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In the Orchard
This is an e-publication of just one short story.
The free download link is below.
The free download link is below.
7 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1923
81 people want to read
About the author
Virginia Woolf
1,909 books28.1k followers(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
June 4, 2024
Cubist impressionism or impressionist cubism?
(Roger Fry)
How would it feel to step inside an impressionist painting, to thrust through the two-dimensionality of the canvas and experience the scents, the light, the colours, the sounds, the sun, the breeze and the birds? Reading Virginia Woolf’s In the Orchard, a delightfully visual micro-triptych of just three pages, written in 1923, in between Jacob’s room and Mrss Dalloway, came close to me.
Once tumbled into Woolf’s evocation of the moment however, slightly disorientated by the manifold imprints on the senses, the three perspectives on the orchard seem to merge into one, adding to the original impressionist character of the tableau an almost cubist representation of the scene.
(Vanessa Bell)
Miranda, asleep or not asleep, in a chair beneath the apple trees, floating on the sea of her corporal sensations, dreams and reflections, the wind caressing the face, the heart beating.
The opals on her finger flushed green, flushed rosy, and again flushed orange as the sun, oozing through the apple-trees, filled them. Then, when the breeze blew, her purple dress rippled like a flower attached to a stalk; the grasses nodded; and the white butterfly came blowing this way and that just above her face.
(Vanessa Bell)
In the orchard is another immersive, sensory feast in which Virginia Woolf discloses how to open up the senses and so experience everyday life anew and more in depth.
(Roger Fry)
How would it feel to step inside an impressionist painting, to thrust through the two-dimensionality of the canvas and experience the scents, the light, the colours, the sounds, the sun, the breeze and the birds? Reading Virginia Woolf’s In the Orchard, a delightfully visual micro-triptych of just three pages, written in 1923, in between Jacob’s room and Mrss Dalloway, came close to me.
Once tumbled into Woolf’s evocation of the moment however, slightly disorientated by the manifold imprints on the senses, the three perspectives on the orchard seem to merge into one, adding to the original impressionist character of the tableau an almost cubist representation of the scene.
(Vanessa Bell)
Miranda, asleep or not asleep, in a chair beneath the apple trees, floating on the sea of her corporal sensations, dreams and reflections, the wind caressing the face, the heart beating.
The opals on her finger flushed green, flushed rosy, and again flushed orange as the sun, oozing through the apple-trees, filled them. Then, when the breeze blew, her purple dress rippled like a flower attached to a stalk; the grasses nodded; and the white butterfly came blowing this way and that just above her face.
(Vanessa Bell)
In the orchard is another immersive, sensory feast in which Virginia Woolf discloses how to open up the senses and so experience everyday life anew and more in depth.
February 10, 2023
I wish I wrote the way I thought
Obsessively
Incessantly
With maddening hunger
I’d write to the point of suffocation
I’d write myself into nervous breakdowns
Manuscripts spiraling out like tentacles into abysmal nothing
And I’d write about you
a lot more
than I should
― Benedict Smith
The world of Woolf is full of seas of ecclesiastical dreams in which has been mediated with careful precision of a keen observer. She has been always aware of the multiple worlds which existed simultaneously for humanity- one was outside in the shape of the various phenomena in, and the other inside consciousness of human beings wherein the vast store of impressions, gathered at numerous significant moments of existence, got churned in and out to produce dense sensations. However those two realms might have had their converging points somewhere, and that’s where the artistic abilities of Woolf came into play with the precision of a surgeon to fuse these two realms- the mental and the material- together and result is poetic impressions which came very close to impressionist art. I feel that Woolf expressed herself to the best of her literary prowess in The Waves, which appeared to me like a long poetic love letter to the literature itself, and this short story- In the Orchard- could be said a little glimpse of that.
The Woolf lovers would know that how deftly she used her observation and experience, which dissolved into fleeting glimpses and so organized that it assumes the form of lyric poetry. She used words in a way which may be regarded as poetry. Her allusions and images, rhythms, refrains and metaphors, all of them join together to make her style poetic. She removed the normal substance of prose fiction – the element of a human being involved in some form of drama – and substituted a combination of visual imagery, of philosophic reflections, and grammatical constructs which tied these elements together. This experimental story was an exercise in what might be called literary cubism – the same scene is viewed from different perspectives as we see in this story which has been divided into three short segments, each one of those reflects at orchard garden differently from others.
The story quite deftly portrays the literary faculties of Woolf as she presented three vignettes in three different styles, which speaks volume about her. We see a mixture of modernism which Woolf is famous for with other styles of narration which we generally don’t associate with her. She experimented here, which only a person top of her might could do, with the task of writing three versions of this story or sketch from a brief and with the ways in which different kinds of author would render the scene, what details they would pay attention to.
Miranda slept in the orchard, or was she asleep or was she not asleep? Her purple dress stretched between the two apple trees. There were twenty-four apple-trees in the orchard, some slanting slightly, others growing straight with a rush up the trunk which spread wide into branches and formed into round red or yellow drops. Each apple-tree had sufficient space. The sky exactly fitted the leaves. When the breeze blew, the line of the boughs against the wall slanted slightly and then returned. A wagtail flew diagonally from one corner to another.
We see that the main character of short story- Miranda is portrayed just like an object like other ones and she has not been given narrative space which could have enabled her to make connect with the reader. Woolf as author is making these connections between the earth, the air, the wind, the orchard, and even the cabbages. She does not persuade us that Miranda is conscious of them. Miranda has been purposefully portrayed as just one of the elements of the composition and nothing more, infusing her with parts of the story to construct a canvas of serene and beautiful paintings, using words though. She approached like a painter who wanted to render only the basic visual elements of a composition. It was a step towards what we now call ‘abstraction’. In the Orchard is fairly clearly an experiment in doing something similar with prose, rather than paint.
Miranda slept in the orchard—or perhaps she was not asleep, for her lips moved very slightly as if they were saying, ‘Ce pays est vraiment un des coins du monde … oui le rire des filles … eclate … eclate … eclate .’and then she smiled and let her body sink all its weight on to the enormous earth which rises, she thought, to carry me on its back as if I were a leaf, or a queen (here the children said the multiplication table), or, Miranda went on, I might be lying on the top of a cliff with the gulls screaming above me.
Obsessively
Incessantly
With maddening hunger
I’d write to the point of suffocation
I’d write myself into nervous breakdowns
Manuscripts spiraling out like tentacles into abysmal nothing
And I’d write about you
a lot more
than I should
― Benedict Smith
The world of Woolf is full of seas of ecclesiastical dreams in which has been mediated with careful precision of a keen observer. She has been always aware of the multiple worlds which existed simultaneously for humanity- one was outside in the shape of the various phenomena in, and the other inside consciousness of human beings wherein the vast store of impressions, gathered at numerous significant moments of existence, got churned in and out to produce dense sensations. However those two realms might have had their converging points somewhere, and that’s where the artistic abilities of Woolf came into play with the precision of a surgeon to fuse these two realms- the mental and the material- together and result is poetic impressions which came very close to impressionist art. I feel that Woolf expressed herself to the best of her literary prowess in The Waves, which appeared to me like a long poetic love letter to the literature itself, and this short story- In the Orchard- could be said a little glimpse of that.
The Woolf lovers would know that how deftly she used her observation and experience, which dissolved into fleeting glimpses and so organized that it assumes the form of lyric poetry. She used words in a way which may be regarded as poetry. Her allusions and images, rhythms, refrains and metaphors, all of them join together to make her style poetic. She removed the normal substance of prose fiction – the element of a human being involved in some form of drama – and substituted a combination of visual imagery, of philosophic reflections, and grammatical constructs which tied these elements together. This experimental story was an exercise in what might be called literary cubism – the same scene is viewed from different perspectives as we see in this story which has been divided into three short segments, each one of those reflects at orchard garden differently from others.
The story quite deftly portrays the literary faculties of Woolf as she presented three vignettes in three different styles, which speaks volume about her. We see a mixture of modernism which Woolf is famous for with other styles of narration which we generally don’t associate with her. She experimented here, which only a person top of her might could do, with the task of writing three versions of this story or sketch from a brief and with the ways in which different kinds of author would render the scene, what details they would pay attention to.
Miranda slept in the orchard, or was she asleep or was she not asleep? Her purple dress stretched between the two apple trees. There were twenty-four apple-trees in the orchard, some slanting slightly, others growing straight with a rush up the trunk which spread wide into branches and formed into round red or yellow drops. Each apple-tree had sufficient space. The sky exactly fitted the leaves. When the breeze blew, the line of the boughs against the wall slanted slightly and then returned. A wagtail flew diagonally from one corner to another.
We see that the main character of short story- Miranda is portrayed just like an object like other ones and she has not been given narrative space which could have enabled her to make connect with the reader. Woolf as author is making these connections between the earth, the air, the wind, the orchard, and even the cabbages. She does not persuade us that Miranda is conscious of them. Miranda has been purposefully portrayed as just one of the elements of the composition and nothing more, infusing her with parts of the story to construct a canvas of serene and beautiful paintings, using words though. She approached like a painter who wanted to render only the basic visual elements of a composition. It was a step towards what we now call ‘abstraction’. In the Orchard is fairly clearly an experiment in doing something similar with prose, rather than paint.
Miranda slept in the orchard—or perhaps she was not asleep, for her lips moved very slightly as if they were saying, ‘Ce pays est vraiment un des coins du monde … oui le rire des filles … eclate … eclate … eclate .’and then she smiled and let her body sink all its weight on to the enormous earth which rises, she thought, to carry me on its back as if I were a leaf, or a queen (here the children said the multiplication table), or, Miranda went on, I might be lying on the top of a cliff with the gulls screaming above me.
February 3, 2019
Miranda slept in the orchard, or was she asleep or was she not asleep? Her purple dress stretched between the two apple trees. There were twenty-four apple-trees in the orchard, some slanting slightly, others growing straight with a rush up the trunk which spread wide into branches and formed into round red or yellow drops. Each apple-tree had sufficient space. The sky exactly fitted the leaves.
It's nice to read at least one Woolf short story every year. "The Orchard" was first published in the magazine The Criterion in April 1923. It blends elements of the unconsciousness with the outside world in such a delightful way that it places the reader in a similar orchard, where she or he sleeps at ease, safe and carefree.
Jan 6, 19
* Also on my blog.
September 11, 2020
In five pages, Woolf shares a story that carried me away on a wild, intangible dream, or perhaps something with a sprinkle of an Alice in Wonderful-ish idea of Woolf’s vision of a dreamlike state of mind, or a world where visions of life float in and out with visions of apple and pear trees as Miranda sleeps, or perhaps doesn’t sleep, in the orchard. I felt as though I was hovering above it all as she whispered these words in my ear, as lovely as any song, and as delightful as the happy laughter of children at play, as lovely as the flowers, as refreshing as the breeze that blew through these pages.
Delightful
June 28, 2025
Dreamy and disjointed, In the Orchard feels like a poetic nap you’re not sure you enjoyed or needed. ⭐⭐⭐
June 15, 2022
3.5 stars
September 4, 2019
I don't know why I hadn't read Virginia Woolf before. This is my second short story of hers, and I think I am in love.
Her observations, the descriptions of the orchard, as she paints a scene is almost like a painting come alive, only much more. It is a three dimensional, moving, come-alive image infused with the smell, the warmth of an orchard on a canvas, again only much more. It was as if I was there with Miranda, and oh, I shall be late for tea! It is perplexing how strong the impression is of when I was there. Through the ways the apple boughs move rhythmically through the air, the ripples in the wind as they caraouss Miranda's skirt, the warm playfulness of the sun with the spaces through the leaves as they create almost an impressionist painting of the sky, these descriptions of the orchard so beautifully done it gives you a sense of presence. I don't really know what this form of storytelling(is it?), or pondering(perhaps not, very unlike Henry James' 'Aspern Papers' she is) it is? I just wish it were longer. I would have loved to have watched, glanced, and wondered more. I would have loved to sit there for a while and meander in my thoughts, with my eyes, but oh, I shall be late for tea! Was that the reason Woolf ended this beautiful painting so soon? It is said that for a short story, you should leave the reader wanting a bit more, or yearning for more and more and more. And I didn't think anyone could do that better than O Henry. But she did. I am in love with her now. Why didn't I read her sooner?
"Each apple-tree had sufficient space. The sky exactly fitted the leaves." - It isn't the most poetic line in the story, or hers or anyone's. But she had me here.
I would love to, and would definitely too, and soon read more of hers.
Happy reading! :)
Her observations, the descriptions of the orchard, as she paints a scene is almost like a painting come alive, only much more. It is a three dimensional, moving, come-alive image infused with the smell, the warmth of an orchard on a canvas, again only much more. It was as if I was there with Miranda, and oh, I shall be late for tea! It is perplexing how strong the impression is of when I was there. Through the ways the apple boughs move rhythmically through the air, the ripples in the wind as they caraouss Miranda's skirt, the warm playfulness of the sun with the spaces through the leaves as they create almost an impressionist painting of the sky, these descriptions of the orchard so beautifully done it gives you a sense of presence. I don't really know what this form of storytelling(is it?), or pondering(perhaps not, very unlike Henry James' 'Aspern Papers' she is) it is? I just wish it were longer. I would have loved to have watched, glanced, and wondered more. I would have loved to sit there for a while and meander in my thoughts, with my eyes, but oh, I shall be late for tea! Was that the reason Woolf ended this beautiful painting so soon? It is said that for a short story, you should leave the reader wanting a bit more, or yearning for more and more and more. And I didn't think anyone could do that better than O Henry. But she did. I am in love with her now. Why didn't I read her sooner?
"Each apple-tree had sufficient space. The sky exactly fitted the leaves." - It isn't the most poetic line in the story, or hers or anyone's. But she had me here.
I would love to, and would definitely too, and soon read more of hers.
Happy reading! :)
January 30, 2019
In what order does sound, thought, and geometry determine the landscape of consciousness? How do we reconcile the physical world with our imagination?
Woolf's short story is concerned with Miranda, who happens to be sleeping in an orchard. While she sleeps, sounds of the bucolic hit her from all directions, pivoting her thought pattern, and shaping her perspective of the world.
We flit back and forth from conscious to unconscious mind, with Woolf herself moving from omniscient narrator to first person character. Only Miranda operates as our locus, and yet she holds no more importance than the rest of the world around her.
There is a great beauty here, and it's the interconnection of all the world through Miranda, even when she isn't aware of it.
‘Ce pays est vraiment un des coins du monde ou le rire des filles eclate le mieux…’
April 24, 2021
Just as lovely as I thought it would be. Three little sections giving a whole picture of humans and nature, and a little French to tease out as well. Here are the apple trees with leaves ‘ flat like little fish against the blue’ , here can be heard ‘ life itself crying out from the curved green leaves of the cabbage’ while Miranda sleeps nature carries on around her , with all its sounds brought to life.
I read this because my last book made me think of Woolf in her garden at Monks House and Penelope Lively made me consider Woolf’s writing as Monet with words. Now I will have to read more.
I read this because my last book made me think of Woolf in her garden at Monks House and Penelope Lively made me consider Woolf’s writing as Monet with words. Now I will have to read more.
January 30, 2019
This is a beautiful short story by Virginia Woolf.
As soon as I read it, I was transported back in time some twenty-five years to my visits to Virginia Woolf’s house, called Monk’s House, in the tiny village of Rodmell on England’s South Downs. In the garden behind the house there is a small orchard, beyond that is Virginia’s writing hut where she would compose her stories and then just beyond the garden is the tower of the village church. All the elements that are part of this story.
One of the things that struck me at once were the mixtures of perspectives within this story. The apples hang in the tree four feet above Miranda’s head, the chanting of the school children passed overhead at the same level, thirty feet above are the top most leaves of the apple tree (like little fish against the blue sky) and then the church tower is two hundred feet above, while above that is the weather vane on top of the spire, charting the movements in the direction of the wind. One final shift takes us to the dizzying heights of the cliff top, perhaps the nearby Beachy Head, where the gulls soar overhead, and the beach lies so far below. I like the way all these changing perspectives play out, while lying back and looking upwards.
Your view is limited as you look upwards through the tree to where “The sky exactly fitted the leaves”. This gives the story a lazy feel, when it is too much effort to turn your head and look somewhere else.
https://goo.gl/images/LMzhSg
As soon as I read it, I was transported back in time some twenty-five years to my visits to Virginia Woolf’s house, called Monk’s House, in the tiny village of Rodmell on England’s South Downs. In the garden behind the house there is a small orchard, beyond that is Virginia’s writing hut where she would compose her stories and then just beyond the garden is the tower of the village church. All the elements that are part of this story.
One of the things that struck me at once were the mixtures of perspectives within this story. The apples hang in the tree four feet above Miranda’s head, the chanting of the school children passed overhead at the same level, thirty feet above are the top most leaves of the apple tree (like little fish against the blue sky) and then the church tower is two hundred feet above, while above that is the weather vane on top of the spire, charting the movements in the direction of the wind. One final shift takes us to the dizzying heights of the cliff top, perhaps the nearby Beachy Head, where the gulls soar overhead, and the beach lies so far below. I like the way all these changing perspectives play out, while lying back and looking upwards.
Your view is limited as you look upwards through the tree to where “The sky exactly fitted the leaves”. This gives the story a lazy feel, when it is too much effort to turn your head and look somewhere else.
https://goo.gl/images/LMzhSg
March 19, 2015
Absolutely in love with the structure of this short story, quite ominous with its touches of the unconscious.
September 18, 2019
This is a true sketch, not only in the literary sense of the word, but also as a piece of painting. This short story describes a scene in which time has stopped, and time passes with incredible speed; something possible only in a painting, and at the final lines of the text, the descriptions become more and more explicit, until they literally turn into the description of a painting.
A nice literary experiment, but that's the end of it. One compliant that I have about Woolf's experimental work is that albeit being very innovative, they lack purpose, and do not contribute to a coherent whole in which her innovative techniques have been put to good use.
A nice literary experiment, but that's the end of it. One compliant that I have about Woolf's experimental work is that albeit being very innovative, they lack purpose, and do not contribute to a coherent whole in which her innovative techniques have been put to good use.
December 7, 2024
Another beautiful short story. Here Miranda is lying in an Or hard, she is asleep, then a new story for when she is awake.
This story is so beautifully descriptive, it feels like you are there, you can smell the grass, hear the children playing and hear the church bells too.
This story is so beautifully descriptive, it feels like you are there, you can smell the grass, hear the children playing and hear the church bells too.
March 27, 2019
Interesting short story in which Woolf writes with three varying degrees of narrative closeness to the protagonist. A woman sleeping in an orchard, a brief moment in time, over and over again.
May 1, 2022
Woolf moves her reader with poetic grace through this idyllic pastoral scene of a woman sleeping in an orchard by a village church.
December 25, 2022
What a way to end the year, with Virginia Woolf❤️
January 19, 2023
My favorite thing in all of existence
September 12, 2023
To be Miranda in the orchard, sitting majestically under the apple trees...
March 11, 2024
Beautiful, but still playful :)
April 12, 2024
The book I read contained 'In the Orchard', 'Evenings over Sussex', and 'Three pictures' (book not found on Goodreads). Three pictures was my favourite.
December 30, 2024
interessante
May 30, 2025
Maurice! no....
November 23, 2023
Not my favourite Virginia Woolf.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews