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Book Reviewed by:
Peggy Kurkowski
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This is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century - and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world.
At the end of summer 2017, Anna Funder found herself at a moment of peak overload. Family obligations and household responsibilities were crushing her soul and taking her away from her writing deadlines. She needed help, and George Orwell came to her rescue.
"I've always loved Orwell," Funder writes, "his self-deprecating humour, his laser vision about how power works, and who it works on." So after rereading and savoring books Orwell had written, she devoured six major biographies tracing his life and work. But then she read about his forgotten wife, and it was a revelation.
Eileen O'Shaughnessy married Orwell in 1936. O'Shaughnessy was a writer herself, and her literary brilliance not only shaped Orwell's work, but her practical common sense saved his life. But why and how, Funder wondered, was she written out of their story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder re-creates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War in London. As she peeks behind the curtain of Orwell's private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer—and what it is to be a wife.
A breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the twentieth century, Wifedom speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past. Genre-bending and utterly original, it is an ode to the unsung work of women everywhere.
Excerpt
Wifedom
How did I get here?
At the end of summer 2017 I found myself at a moment of peak overload: organising separate new schools for my teenage daughters – uniforms, books, dozens of emails – orthodontics, euphonium hire, my son's holiday program (bring extra shirt for tie-dye!), ferrying a depressed French exchange student to see the sights, arranging for recalcitrant, condescending tradesmen to patch up my old house in three-hour windows of their choosing, sorting out a relative's hospital care, and hosting dear interstate family at a time of great sadness.
All of this was taking me away from work deadlines ticking under every waking minute. I shopped for groceries, yet again, in the soul-sapping local mall. I wound the car, yet again, down the ramps from floor to floor, following EXIT signs I knew were empty promises: I could never, really, leave. When the greedy boom-gate machine inhaled my ticket, I knew: the mall had sucked out my privileged, perimenopausal ...
There is pain, sadness, and anger in Wifedom, an acute recognition of the ways "wifedom" can be a "wicked magic trick" that obscures and omits the sacrifices of women. In retrieving Eileen Blair "from behind the Cerberus," Funder puts her squarely back in frame as her own person and not just "Mrs. Orwell."..continued
Full Review
(833 words)
(Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski).
Claire Tomalin
A truly wonderful biography...Anna Funder has written another brilliant human portrait. Geraldine Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of Horse
Simply, a masterpiece. Here, Anna Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in full. And this in a narrative that grips the reader and unfolds through some of the most consequential moments—historical and cultural—of the twentieth century.
Readers might be forgiven if, in reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, they miss the fact that his first wife, Eileen Blair, was in Spain with him, working for the Republican resistance against Franco's fascist forces. As Anna Funder points out in Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life, when George does refer to her, he does not even use her given name; she becomes merely "my wife."
In a Guardian article, the author expands on this act of erasure. "In Homage, Orwell mentions ‘my wife' 37 times but never once names her. No character can come to life without a name. But from a wife, which is a job description, all can be stolen." Eileen's contributions to the war effort were not inconsequential, as she was constantly on the move:...
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