Qu(e)ercus Robur: Orlando and The Oak Tree

Qu(e)ercus Robur: Orlando and The Oak Tree 

 

Firstly, is important to foreground this paper in the decision to feature an oak tree with Orlando over any other British native and to clarify its importance. Oaks are a prominent visual feature of the English landscape, particularly of the rural countryside where they are often seen as solitary beings set within agricultural land, deer parks or pasture. Their symbolism runs deep within the veins of English culture and have evencome to signify notions of strength, stability and nobility.^[i] According to the botanist Aljos Farjon, England boasts a rich number of ancient oaks that rival most of continental Europe, a high proportion of which appear within rural Herefordshire in middle England.^[ii] Most of these fall within the private land of the crown or of aristocratic landowners and have been preserved either due to their visual prominence within the surrounding community, or because of wider notions of old oaks as material examples of the 'family tree', and their respective collisions (re)producing ideas surrounding the status, stability and legitimacy of the noble family and by extension their entitlement to land and, therefore, nature.^[iii]

            

As oaks, estates, and noble families are often tangled, it is no surprise that Woolf chose to feature an oak tree as the principal tree and inspiration for Orlando's poetry, particularly as the inspiration for the novel was Woolf's friend and lover, the aristocrat Vita Sackville-West. Early in the novel, Woolf toys with the aforementioned botanical references herself, noting the strength and hardiness of the oak's trunk and roots, referred to by Orlando as "earth's spine" as they lay down against it, resting before the arrival of Queen Elizabeth I.^[iv] However, this is not just some random tree conjured up by chance to symbolise the nation. It is instead a reference to a real oak within the grounds of Knole Park, Kent (one of the homes owned by the Sackville-West's) that grows upon a high mount known as Mast Head, a regular site of choice for Vita's writing.^[v] The oak featured in Orlando, therefore, whether as a poem or as a living tree, has very real roots. Permeating beyond the pages of the novel and into the emotional and physical life of Woolf herself, it exists not as an inanimate backdrop, but as a sensate, animate and dynamic character form that holds significant and palpable connections between author and subject/s.^[vi]

          

 It is from this initial emotional and physical foregrounding of the oak within the novel (but also outside of it) that drew out my own interests in how portrayals of the natural world, and the oak tree specifically, can be further understood through a queer ecology reading.^[vii] Set between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, Orlando is effectively positioned as an immortal aristocrat and heir presumptive to their family seat. However, once they undergo a physical change of sex halfway through the novel their legitimacy is called into question, as is their entitlement to land. Because of this, Orlando's perception of, and access to, nature changes throughout the course of the novel, revealing the natural world as more than a mere aspect of Orlando's wealth, but a multidimensional form that exists as both a concept in the human mind but also as a material entity (or collection of entities) entirely separate from it.^[viii]

           

 To avoid confusion, as the character of Orlando changes sex midway through the novel, I have taken the decision to refer to Orlando throughout this paper using gender neutral pronouns except when using quotes that attribute to Orlando's given sex within the novel.

            

Orlando's Queer Nature

 

The oak tree's introduction, just four pages in, follows from a brisk walk through Orlando's family estate and up a hill, through ferns and hawthorn bushes, past deer and wild birds, until finally Orlando reaches the top of the mound crowned by a single oak tree

 

            "It was very high, so high indeed that nineteen English counties could be seen beneath […] he sighed                     profoundly, and flung himself - there was a passion in his movements which deserves the word - on the               earth at the foot of the oak tree. He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth's spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be"^[ix]

 

Much is said within this small quotation. It talks of land, the broad extent of which Orlando and their family claims ownership, including a description of its topography which, stood atop and "crowned" by an oak tree, provides a view over such a stretch of England that one can see nineteen English counties. However, it also speaks of the oak itself. Its vastness and association with royalty, but also its solidity, metamorphosed as "earth's spine", a grand statement that aligns the identity of the oak to the earth itself upon which Orlando rests and observes a portion of it from their viewpoint. From the very beginning, the oak sits atop Orlando's world claiming royal status, and although this is where it physically remains, its presence and influences stretches far beyond its material form into its poetic manifestation "The Oak Tree", which instead travels with Orlando. Over the course or Orlando's life the poem is occasionally lost and then rediscovered, scribbled out and reconfigured in different forms; adapting to the style, fashion, and temperament of the culture within which it is constantly (re)written. Within these vegetal distinctions lie adivision - the material, rooted oak, and its metaphysical, uprooted counterpart. While in one sense they are entirely separate entities that take on distinct roles, references, and associations throughout the novel, they are also almost seemingly bound. 

           

 When Orlando is twenty-five years old "The Oak Tree" begins its life as a small, thin document among "some forty-seven plays", all of which are seemingly condemned to flames five years later, alongside "fifty-seven poetical works, [of which Orlando] only retain[ed] 'The Oak Tree', which was his boyish dream and very short".^[x] For the next two-hundred-and-seventy-five years, its size however continues to expand, contract, adapt and reform in relation to its environment (much like Orlando themselves), ending its life as a published work of art laid above the roots of the original tree as a tribute to that which inspired it, "a return to the land of what the land has given me".^[xi] The oak's existence therefore performs a cyclical journey that begins with a separation between its material and poetic form which then ends with their unification. To think of this in terms of the human, the notion of separate yet indistinguishable identities is often reflected on in terms of Orlando's sense of self through what Biwas calls the "negotiation between [Orlando's internal] self and the external world", or, the differences of experience between how Orlando perceives themselves and how Orlando is perceived by those around them.^[xii] This notion is, for example, explicitly expressed through Orlando's awareness of how, post-transition, those around them have (re)arranged their behaviour in order to fit their new one.^[xiii] Orlando later addresses this tension soon after transitioning that while they now may be physically different and though their interests and emotions have shifted and swelled, they have fundamentally remained the same person.^[xiv] This observation, curiously enough, occurs simultaneously with the (re)discovery of their oak tree manuscript within the bosom of their shirt some years later, while musing upon their new identity as female, and the various material they must buy in order to fit their gender such as "a crinoline, and then (here she blushed) a bassinette, and then another crinoline, and so on…".^[xv] While flicking through the stained and torn pages that bare the ravages of age and time, Orlando turns to the first page and reads the date 1586, before remarking that they 

 

            "had been working at it for close three hundred years now […] she began turning and dipping and                         reading and skipping and thinking as she read, how very little she had changed all these years. She had been a            gloomy boy, in love with death, as boys are, and then she had been amorous and florid […] yet through all                     these changes she had remained, she reflected, fundamentally the same. She had the same brooding meditative         temper, the same love of animals and nature, the same passion for the country and the seasons."^[xvi]

 

These alignments drawn between Orlando's sense of self, their love of nature, and how these both relate to the presence of "The Oak Tree", demonstrate in part the ways in which Orlando sees themselves in relation to the natural world. Although love is expressed more directly within the text, the proximity drawn between Orlando's newly shifted identity and the presence of "The Oak Tree" manuscript draws more subtle lines between how, in times of meaningful change, Orlando is drawn to aspects of the natural world, whether this be more generally to ideas of 'nature' and 'country', or more specifically through the oak tree as a symbol of stability or endurance. There is here also a sense of dualism, an acknowledgement that although Orlando remains fundamentally the same (or stable), changes have unavoidably occurred and will continue to do so with the changing social and cultural climate. Here, vegetal parallels occur in relation to how the oak tree is positioned in the novel. The material oak, that which stays rooted atop the hill within Orlando's family estate remains stable despite the ravages of age, whereas the poem "The Oak Tree" in turn makes visible the changes, adaptations and physical markers of time upon the pages of its manuscript, much like Orlando bares the physical markers of change upon their own body. 

          

 Woolf's choice to align Orlando more deeply within concepts of the natural world speak here directly to concepts of queer ecological thinking. As Timothy Morton observes within their introduction to Queer Ecology, the idea that nature is somehow out there beyond the realm of the human and therefore remains entirely separate from it is constructed by pre-existing forms of heteronormative categorisation that creates ideas of the natural world based on notions of exclusion and separation.^[xvii] These similarities between the way in which both queer and vegetal bodies are policed and pushed to the margins provide an interesting standpoint to view how Woolf furthermore compares Orlando and the oak tree's journey throughout the text. After being declared legally dead due to their transition from male to female and having almost lost all legitimacy and ownership of land and property as a result, Orlando, having no husband or son as a means to secure their status and security (in the eyes of the law), and having no interest in those who come forward to claim their hand in marriage, finally declares themselves as "nature's bride", continuing that "my hands shall wear no wedding ring […] the roots shall twine about them".^[xviii] Although this statement is somewhat a result of Orlando's exhaustion at having to maintain certain societal roles and expectations that, having previously been a man, are a relatively new concept and a condition of their sex, it does however conjure visions of how Orlando views the natural world as being devoid of such constrictive gender boundaries that might otherwise police their body and mind. Nature, then, under this canopy of thought, could be said to inhabit notions of queer potentiality^[xix] in that despite its attempted subjugation by humans and the resulting hierarchy used by them in order to delineate the vegetal world into the domain of otherness,^[xx] its vastness also renders it irreducible to human dominion and the structures within which human life unfolds and attempts to control it.^[xxi] The natural world in a sense is consistently revealed as an agent within the novel, especially during times of great change or challenge for Orlando which in turn reinforce their deep connection with it. As Woolf consistently disrupts such heterosexist assumptions of nature throughout, even going so far as to suggest Orlando may one day be wedded to the earth, or to the oak, itself, these ideas could just as easily be viewed as an intentional queer ecological method to subvert heteronormative notions of nature through the consistent alignments drawn between Orlando, the oak and the natural world, practically embedding Orlando's existence within it.

            There could also, however, be read here a sense of dichotomy in the comparison between the historical marginalisation of queer and vegetal bodies, in that queerness has often been referred to in a derogative manner as 'unnatural'.^[xxii] But then what is natural? As Morton continues, such distinctions (and definitions) rely again on heteronormative presumptions of the vegetal world that function as a kind of queer-blindness (or erasure)  - not dissimilar to its vegetal cousin 'plant-blindness'^[xxiii] -  that ends up simply reproducing binary definitions of both gender and sexuality in ways that are fundamentally incompatible to the germination of knowledge.^[xxiv]

            

Queer Ecological Time

 

In addition to the heteronormative conceptions of nature, the temporal aspects of Orlando's identity and life are also worth briefly examining, especially in relation to notions of vegetal and queer time and how such aspects furthermore embed Orlando's identity within the natural world. Here, several ideas converge. As Orlando exists outside of a traditional human lifespan - by the end of the novel they are three-hundred-years-old - but also changes their sex and gender, their identity intentionally explodes notions of "straight time", or the linear, binary narrative of time and gender, reshaping it into a sense of "queer time", that which is circular, non-linear and non-binary.^[xxv] This is of course more clearly expressed through Orlando's body and the fact their their physical change splits such linear and binary narratives of how straight time is constructed through their metamorphosis. As their transformation from male to female happens while they are asleep, Orlando's body is yet again compared to an aspect of the natural world by its mirroring of "the natural phenomenon of the pupa's transformation into a butterfly".^[xxvi] This notion of "queerness as metamorphosis" and the expression of Orlando's enduring, and apparently immortal, life is furthermore positioned by Biswas as a form of temporal existence that is at least somewhat defined and reproduced by their metamorphosis.^[xxvii] Although Orlando does not change physically for the rest of the novel, their queer metamorphosis is instead reproduced through more subtle, internal changes towards gender and sexuality rather than the more overt expressions of their sex change - Orlando, for example, becomes more comfortable with changing "frequently from one set of clothes to another" and enjoys "the love of both sexes equally".^[xxviii] This temporal framing also could be said to mirror previous discussions of how notions of nature are conceived by a heterosexist lens, yet again placing Orlando themselves 'outside' of what is natural and therefore confining their perceptions of gender, of sexuality, of the natural world, and finally their body and its capacity for transformation, to the domain of otherness. 

           

Thinking on this vegetally, Orlando's age and experience of time can also be thought of in relation to aspects of vegetal temporality in that although their metamorphosis is metaphorically linked to the pupa of a butterfly, their lifespan extends far beyond the life of an insect or a human and therefore more seemingly reminiscent to that of a tree. As Marder notes, aspects of "vegetal temporality are often imperceptible to a conscious human observer, because even when they share a physical space, the two beings do not live in the same homogenous time".^[xxix] In short, as plants exist in a different temporal plane to humans, their shifts in behaviour or their physical changes become imperceptible to humans unless temporal distance is itself placed between them; time is not perceived until time passes. Orlando makes reference to this at the end of the novel during their return to the original tree to pay tribute to it for inspiring their poem "The Oak Tree", which by then had been published to critical acclaim, remarking that the oak "had grown bigger, sturdier, and more knotted since she had known it […] but it was still in the prime of its life".^[xxx] As Orlando is, having finally become a published poet and having materialised in some form their "boyish dream", also arguably within, or coming into, their prime, parallels are drawn again between Orlando and the oak as well as the oak's influence and enduring presence in Orlando's life. This enduring presence is also seemingly supported by the fact that Orlando also exists within a kind of vegetal temporality themselves, a virtue of their long life being that they are exposed to the changing perceptions and understanding of concepts, such as sexuality and nature, which therefore reveal them as concepts in and of themselves that although are tied to a particular time and place, are shown to be potentially released. Returning again to aspects of vegetal temporality, Marder furthermore describes temporal relations to plants as being based on ideas of alterity, or otherness; the fact that plants inhabit an "openness to the other", that their bodies express, or are hinged on expressing, the potentialities of ripening, flowering, withering and dying.^[xxxi] Orlando, of course, expresses such ideas of alterity consistently throughout the novel, their physical metamorphosis being just one example of how, since Orlando has changed once before, therein lies the question and potential that such significant transformations do not exist in isolation, but that another change might well be around the corner.^[xxxii] This framing can also be redirected back to the foregrounding ideas at the beginning of this paper, in that both plants and Orlando contain within them parts of their identity which although remain "fundamentally the same", their bodies simultaneously inhabit the potential for physical (and philosophical) changes that in turn express notions of otherness. Rather than the heartwood from which everything else grows, heteronormative assumptions of nature, gender and sex are, through a queer ecological lens, redistributed more as a branch of nature (or naturalness), much as queer ecological engagements are, thereby de-centering and destabilising heteronormativity as an arbiter of what is and what is not natural.^[xxxiii]

            

Conclusions: A Return to Land of what the Land has Given

 

As the novel reaches its climax and "The Oak Tree" is published to critical acclaim, Orlando is gifted with a prize. Upon receiving it, Orlando remarks upon how their vision takes them to "the oak tree here on its hill", wondering "what has that got to do with this?", words that function as a reminder of the enmeshed relations between the material and poetic worlds, between Orlando and the oak, and their enduring impact upon each other.^[xxxiv] As a mirror and a bracket to the first time the oak is introduced to us, Orlando re-visits the oak that bore the poem's influence, flinging themselves for the last time upon the ground below the oak tree, feeling once again

 

   "the bones of the tree running out like ribs from a spine this way and that beneath her […] as she flung herself         down a little square book bound in red cloth fell from the breast of her leather jacket - her poem 'The Oak     Tree'. 'I should have brought a trowel', she reflected".^[xxxv]

 

Although they intend to bury the book as a tribute, "a return to the land of what the land has given me", a combination of the act's romanticism and Orlando's self-declared silliness prevents them from doing so, leaving it instead upon the risen roots above the surface of the soil to lie "unburied and dishevelled on the ground".^[xxxvi] Buried or not, Orlando's intention of returning the now published novel to the ground, the tree or the landscape from whence it came, signifies an acknowledgement of nature itself having given something to Orlando, whether passively or actively, emotionally or physically, and this act having an impact on Orlando's desire to give something back. This notion of reciprocity, or the idea that humans and the natural world are involved in a form of mutual exchange, can be thought of as one final act of subversion. An acknowledgement of the oak tree as agent, as a literary character form, and of its significance in Orlando's life that has been both direct and tangible, but also imperceptible. The queer ecology of Orlando therefore lies not only in their consistent resistance to rigid gender and sexual norms that permeate their life, but also within the ways in which Orlando engages with ideas of nature both as something out there, but also within themselves. In this sense Orlando can be understood to embody aspects of the natural world itself. Much as the oak begins in the novel as a single entity to then split in two only to be reunited again at the end, Orlando also repeats this cyclical journey through their beginnings as a male their transition to female and the gendered tensions that occur as a result, only to finally reunite and reconcile those tensions within one body and form. This journey itself can even be thought of as a form of queer ecological temporality, in that their cyclical nature disrupts the linear aspects of straight time that have come to dominate much of how Orlando navigates their life, and how the portrayal of the natural world and the oak tree within the novel reveal Orlando's character as an embodiment of queer ecological ideologies that not only subverts traditions, but also gives rise to concepts of otherness as oneness with nature.  

 

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Endnotes