exotic cultures and racial others to establish white traveling women’s sense of mastery and kindle their homecoming desire. In The Voyage Out and Orlando, the exotic environments are of vital importance for the two

heroines self-developments. Nevertheless, the uncivilized nature of racial others fuels the two heroines’ desire for homecoming. In this chapter, I will argue that Woolf’s travel writings mainly help revise the tradition of men’s travel writing and highlight female travelers’ perspective toward the Empire, while her heroines’ home-bound journey suggests Woolf’s traveling women cannot abdicate their Englishness.

3.1. The Voyage Out

Structurally the plot of The Voyage Out follows the convention of quest narrative, but Woolf rejects the theme of travel tradition. Unlike male travel writers,

Woolf particularly incorporates gender issues into her travel writing. In the very beginning of the story, it is clear that the travel is gendered because the

traveler-protagonist is a woman. The novel is about a woman’s journey and her individual development rather than about men’s adventure and conquest. Such female travel story serves Woolf’s purpose to reverse the Western tradition of travel writing and to challenge English patriarchy and imperialism. As far as the Western travel tradition is concerned, women’s travel writings are considered as important as their male counterparts’ and the protagonists of traditional travel stories are essentially male. Men’s travel accounts often produce colonial discourse and male travelers usually devote themselves to imperial expansion. However, Woolf’s The Voyage Out contests English hegemony of patriarchy and imperialism in that she replaces the male adventurer with a naive girl in a travel narrative. It also underscores the differences between men’s and women’s roles under colonial discourse and thereby criticizes male-centered colonialism to some extent.

Woolf’s writing about exotic lands concerns itself with traveling women’s search for individuality rather than with consolidating the Empire. Woolf’s travel writings are deviant from the travel tradition, for she does not explicitly present South America as a colony under the control of the British Empire. Whereas male travel writers emphasize the depiction of colonial enterprises in general, Woolf does not give specific and precise descriptions of colonial activities or colonial societies. As

Lawrence argues, South America is “a place of imagination historicized by Woolf in its colonial European context” (158). South America cannot be simply viewed as a geographical place but rather as a symbolic space; it serves as a continual source for European imagination. Specifically in Woolf’s novels, it becomes a land of liberation where white women travelers can search for the truth of female self. As Lawrence proposes, Woolf “appropriates the model of Renaissance exploration to explore the

possibilities of specifically feminine quest for new models of desire” (160). Indeed, Woolf’s heroines like Helen Ambrose and Rachel Vinrace do not treat their travels as a chance to witness the glory of the Empire overseas. Rather, their travel involves less colonial intention than a quest for female independence and individuality. For them, their sojourn in the exotic land enables them to temporarily leave behind English civilization and its dominant values.

Woolf employs a number of characters in The Voyage Out to represent the uneven power relation between men and women in colonial discourse. Generally, the travelers on the ship still follow the values of English patriarchy and imperialism.

Living under such ideology, both male and female travelers support the ongoing expansion of the Empire, equally being the colonizers carrying out imperial project.

However, white men and women play different roles under the logic of the Empire.

White male travelers are the primary agents to generate and disseminate imperial knowledge, whereas white women get excluded from the core of imperial power. The male travelers like Willoughby Vinrace and Richard Dalloway are representatives of the Empire. On the other hand, most of the female travelers like Clarissa Dalloway, though imperialist-minded, only play domestic roles to support imperial enterprise.

Willoughby Vinrace is the salient example of an imperialist and a patriarchal father that Woolf presents in the early part of the novel. Willoughby, as a patriarchal father, strictly governs his daughter’s life in England. Besides, as a middle-class capitalist, Willoughby dominates his oversea business entirely. Willoughby echoes the adventurer of the travel tradition in the Renaissance period, but the male traveler has now become an imperialist capitalist since the nineteenth century. He “loved his business and built his Empire” (TVO 19). In the past, the Elizabethan adventurers use military forces to extend the imperial power for commerce. In the Victorian Age, colonialists tend to exploit the colony for capitalist market economy, thereby

establishing the British Empire in the age of High Imperialism. As a ship owner, Willoughby sets out for the exotic lands on the purpose of capitalist expansions.

Willoughby’s travel is supposedly masculine activity to realize the white men’s

imagination and, more importantly, to gain economic profits of conquest. Even though it has just passed the Victorian Age, Willougby’s attitude toward the racial others is not really different from the Renaissance adventurers. In order to rule colonial space effectively, he devalued the native culture and used forces to conquer the exotic land.

More specifically, Willoughby is proud of his “triumphs over wretched little natives who went on strike and refused to load his ships” (TVO 44). Accordingly, he as a post-Victorian capitalist in the Empire exercises authority over the racial others to maintain imperial rule. He acts like a hero in the exotic land as he successfully quells the rebellions. The white men’s travel has always been aimed to establish and expand the Empire. In contrast, white women cannot actively participate in colonial

expansion. Take Willoughby’s daughter Rachel for instance. She is placed at home under protection but never gets involved in his business in colonial space. It is evident that colonial enterprise is primarily under white men’s control but prevents women’s active participation.

In addition to Willoughby Vinrace, Richard Dalloway also stands for imperialist male dominance. Unlike Willoughby, Richard Dalloway is a politician of the Empire and the purpose of his tour is to observe imperial enterprise abroad. Since Richard Dalloway is looked upon as a representative of the Empire, his utterance significantly represents the underlying values of the Empire. In his talk to Rachel, he offers a lesson in empire and gender division. In the first place, Richard expresses the goal and the ideal image of the Empire: “Unity of aim, of dominion, of progress;” and “the dispersion of the best ideas over the greatest area” (TVO 69). Like the Renaissance adventurers, he believes in the lasting integration of the Empire and also justifies the

English aggression by the pretext of civilizing the racial others. He keeps emphasizing the binary oppositions of civilization and savagery, for the contrasting differences are made of to maintain the Empire as a whole. Montgomery indicates that Richard’s talk

“appears to epitomize the imperial ideal” and “it once again suggests the monolithic operation of a [national] machine” (37). The integrity of the imperial project is built upon the subordination of the racial others. As Phillips suggests, “unity derives from the imposed union of Empire”; “‘Dominion’ is dominated by guns”; “‘Progress’

means making money’” (59). It is military force that really maintains the Empire. The racial others are forced to be the subordinate members of the Empire rather than voluntarily participate in the colonial enterprise voluntarily. As a matter of fact, the dispersion of the western civilization to every corner of the world is commercial exploitations and military coercion in disguise.

It is clear that white men’s roles like capitalist or politician are authorized to exert the power of empire, whereas white women’s agency is denied or marginalized in the process of establishing and progressing colonial enterprise. White women’s image is associated with home in need of protection. Clarissa Dalloway, who has all the characteristics of the domestic angel image, plays a supportive role to her husband’s career. Both of the husband and the wife know how important it is to maintain imperial rules. Richard “was once a member of Parliament and his wife’s the daughter of a peer” (TVO 37). Compared with other white women, Clarissa Dalloway must know a lot what it means to be a politician’s wife. Phillips observes that “Woolf lays out the main knots of this network [of the English social values] in the

conversations of the Dalloways” (54). Richard Dalloway claims that “’I never allow my wife to talk politics’” (TVO 68). He is emphasizing the social reality that women are forbidden to interfere with the public affairs but need to be instead placed in the domestic space. Women’s primary role is to reproduce the upcoming generations,

especially boys, because the Empire is sustained by military force. In the colonial discourse, woman is identified with home, while men leave the homeland to exhibit martial valor and claim authority over the inferior others. Indeed, while alone on the deck with her husband, Clarissa Dalloway says reflectively:

‘D’you know, Dick, I can’t help thinking of England,’… ‘Being on this ship seems to make it so much more vivid—what it really means to be English.

One thinks of all we’ve done, and our navies, and the people in India and Africa, and how we’ve gone on century after century, sending out boys from little country villages—and of men like you, Dick, and it makes one feel as if one couldn’t bear not to be English! Think of the light burning over the House, Dick! When I stood on deck just now I seemed to see it. It’s what one means by London.’ (TVO 51)

Being representative of English women, Clarissa Dalloway has internalized the

colonial concept of national aggression and endorses imperial ideology. Moreover, she obviously approves that “boys” should be sent out to the battlefield in the exotic lands, whereas women should give birth to sons. Clarissa says to her husband that “[w]e must have a son, Dick” (TVO 51). Accordingly, men are of vital importance in the

consolidation of the Empire, whereas women’s role “sentimentalizes the Empire”

(Phillips 55). Undoubtedly, it is reproductive power that makes white women’s role so inextricable to colonial expansion. Based upon the social conventions of England, women’s function of biological reproduction symbolizes the power of nature and land.

Such image is also associated with a motherland in need of protection. White women’s role in colonization is ambivalent because they are recruited to support the Empire but they are also banished from the core of masculine imperial power. Woolf makes clear that though white men and white women are both imperialist-minded, they play different roles under colonial discourse. Both white men and women

colonizers get involved in the overseas colonial expansion, but the travel writings produced then rarely record or reflect women’s roles and perspective.

Since the masculine heroic code is not readily applicable to European women, white women writers do not adopt an imperialistic voice with ease in their accounts of colonial situations. Woolf’s depictions of exotic space apparently challenges and mocks the self-importance and possessiveness of Western explorer-man rather than to endorse and glorify imperial rules. As a woman writer, Woolf does not in her work fully adopt the imperialistic perspective as her male counterparts do. Her writing about colonial situations in Santa Marina does not present a complacent perspective of a powerful colonizer. Instead, it always implies a sarcastic or critical overtone as the narrator recounts the story about colonization. It seems that the narrator intends to reveal the fact that colonial enterprise is not as dignified as most Europeans believe.

The narrator in The Voyage Out is more like a self-reflective traveler and does not thoroughly align herself with imperialists. At first, the narrator objectively indicates that the expansion of the Empire was built upon the exploitation of the native resources. Unlike in the traditional travel writings, the Elizabethan forebears are not looked upon as adventurous heroes but as monstrous exploiters devouring exotic lands:

[T]he hardy Englishmen, tawny with sea-voyaging, hairy for lack of razors, with muscles like wire, fangs greedy for flesh, and fingers itching for gold, dispatched the wounded, drove the dying into the sea, and soon reduced the native to a state of superstitious wonderment. Here a settlement was made;

women were imported; children grew. (TVO 96)

The above passage offers a totally alternative view on colonial expansion. As a matter of fact, the adventurers do not meet their heroic image as recorded in imperialist travel writings. Their mission to take over the exotic land does not truly serve the

purpose to civilize the savage culture. Instead, they not only exploit the foreign natural resources greedily but also quell any native rebellion by force. They erase the memory of piling up racial others’ corpses and reduce the native to the unknown mystery. Consequently, white men rule the exotic land by claiming natural their mastery over the native. In addition to revealing white men’s cruelty, the narrator also indicates that white women are recruited by the Empire only to reproduce new

generations. To be short, white men are pioneers in the development of colonial

expansion. White women are of vital importance in the reproduction of English troops.

While the men play dominant role in colonial space, the women are only the subsidiary character in supporting their spouses.

However, while it does mock the self-important male colonizers and their imperial enterprise, Woolf’s The Voyage Out puts stress on a white girl’s maturing process rather than on protest against colonialism. More specifically, the novel

appropriates colonial space mapped and governed by white men as a land of liberation for white women. Santa Marina in the novel probably exists only in Woolf’s

imagination, for it provides an escape for white women from male civilization.

Lawrence indicates that “the blank page of South America provides an exhilarating and sometimes frightening escape from the already-written English script” (161).

Indeed, Rachel escapes her father’s control and develops her independence during her stay in the exotic land. Yet white women’s position is ambivalent while traveling in exotic space. Lawrence argues that “Woolf’s woman explorer is doubly positioned in the geography of the narrative, curiously situated both as explorer, mapping an uncharted territory, and as virginal territory” (162). As a traveling woman, Rachel’s positionality does not stay stable but keeps shifting. On the one hand, Rachel is identified with virgin land waiting for male exploration. On the other hand, she occupies a higher position than racial others. During the course of discovering exotic

land, Rachel is simultaneously striving to explore the truth of female self and exerting white mastery acting out her racial superiority.

Exotic space is like a virginal territory with which Rachel herself identifies and offers her a shelter from England’s patriarchal culture. Exotic space, associated with nature and underdevelopment, resembles woman’s body that is not yet penetrated by male exploration. As Rachel reflects, exotic land “had been at the birth of the world, and so it had remained ever since”; “[p]robably no human being had ever broken that water with boat or with body” (237). In this regard, exotic land is regarded as a birthplace of the world; that is, a land of fertile power. The native land is not developed and explored yet. Its conditions as such are like Rachel’s, for Rachel’s knowledge of being a mature woman is not yet thoroughly developed. The exotic setting serves the purpose to initiate Rachel’s maturing progress. It is in the native land where she is going to learn what it is like to be an English woman. Woolf makes her heroine freely develop her true self in the exotic space, for Rachel can temporarily escape the English social values here. The further Rachel explores exotic nature, the more mature she becomes. First, she becomes independent of her father while isolated in the villa. Then, she decides to explore the relation between men and women during the expedition to the Elizabethan watch tower. She even learns to critically examine her early days in Richmond when surveying natural scenery on the cliff with Terence.

At last, she becomes engaged with him during the upriver expedition. All and all, Rachel makes progress in her maturing process when she is far away from the English community and steeped in exotic nature. Rachel has completed the search for her true female self. It is no doubt that the virginal territory of South America eventually becomes a colonized land under the military and economic forces of white men.

Likewise, Rachel cannot evade her female gender role, for to become a married woman means that her body is going to be taken over by her husband.

Woolf not only employs exotic space to help white women establish a sense of self, but also makes use of racial others to reinforce their sense of autonomy. Firstly, Rachel is allowed to walk on the street at night before her contact with the English people in the hotel. At that time, she enjoys the freedom of walking in the public areas without being watched by white men. While walking on the street at night, Rachel and Helen “excited some friendly curiosity, but no one molested them” (107). The racial others are relatively inferior to white women and not daring to hurt them. Under such circumstances, white women have no fear of venturing into the public areas in the foreign land. Not only do they claim their right of spatial mobility, white women also establish their sense of mastery and superiority over the racial others. White women are anything but masters in the English social space, for they are expected to serve men. Yet once in the exotic space having had the chances to be in contact with the inferior race, white women develop a sense of mastery over the racial others.

Even though European women can form a sense of superiority through intimate contact with the racial others, the exotic environment kindles white women’s desire to return to homeland. It is believed that white women can escape English social values temporarily while they are in the exotic environment. However, it turns out that uncivilized nature of the exotic space eventually induces European women’s homecoming desire. Joining the upriver expedition, a party of six English people leaves their community at the hotel expecting to experience the authenticity of exotic nature. This experience of intimate contact with the exotic environment, however, does not reinforce the white women’s sense of female self. Rather, it results in their homesickness. Helen grows more and more absent-minded and misses her family and England. “Her mind left the scene and occupied itself with anxieties for Ridley, for her children, for far-off things, such as old age and poverty and death” (324). The exotic environment now reminds Helen of her domestic duties as a wife and a mother.

Despite the fact that Helen is in the faraway land, she cannot discard her female gender role expected by English society. Similarly, Rachel also gets irritated by the chaos of exotic environment, thereby growing reluctant to stay in the forest for long.

More importantly, the further contact she gets into with the racial others, the more resistant Rachel becomes to the English institution of marriage and her female gender role. The native village the English visit does not faithfully exhibit the lifestyle of the indigenous culture. Instead, the native village seems to display the gender division of labor in English society. Phillips argues that the western polarization of female and male roles “is reiterated in South American village” (73). Indeed, when the indigenous woman uncovers her breast to feed her baby, this reminds Rachel and Terence that women cannot evade their duty of biological reproduction and nurturing younger generations. The sight of the women is “[p]eaceful and beautiful at first” but makes them “now feel very cold and melancholy” (332). This is because the lifestyle of indigenous culture foreshadows Terence and Rachel’s marriage life. Initially, they believe they can have their marriage in an unconventional way, but it becomes clear they actually cannot contest the traditional division of gender roles. The native village reminds Rachel of her own female gender role and motherly duty to some extent.

Phillips points out that the racial others mirror the gender division of English society

“because the native village already has been exposed to European ways” (73). The racial others do not lead a life in their own way, but rather their lifestyle shows the influence of European culture. It is not likely that Woolf faithfully portrays the indigenous society. The indigenous people and culture depicted in the novel serve to help Woolf establish white women’s sense of mastery and arouse their homecoming desire. Nevertheless, after the upriver expedition, Rachel feels her female

independence threatened by Terence’s dominant male role. Rachel realizes that she cannot challenge the institution of marriage and the restrictions on her female gender

role. Her sudden death may be considered a passive resistance to her incorporation into English society. In the later work Orlando, Woolf also makes good use of exotic culture but the female Orlando’s intimate contact with the racial others empowers her with androgynous experience to confront the division of gender roles of her society.

3.2. Orlando

In Orlando, Woolf presents the seafaring tradition of Elizabethan England in the very beginning of the novel. It shows that the adventures overseas are solely

undertaken by male explorers but excludes any white women’s participation. The stories of overseas adventure contribute a lot to the production of imperial knowledge and to the erection of the imperial subject as well. The commitment on overseas expansion defines the title character’s world, so that he encourages himself to be a brave imperialist in the future. The imperial knowledge that Orlando receives chiefly derives from his fathers’ stories of conquest in exotic spaces. Also, the imperial subject that Orlando learns to play is modeled on his forefathers’ manly behavior in exotic spaces. Exotic spaces thus become where white men can exhibit their martial valor and claim their authority over the racial others. Woolf’s Orlando reflects a social reality that white men or even boys aspire to inherit the tradition of seafaring explorers and to display masculinity in the other lands. Phillips suggests that “Woolf illuminates the past not as a sanctuary but as a source of modern problems of

colonization, gender, and class” (184). Specifically, it is with Orlando’s sex change that Woolf challenges the white men’s imperial power in the exotic space.

As a prevailing ideology, the heroic adventure tales help to shape the male Orlando’s attitude toward the English presence in the outposts of the Empire. As England’s young heir, the male Orlando is supposed to be the epitome of the brave white adventurer. The ideology of imperialism can be seen in the title character’s

attitude toward the colonial space. The male Orlando tends to generalize the racial others; that is, to construct a reified “other” in a way that his forefathers used to do.

The head of a Moor is depicted like “the colour of an old football” and “the hair on a cocoanut” (Orlando 13). It is hard for the male Orlando to think of any concrete feature of the racial others. This is because the imperial knowledge does not really offer Orlando any information about the racial others’ cultures and looks. White male adventurers distort and erase local cultures in order to stress imperial dominance, while travel is considered exclusively masculine activity. As such, exotic space is believed to be a place that invites white men’s heroic deeds of imperial expansion.

Though still unable to travel alone, Orlando as a boy imagines himself riding with his fathers in Africa or France and striking many barbarians’ heads as his head-hunting forefathers did (Orlando 13). It is evident that the male Orlando expects to carry out militarism in exotic space. Only when he enforces his relentless militarism in exotic space can he be recognized as a man. Phillips writes that “[t]o be a ‘man’ as expected of Orlando means murderous racism or suicidal sacrifice” (186). Thus exotic space can be looked upon as the theater for white men’s personal performance of colonial conquest.

However, white women have never been any protagonist in stories of adventure, incapable to play out such personal drama within the theater of the Empire.

Imperialism is totally masculine activities rather than feminine. The feminine often suggest to be subjugated and defeated. As Phillips writes, “Orlando acquired

definition of masculinity as aggression, enacted against both Moors and women (186).

It suggests that Orlando “created an uneasy equation of phallus and weaponry: ‘his manhood awoke; he grasped a sword in his hand’” (Phillips 186). In other words, the male Orlando’s manly behavior is seen as a gendered national ideal. The Elizabethan adventurers endeavor to establish national and masculine identity through their

achievement of colonial conquest in exotic space. Quite like the racial others, white women are social inferior and exploited by men. Men acquire their social authority by enacting dominant masculinity over femininity. To be masculine is to fight against enemies and protect the weak. Since women are the weaker, it is believed that they are in need of protection. Under such social conditions, it is taken for granted that women should be placed at home and immobilized by English society. White men can

establish their confidence by conquering the racial others and playing the producer of imperial knowledge. Travel tradition privileges white men with much more authority and mobility than women.

Woolf’s depiction of the male Orlando in Constantinople does not follow the convention of white men’s travel writing. In the first place, it exposes the dullness of imperial ceremony in the exotic land. The male Orlando has aspired to demonstrate the magnificence of the Empire since childhood. As an ambassador, the male Orlando achieves his childhood dream, that is, to play “a most important part in the public life of his country” (115). Nevertheless, Orlando grows weary of the ambassadorial mission and his role as an imperialist. In order to maintain imperial rule, Orlando as an ambassador has to receive visits from secretaries or officials of subordinate countries. The male Orlando does well on his diplomatic duty, so that the king promotes him to a higher political position. Like his forefathers, he has become an eminent imperialist. Although the male Orlando can display masculine valor in the exotic space, he was nevertheless not content with his political role.

Though Orlando performed these tasks to admiration and never denied they are, perhaps, the most important part of a diplomatist’s duties, he was undoubtedly fatigued by them, and often depressed to such a pitch of gloom that he preferred to take his dinner alone with his dogs. (119)

Accordingly, Orlando’s childhood idealization of the imperialist is completely

shattered, for he realizes that the glamour of the Empire is dullness in disguise and it exhausts him greatly. He would rather isolate himself than perform the daily

ceremonies. Thus, the male Orlando’s life in the exotic land challenges the

male-dominated tradition of travel accounts. As a woman writer, Woolf does not focus on how a heroic adventurer conquers and maintains the exotic land as a whole.

Instead, her heroic adventurer, though endowed with political power, feels tired of the repetition of imperial activities. Forced to routinely repeat those ceremonial

procedures, Orlando feels powerless to dispose of his imperial role.

In addition, Woolf subverts the so-called “monarchy of all-I-survey” perception so as to expose the instability of imperial rules. Firstly, Woolf follows the convention of travel writing to enact Orlando’s “monarchy of all-I-survey” imagination. In the opening scene of Chapter III, Orlando performs the “monarchy of the all-I-survey” by climbing up to the hilltop to view the colonial territory. According to Pratt, the

“monarchy of all-I-survey” scenario is constantly found in the white explorer’s accounts of heroic discovery. It seems to “involve particularly explicit interaction between esthetics and ideology” (Pratt 205). As Pratt points out, “the esthetic qualities of the landscape constitute the social and material value of the discovery to the

explorers’ home culture, at the same time as its [the exotic scenery’s] esthetic

deficiencies suggest a need for social and material intervention by the home culture”

(205). It makes clear that the white explorers tend to depict the civilizing mission as an esthetic project and consider the racial others in need of Europe’s benign and beautifying intervention. As soon as being up to the hilltop, Orlando evaluates and compares exotic landscape to English scenery. “Nothing, he [Orlando] reflected, gazing at the view which was now sparkling in the sun, could well be less like the countries of Surrey and Kent or the towns of London and Tunbridge Wells” (116).

Even though Orlando enjoys Constantinople’s wild and exotic scenery, he cannot

forget the manor house in England. Orlando finds it a pity that “parsonage there was none, nor manor house, nor cottage, nor oak, elm, violet, ivy, or wild eglantine” (116).

Orlando unconsciously imposes “home’s culture” upon the exotic land in such a way he consolidates his position as a colonizer.

Despite that the “monarchy of the all-I-survey” scenario serves to create the mastery of the seer over the landscape, Woolf deconstructs the hegemony of imperialism subsequently. Orlando has been proud of his noble heritage and the magnificence of imperial past. However, his belief in the homogeneity and nobility of English race starts to collapse.

He wondered if, in the season of the Crusades, one of his ancestors had taken up with a Circassian peasant woman; thought if possible; fancied a certain darkness in his complexion; and, going indoors again, withdrew to his bath.

(117)

The description indicates that Orlando suspects if his forefathers consummated with any woman of other races during imperial expansion. In the exotic land, Orlando’s ambition to conquer the racial others wanes, for he increasingly distrusts the imperial knowledge imparted to him by the past explorers. The imperial knowledge helps white men take over the other land in terms of the binary opposition between the imperial subject and the racial others. Orlando’s fantasy about “darkness in his complexion” indicates his unspoken desire to intermix with other races. The implied intermixture challenges the hegemony of imperialism.

Clearly, Woolf’s writing about Constantinople reverses the tradition of travel writing. Moreover, Woolf exploits white men’s colonial space to empower women travelers. The female Orlando acquires her androgynous experience in Constantinople by means of her intimate contact with exotic culture and the racial others; that is, a group of gypsies. In exploring the significance of Constantinople in the novel, Roessel

points out the reason why Woolf makes Orlando’s sex change happen in Turkey. He claims that “[t]he Ottoman Empire was a place where European women could, to some degree, escape the gender constraints of home” (343). Besides, Turkish clothing can serve to disguise one’s sex. The aftermath of sex change is reduced because Orlando can easily disguise her sex in Turkish clothing. Orlando has never thought of how to play her female gender role in the exotic land. She does not feel pressured and restricted after the transformation. It seems that the female Orlando the traveling woman can escape English social values temporarily with androgynous clothing, especially during her sojourn with the gypsies. Later on, this androgynous experience empowers her to transgress the binary opposition between masculinity and femininity when she returns to her homeland.

Even though Woolf’s traveling women in the exotic space revise the travel tradition and suggest female empowerment, the female Orlando’s encounter with the racial others eventually fuels her homecoming desire. The nomadic gypsies are associated with homelessness and freedom in history. The nature of the nomadic gypsies is in sharp contrast to western culture. During her sojourn with the racial others, Orlando attempts to show off the English manor house and noble inheritance.

However, efforts as such are thwarted. Initially, the female Orlando thinks of the gypsies as “an ignorant people, not much better than savages” (141). This is because the traditional travel accounts have informed her that the English race as most ancient and civilized is the greatest of all among the other races. Yet Orlando’s ancient birth is dwarfed compared with gypsy’s lineage of antiquity. Though Orlando comes to

recognize the significance of nature for the racial others, nature itself reminds Orlando of home. Once again, Orlando feels nostalgic for the homeland, for “she could see oak trees dotted here and there” in the exotic land. The oak tree, with roots growing

underground, is easily associated with solidity and rootedness. Orlando has a desire of

homecoming to work on the incomplete poem.

Woolf’s representation of the exotic space does not merely aim to contest imperialism but main concern is to empower white women. Energized in the exotic land, white traveling women’s ultimate destination is homeland. The female Orlando, though temporarily free from the demand of her female gender role, can not fully abdicate English tradition. On the one hand, the female Orlando appreciates freedom in exotic space. On the other hand, she feels she must go home. Lawrence asserts that the gypsies “represent a longed-for freedom from the constraints of the West and yet a threat to history and narrative itself” (203). In the Elizabethan Age, the male Orlando starts to work on his poem. At that time, he planned to earn public recognition in the field of writing, but he cannot complete his writing. However, in the exotic space, the gypsies’ passion for nature reminds the female Orlando of her vow to write and continue the tradition of English literature. It is the androgynous experience that eventually helps the female Orlando complete and publish her work. In the modern time, the female Orlando becomes a professional writer, as more and more women have influence in the public sphere of English society. It is hard to deny that Woolf’s traveling women maintain a sense of nostalgia toward Englishness. One thing for sure is that Woolf is strongly discontent with English patriarchy and the exploitative and Eurocentric imperial project. The novel’s white woman traveler’s attitude toward exotic land and the racial others is ambivalent. The representation of exotic space and the racial others in a sense mainly serves to enable white women to challenge the division of gender roles in English society.

3.3 Conclusion

In The Voyage Out and Orlando, Woolf critiques English patriarchy and the travel tradition by presenting the hierarchical roles that men and women play in

England and Empire and replacing male adventurers with female travelers. White men usually play the dominant role and the active agent in colonial conquest. On the contrary, white women are recognized with their biological reproductive power, so that they are expected to bear offspring to sustain imperial expansion. Regarding the uneven relation between men and women in the Empire, Woolf appropriates the tradition of representing colonial spaces to write white women’s stories of

self-development and transformation: Rachel grows into a mature woman in South America and Orlando undergoes sex change in Turkey. Exotic spaces, therefore, becomes lands of liberation for white women’s self-advancement. Woolf’s travel writings take gender issue into account, whereas white men’s travel accounts used to ignore the significance of women travelers. In other words, the primary purpose of Woolf’s travel writings is to explore the gender relation under the English patriarchy as both in the homeland and the exotic space.

Woolf’s depicting of colonial activities in exotic lands always suggest a sarcastic overtone so as to show her disbelief on the conventions of male travel accounts and the stability of imperial rules. Although she does not strongly inveigh against British imperialism to the extent of relinquishing Englishness, she does reject the conventions of white men’s travel writing. Woolf‘s travel writings do not consolidate imperial rules and represent the stability of the Empire. Instead, the narrators in her novels show inability to adopt the masculinist imperialist mentality at ease. In The Voyage Out, the narrator exposes how European capitalism exploits the exotic land and racial

others. And, in Orlando, the biographer mocks the dullness of diplomatic ceremonies and the precariousness of imperial rules. Both the narrator in The Voyage Out and the biographer in Orlando hardly ever align themselves with exploitative and racist imperialism.

While Woolf challenges imperial domination, she chooses to set the two novels

mainly within the Empire. Her portrayals of traveling women in exotic spaces suggest that white women can freely leave domestic space to enter colonial space. The

heroines, though feeling free in the exotic spaces, never plan to stay in the other lands for long. Their homecoming desire means that as travelers in foreign land, they cannot really leave behind their Englishness or English nationality. In her novels, Woolf creates the exotic spaces as a land of liberation for white women, but the narrative disposes of the exotic spaces at last after the attainment of liberation. As a woman writer, Woolf’s attitude toward colonialism seems rather ambivalent. On the one hand, the narrators show sympathy for the racial others. On the other hand, the heroines cannot abandon English tradition, despite its many constraints on women. The device of the exotic spaces in both novels, for Woolf’s benefit, makes possible woman’s escape from gender constraints and empowers her to come home with a fresh outlook on English society. Woolf’s travel writings contribute to the re-visioning of imperial knowledge and they definitely differ from the traditional travel accounts produced by men.