WIFEDOM: MRS ORWELL’S INVISIBLE LIFE
Anna Funder
Penguin Random House
REVIEWED BY ANNE STEVENS
George Orwell married Eileen O’Shaughnessy in 1936, nine years before one of his most popular works Animal Farm was published. When a book like Wifedom is written, the obvious becomes apparent; she played a huge part in her husband’s writing.
The problem is in the telling; the book is a vehicle for the author to give us a lecture on misogyny and the patriarchy. The author’s premise is that male writers have a phenomenal advantage in that they benefit from the work of someone who is invisible and unpaid and whom it is not necessary to thank because it is their inescapable purpose in life to attend to you.
For the bolstering of male centrality and male imagination to work it is crucial that the supports remain invisible. A high-wire act is not awe inspiring if you can see the wires. It is probably indisputable that the premise is correct at least in part as it relates to Orwell but the frequent lectures in the book on this point are tiresome.
Orwell and O’Shaughnessy meet at a party and immediately fall into conversation; she is clearly his intellectual equal. At the end of the night Orwell tells his hostess Rosalind Obermeyer: “Eileen O’Shaughnessy is the girl I want to marry.”
Shortly after, he proposes and she accepts despite the fact her friends think it is a bad idea. O’Shaughnessy though is certainly game. She lives with him in what can only be described as a hovel. It has no power, no water and the toilet is outside and floods with sewage. She edits and helps Orwell with all his writing while he repays her by fluffing off to see other women or to fight in the Spanish civil war.
One gets glimpses of Orwell that explain the attraction. He can clearly be charming and witty but he seems a lonely man who was convinced nobody would like him until he meet O’Shaughnessy. She adored him and yet she knew his worst side, his incompetence in life and his selfish sexual pursuits. He was gangly and uncoordinated whereas his wife was practical and efficient. What impresses most about O’Shaughnessy is her resilience and persistent ability to see humour in a situation.
She dies following surgery, after suffering painful bleeding for a number of years. A tumour is diagnosed and she decides it would be a waste of money to use a reputable London surgeon and instead arranges a local doctor to undertake the procedure.
O’Shaughnessy writes a long letter to Orwell, who is in Paris, telling him how glad she is that he will miss the hospital nightmarishness given how he hates all the blood. She travels alone by bus to have the surgery. No more need be said except, satisfyingly, he was completely lost without her.
Anne Stevens KC is a Dunedin barrister
