Abstract
The visibility of pregnancy in contemporary societies through various forms of medical imaging has often been interpreted by feminist critics as negative for the autonomy and experience of pregnant women. Here, I consider the representation of pregnancy in Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando, and Sally Potter’s film of the same name arguing that, despite limited critical attention to Orlando’s pregnancy, these texts offer a productive interpretation of gestation that counters conventionally reductive cultural images of that embodied state. In particular, I argue that Potter’s translation of Woolf’s novel to the screen gives us a useful model for thinking through the new visibility of pregnancy in contemporary Western culture.
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Notes
See Boucher, “Ultrasound: A Window to the Womb?: Obstetric Ultrasound and the Abortion Rights Debate,” 7–19; Daniels, At Women’s Expense: State Power and the Politics of Fetal Rights; Duden, Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn; and Stabile, Feminism and the Technological Fix.
Matthews and Wexler, Pregnant Pictures.
Woolf, Orlando: A Biography. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically within the text.
Potter, Orlando (Adventure Pictures: Ronin Films, 1992).
See Hartouni, Cultural Conceptions: On Reproductive Technologies and the Remaking of Life, which describes the newly visible fetus as a pre-formed person, and Adams, Reproducing the Womb: Images of Childbirth in Science, Feminist Theory and Literature, in which Alice Adams also describes the phenomenon of the newly visible fetus as a pre-formed person.
Parkes, “Lesbianism, History, and Censorship: The Well of Loneliness and the Suppressed Randiness of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando,” 436. Parkes argues that Woolf anticipates Judith Butler by interrogating the discursive paradigms that constituted lesbianism. See also Piggford, “‘Who’s that Girl?’: Annie Lennox, Woolf’s Orlando, and Female Camp Androgyny,” in which Piggford considers that Orlando demonstrates and enacts the stylized repetitions of gender performance that constitute the fracture of gendered performativity that Butler argues are the best possibility for subverting gender codes; Cervetti, “In the Breeches, Petticoats, and Pleasures of Orlando,” 168, in which she argues that Woolf’s strategies anticipate Butler’s theoretical reconception of gendered identity; Ferris and Waites, “Unclothing Gender: The Postmodern Sensibility in Sally Potter’s Orlando,” 1107#x2013;111, who note that Butler’s reconfiguration of sex—questioning the comfortable distinction between two sexes—is implicit in Potter’s interpretation of Woolf’s text, seen in the casting of Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth; Burns, “Re-Dressing Feminist Identities: Tensions Between Essential and Constructed Selves in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando,” 356, in which she argues that Butler’s understanding that the very structures which construct gender are those from which we need emancipation can be seen in Woolf’s strategic imperative to “repeat with a difference” the performances of gender that are available; Boxwell, “(Dis)orienting Spectacle: The Politics of Orlando’s Sapphic Camp,” 311, who utilizes Butler’s notion of gender as corporeal style’ to examine the way in which Constantinople is constructed as a place of liberation for Orlando and a location where gender does not sediment itself as it does in England; and finally, Pidduck, “Travels with Sally Potter’s Orlando: gender, narrative, movement,” 172–189, which examines Orlando’s narrative trajectory through gender and time
Watkins, “Sex Change and Media Change: From Woolf’s to Potter’s Orlando,” 41–59.
Degli-Esposito, “Sally Potter’s Orlando and the Neo-Baroque Scopic Regime,” 87.
Mellencamp, A Fine Romance: Five Ages of Film Feminism. See also Pidduck.
Jordan, The Crying Game (Palace Pictures, Miramax, 1992). In this film, the sex of the actor, Jaye Davidson, was kept secret in order to support the film plot.
Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex,” 10.
Squier, Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century Visions of Reproductive Technology, 147.
Ibid., 131.
See Duden; Daniels; Stabile.
Shildrick, Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)ethics, 210.
Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, 5.
Newman, Fetal Positions: Individualism, Science and Visuality, 10–11.
References
A. Adams, Reproducing the Womb: Images of Childbirth in Science, Feminist Theory and Literature (Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 1994).
J. Boucher, “Ultrasound: A Window to the Womb?: Obstetric Ultrasound and the Abortion Rights Debate,” Journal of Medical Humanities 25 (1) (2004): 7–19.
D. A. Boxwell, “(Dis)orienting Spectacle: The Politics of Orlando’s Sapphic Camp,” Twentieth Century Literature 44 (3) (1998): 306–327.
C. Burns, “Re-Dressing Feminist Identities: Tensions Between Essential and Constructed Selves in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando,” Twentieth Century Literature 40 (3) (1994): 342–364.
B. Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex’ (New York & London: Routledge, 1993), 10.
N. Cervetti, “In the Breeches, Petticoats, and Pleasures of Orlando.” Journal of Modern Literature 20 (2) (1996): 165–175.
C. Daniels, At Women’s Expense: State Power and the Politics of Fetal Rights (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard U. Press, 1993).
C. Degli-Esposito, “Sally Potter’s Orlando and the Neo-Baroque Scopic Regime,” Cinema Journal 36 (1) (1996): 75–93.
B. Duden, Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn. Trans. Lee Hoinacki (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard U. Press, 1993).
A. Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 5.
S. Ferris, and K. Waites, “Unclothing Gender: The Postmodern Sensibility in Sally Potter’s Orlando,” Literature Film Quarterly 27 (2) (1999): 110–115.
V. Hartouni, Cultural Conceptions: On Reproductive Technologies and the Remaking of Life (Minneapolis: Minnesota U. Press, 1997).
N. Jordan, The Crying Game (Palace Pictures, Miramax, 1992).
S. Matthews, and L. Wexler, Pregnant Pictures (New York & London: Routledge, 2000), 5.
P. Mellencamp, A Fine Romance: Five Ages of Film Feminism (Philadelphia: Temple U. Press, 1995).
K. Newman, Fetal Positions: Individualism, Science and Visuality (Stanford: Stanford U. Press, 1996).
S. Potter, Orlando (Adventure Pictures: Ronin Films, 1992).
A. Parkes, “Lesbianism, History, and Censorship: The Well of Loneliness and the Suppressed Randiness of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando,” Twentieth Century Literature 40 (4) (1994): 434–460.
J. Pidduck, “Travels with Sally Potter’s Orlando: Gender, Narrative, Movement,” Screen 38 (2) (1997): 172–189.
G. Piggford, “Who’s that Girl?:” Annie Lennox, Woolf’s Orlando, and Female Camp Androgyny,” Mosaic 30 (3) (1997): 39–58.
M. Shildrick, Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)ethics (London: Routledge, 1997).
S. Squier, Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century Visions of Reproductive Technology (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers U. Press, 1994).
C. Stabile, Feminism and the Technological Fix (Manchester: Manchester U. Press, 1994)
S. Watkins, “Sex Change and Media Change: From Woolf’s to Potter’s Orlando,” Mosaic 31 (3) (1998): 41–59.
V. Woolf, Orlando: A Biography (London: Harvest Books, 1992[1928]).
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Maher, J.M. Prone to Pregnancy: Orlando, Virginia Woolf and Sally Potter Represent the Gestating Body. J Med Humanit 28, 19–30 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-006-9026-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-006-9026-5