Analysıs of Gender Roles of Mıchael Cunnıngham’s “The Hours” and Vırgınıa Woolf’s “Orlando” in Lıght of Postmodernıst Perspectıve

In the worlds of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, both protagonists are defying, exploring or subverting traditional gender roles much to the worrying eyes of society within their individual eras. Through a postmodern lens, these individuals come to light as fluidic and plural selves generation by stripping in addition of the core concept of self-built onto them creates resistance against conformity and ossified identities. Orlando biographically travels from male to female, over a number of centuries in the book Orlando: A Biography and messing with each morningside gender roles. The transformation raised questions of stable and fixed identity; fluidity and performativity in gender thus reflect postmodern notions of fragmented identity and rejection of grand narratives. Characters in The Hours also reject conventional gender roles. Virginia Woolf, the protagonist of the novel, places importance on her writing career above all other things and explicitly discusses how she resists domestic and social expectations of women in her day. It depicts Laura Brown, a typical 1950s housewife, who is frustrated with her domesticated role in the home and deeply attracted to another woman named Kitty. Living in the 1990s, Clarissa Vaughan also keeps a non-heteronormative relationship with her partner Sally, thereby disobeying conventional gender expectations and postmodern critiques of fixed identities and societal norms. Therefore, the characters in Orlando and The Hours resist social norms of their times with their acts and identities with their own way and give a rich exploration of identity, authenticity and resistance through a postmodern lens. Their stories problematize the individual identity and constructed nature of societal norms, hence making these works very significant in the study of gender and and identity in literature. Gender is explained as those roles, behaviors, activities, expectations and attributes that a given society deems appropriate for men, women and people of other gender identities. “The fact of living in the world shared by two sexes may be interpreted in an infinite variety of ways; these interpretations and the patterns they create operate at both the social and individual levels. The production of culturally appropriate forms of male and female behavior is a central function of social authority and is mediated by the complex interactions of a wide range of economic, social, political and religious institutions” (Conway, Bourque, Scott, 1987, p.22). It means both social and cultural aspects of being male, female or non-binary, and the personal sense of one’s own gender identity. This article will argue that the characters in the novels Orlando and The Hours challenge the social norms of the time through their gender roles. Gender is created to a big extent by society; thus, all the roles and expectations of males and females are culturally and historically ignited. Do the characters in the novels Orlando and The Hours, go against the social norms of the time with their gender roles?