Orlando: Mood 1 key example

Although Orlando consistently raises large and perhaps unanswerable questions regarding society across centuries, it is not explicitly grounded in traditional philosophy. Rather, it is experimental in how both Orlando and the narrator address their questions about life. The narration sheds light on issues of nature, morality, the passage of time, and humanity itself. These issues often carry great weight, but Woolf rarely evokes a somber mood through her writing. She instead uses playful, tongue-in-cheek satire. The narrator, like Orlando herself, is curious to learn and report back to the reader their findings as they explore time and space across centuries of existence.

Woolf's narrator clearly takes pleasure in their task of telling Orlando's story, and often cannot help but comment on the story with humorous quips. Not only does this create a more intimate reading experience, but it imbues the novel with a sense of intimacy, especially considering that the book is ostensibly supposed to be a biography—a conventionally serious, sometimes even dry genre. Woolf's playful experimentation thus defines the mood of Orlando, leaving the reader with a sense of curiosity.