George Orwell's wife

[ArabeIIaScott]

Article by the author of a new book on Orwell's wife, out in August. Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/30/my-hunt-for-eileen-george-orwell-erased-wife-anna-funder

'No character can come to life without a name. But from a wife, which is a job description, all can be stolen.'

'the methods of omission ... fascinated me. When women can’t be left out, they are doubted, trivialised, or reduced to footnotes in eight-point type. Other times, chronology is manipulated to conceal. But the most insidious way the actions of women are omitted is by using the passive voice.'

'We think we’ve come a long way in 80 years, but statistically, there is an irrefutable, globally intransigent heterosexual norm that pervades across ethnicity, colour and class. Nowhere in the world do women have the same power, freedom, leisure or money as their male partners. Every society is built on the unpaid or underpaid work of women, an estimated $10.9tn (£8.5tn) of it a year. But to pay would be to redistribute wealth and power in a way that might defund and defang patriarchy.'

Thanks for posting this — I found it fascinating and would've missed it otherwise. Orwell's probably my favourite writer, despite the things I've read about Orwell the person, and I'm ashamed to admit I hadn't given much thought to how his wife's existence has been pretty much elided from almost everything I've read about him. It was an eye-opening demonstration of how insidious this woman-hiding can be.

Oh My Word.

Thank you for posting, ArabeIIaScott

Wow. That's quite a read.

It also comes as no surprise.

Or rather, the surprise is that Funder managed to pin down enough surviving information about Eileen for us to know all of these things she did.

I do a great deal of family and microhistory, and all of these techniques of simply writing women out of existence are very, very familiar to me. The passive voice indeed! "It was done. It happened." But by whom was it done? Who made it happen?

I have to say, Scottish records and reporting are significantly better than English in this respect. At least women keep their own names after marriage, so that Margaret McPherson becomes known as Margaret McPherson or Brown. Whereas if she marries and moves to England, she becomes known merely as Mrs William Brown. It's quite common in English records to find a Mrs William Brown whose recorded age is more variable even than usual, and only discover later that this is because she is an entirely different woman from the first Mrs William Brown, and indeed the second Mrs William Brown, and is in fact the third wife of William Brown: her own name still unknown.

Thanks for posting this. Having the read the article I'm going to order the book, to add to my ever growing pile of 'unread but looks interesting'

Thank you, this is fascinating. I will just say in mitigation that after Eileen died many people assumed that Orwell would no longer want their recently adopted baby son Richard, but he did. He brought him up, with the help of a nanny (although of course he died when Richard was still very young). I believe I read this in Anthony Powell's autobiography. They were contemporaries, had been at Eton at around the same time, and became friends (not that close, but on good terms) in adult life as a result of shared literary interests.

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.

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...

@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.

Thanks - an eye-opening read!

Oh my god, the pile of Unread fills me with Dread.

Think of the TBR pile as a stylish accent feature.

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?"

I could probably build an Orangerie out of it. Good call.

That looks great, particularly as we enter the fifth week of the summer holidays.

Linky: https://unbound.com/books/the-hard-way/

Brilliant, poignant and still relevant.

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

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.

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 🙂

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

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.