George Orwell's wife

How weak men's gods are that they can be destroyed by recognising the fact that the women in their lives helped them achieve god-like status.

Amen to that, sister.

I must remind myself, yet again, not to read the comments. Although some of them are fine and even interesting - the woman whose Nobel Laureate husband wrote his autobiography and mentioned her only once, went to a friend to get it published who suggested his wife could be his editor. The NL baulked at the idea as he might want her name on the book. It was never published - many of them are from men who think that all Funder wants to do is slag off Orwell. How weak men's gods are that they can be destroyed by recognising the fact that the women in their lives helped them achieve god-like status.

39, apols.

He was married twice. His second wife, Sonia, married him when he was in hospital with TB, three months before his death.

Eileen, his first wife, i.e. the subject of this thread, died at the age of 30 under the anaesthetic while having a hysterectomy. Poor, poor woman.

Fascinating - thank you. His 'always getting something' antics would certainly earn a chorus of LTB on here.

And I love the Lynn Peters poem, too.

I did not know he was married. Can’t wait to read this, thanks @ArabeIIaScott

Anna Funder wrote Stasiland which I still re read regularly and feel astonished, so I will definitely check that book out. Thank you for posting.

And the Hard Way also - lovely to know what talent there is here 🙂

Guardian, hence Garnie. What a lovely book it is. Notable that all the capable managing/coping women are single, although I suppose we might have found out that the nice garage owner man's wife could be described in those terms too, had we been told more about her.

On a contemporary note, do those of you who socialise as a couple ever notice that male friends will ask your DH how work is going but not you?

Yeah but Sylvia isn't actually their mother - she's a single woman and GUM just lands her with the responsibility. So I think it's ok for her to get in some help!

Special award though for the mum in Swallows and Amazons who I always thought was winning at life. Seen as the best of mothers, kids all at boarding school, baby with nurse, farmers wife doing the housework/cooking AND she manages to parcel four small kids off to an island on a lake for most of the hols.

Sylvia in Ballet Shoes is similar - no job, full time nanny, cook and housemaid, sends the kids out to earn a living asap.

Yes to both. To be fair, both were (effectively) single mothers, so although they were doing very little of the domestic work they did carry the responsibility of looking after the money and managing the staff.

The passive voice is actually very much used I have JUST REALISED in classic children’s literature (even or indeed especially when written by women). The delicious picnics and clean cosy homes and mended clothes and magical christmases are all organised by… WOMEN!

Christmas and the work women put into it was a shocker to me, but to be fair my husband would just put 99% less work into it and enjoy it just as much.

Special award though for the mum in Swallows and Amazons who I always thought was winning at life. Seen as the best of mothers, kids all at boarding school, baby with nurse, farmers wife doing the housework/cooking AND she manages to parcel four small kids off to an island on a lake for most of the hols.

Sylvia in Ballet Shoes is similar - no job, full time nanny, cook and housemaid, sends the kids out to earn a living asap.

He may say wise words but he's still a man...

Brilliant, poignant and still relevant.

A favourite poem by Lynn Peters:

Why Dorothy Wordsworth is not as famous as her brother
"I wandered lonely as a...
They're in the top drawer, William,
Under your socks -
I wandered lonely as a -
No not that drawer, the top one.
I wandered by myself -
Well wear the ones you can find.
No, don't get overwrought my dear, I'm coming.

"I wandered lonely as a -
Lonely as a cloud when -
Soft-boiled egg, yes my dear,
As usual, three minutes -
As a cloud which floats -
Look, I said I'll cook it,
Just hold on will you -
All right, I'm coming.

"One day I was out for a walk
When I saw this flock -
It can't be too hard, it had three minutes.
Well put some butter in it. -
This host of golden daffodils
As I was out for a stroll one -
"Oh you fancy a stroll, do you?
Yes all right, William, I'm coming.
It's on the peg. Under your hat.
I'll bring my pad, shall I, in case
You want to jot something down?"

Think of the TBR pile as a stylish accent feature.

Thanks - an eye-opening read!

@TressiliansStone One trick I have found helpful with the family history is that English women in Victorian times seem to have quite often used their maiden name as a middle name for -usually - their first child. So I think they were a bit pissed off then too.

Excellent, thank you.

I am now going to do a shameless bit of self-promotion here, as I've got a book coming out next year which is also partly about this, particularly about how women like John Betjeman's wife Penelope and Tirzah Garwood, who married Eric Ravilous were amazing women who were utterly eclipsed by their husbands. And the most extraordinary of all seems to have been the artist Paul Nash's wife, Margaret, who disappeared entirely (first from Oxford, apparently brilliant, trail blazing social worker - then got married to a shit who had affairs).

It's also about being a woman and trying to get away from home now, as well as some brilliant women who did this and wrote about it. And lots else too.

Anyway it's called The Hard Way and it's being published by Unbound, who do a mix of crowdfunding and trad publishing, so do go and have a look at it on the website and then find me on Twitter where I've been telling some of these stories as threads...

I found that quite sad. I haven’t read so many Orwell books, but I reread 1984 not so long ago and it was immediately obvious to me, in a way I entirely missed when younger, how dismissive Winston was of Julia. I found myself wanting to rewrite it from Julia’s perspective, which I have no doubt would show her in a very different light.

She sounds like a wonderful woman and I’d like to bet that the sudden improvement in his writing was partly due to having someone smart to bat ideas around with and also probably because she edited whatever he wrote into something much better.

And now I’m imagining a very different world and a man who actually loved and respected his wife to the point where he acknowledged her input. Imagine how much he could have changed the world for the better for women.