From Man to Woman to a New Understanding of Gender: Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve.

Both Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve depict the transformation of a male character into a female one. In both texts these changes are not initially desired by the subjects but rather they are imposed on them by forces outside their control. Their transitions from male to female stirs in both novels a debate regarding the construction of gender by society and its influence in people. This article will analyze the way Orlando and Evelyn/Eve enter womanhood after going through a sex change and how both transformations imply a loss of power and privilege once the characters are no longer men. It will also compare and discuss the alternatives Woolf and Carter offer in terms of the new understandings of gender they propose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]