Review: Vivien Horler

Wifedom – Mrs Orwell’s invisible life, by Anna Funder (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin)

The picture on the cover hints at the story: a half-glimpse of an attractive woman, intelligent-looking, good hair – but almost not there at all.

And if you read George Orwell, or his biographies, that would be the impression you’re left with – where is Eileen Orwell?

This book – part memoir, part fiction, and part biography – appeared in 2023 and has garnered excellent reviews. I came across it in a bookshop in Sydney’s Kingsford Smith airport – Anna Funder lives in Sydney – recognised I had read about it, and bought it. By the time I reached Cape Town, nearly 24 hours later, I had almost finished it.

It has been described variously as electrifying, brilliant, spellbinding, fascinating. I would go with all those adjectives.

It’s a look at marriage, as the title suggests, and why women, particularly clever, ambitious women, should probably have nothing to do with it.

In the hot Sydney summer of 2017 Funder, feeling overwhelmed by domestic responsibility, went into a bookshop and found a first-edition, four-volume series of Orwell’s Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters from 1968.

She had always loved Orwell – author of the acclaimed Animal Farm and 1984 – for “his self-deprecating humour, his laser vision about how power works, and who it works on”. She bought the books.

Then she spent the next few months reading them, as well as the the six major biographies of Orwell’s life. She found it all “a joy”.

Until she came across a passage, written by Orwell towards the end of his life in a private literary notebook: “There were two great facts about women which … you could only learn by getting married, & and which flatly contradicted the picture of themselves that women had managed to impose upon the world. One was their incorrigible dirtiness & untidiness. The other was their terrible, devouring sexuality.”

Funder says: “Orwell only ever lived with one wife. These comments refer to Eileen.”

A few paragraphs later she adds: “He sees women – as wives – in terms of what they do for him, or ‘demand’ of him. Not enough cleaning, too much sex. How was it, then, for her? My first guess: too much cleaning and not enough, or not good enough, sex.”

And so Funder began to research the wife. This book is the result.

Early on there’s a telling interaction between Funder and her 16-year-old daughter. Funder is saying it’s hard to know how to think about an author you’ve long loved if you find out they were… “An arsehole?” says the daughter helpfully. “Maybe,” says Funder.

She realises the biographers, all men, minimise the importance of women in Orwell’s life. This begins to look deliberate, and so Funder goes to their sources, as well as other sources, and pieces together the details of a remarkable woman.

In 2005, well after the biographies were written, six letters from Eileen to her best friend, Norah, were found in Norah’s papers. They date from shortly after the Orwells married in 1936, through their time in Spain and later Morocco (Orwell almost certainly had TB and needed a dry climate), and in London during the Blitz.

Eileen O’Shaughnessy won a scholarship to Oxford (Orwell went to Eton but never to university), in 1934 published a poem called End of the Century, 1984, and twice organised co-workers to stand up to bullying bosses. She also played a serious role in Spain during its civil war, following Orwell to the battle in 1937 against Franco as part of a small British Independent Labour Party contingent. She faced arrest and possible execution.

Orwell wrote a book afterwards, Homage to Catalonia, in which her central role was barely mentioned and she was referred to only as “my wife”, never by name.

She worked with him, typing and editing his manuscripts, and is credited with improving his writing. She always knew she came second to his work. She wrote that should she ever be in serious trouble her brother would drop everything and come, but Orwell wouldn’t.

She ran their home, usually in the bleak, remote places that suited Orwell. She looked after the goat, chickens, dog and home (no electricity) and ran the village shop. Every time she wanted to visit Norah, Orwell would fall ill. She knew about – and was deeply hurt by – his sexual affairs.

Towards the end of her life in March 1945, when she was seriously ill, she was more concerned about his happiness and his welfare than her own. She needed major surgery, but wrote worriedly about how much it would cost.

Interspersed with the story of Orwell and Eileen are Funder’s realisations about her role in her own marriage as a wife and mother of three children.

She writes, in 2022/2023: “I needed to face the unpleasant fact that despite Craig and I imagining we divided the work of life and love equally, the world had conspired against our best intentions. I’d been doing the lion’s share for so long we’d stopped noticing. For someone who notices things for a living, this seemed, to borrow our nine-year-old’s son’s term, ‘an epic fail’.”

It doesn’t matter if it’s 1936 or 2024, most married women still bear the brunt of domestic work. But if you’ve chosen wisely, perhaps not entirely. In her coda Funder, who is in her study, writes: “Craig calls me in for dinner.”

She enters the kitchen to find her 17-year-old daughter writing an essay on Lot’s wife. The daughter points out the nameless wife is blamed for her own death, because she was disobedient and deserved what she got.

Funder marvels at her daughter’s insight. “She is starting out in a place I’ve only just reached.”