Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR - WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION FINALIST - 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 "Simply, a masterpiece...Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in full." --Geraldine Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of Horse 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.
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Community Reviews
Definitely going against the popular reviews of this book.. but in all honesty Wifedom became Boredom for me and if it had not been a choice by a member in my Book Group I would not have read it. Eileen O'Shaughnessy seemed like an intelligent, admirable and rather complex woman. If the Author's intention was to celebrate this and highlight her contribution to her husband Orwell's success, it became overshadowed by portraying her as yet another victim of patriarchy. Whilst this may actually have been true (we will never know as the dead can't talk), in all honesty based on the half a dozen letters from Eileen to her friend Nora covering a 9 year period, I was not left convinced that Eileen felt this. What gives a third person the right to portray a woman in this way and in doing so the Author also managed to effectively cast some dark shadows over George Orwell and how he and Eileen lived their married life together. Here's a quote I use often: "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice". Many, many, many people worldwide practice philanthropy (in its various forms), many of them prefer this to go unnoticed and many of them would do this for their wife, husband, partner, children, family members - out of love. If a woman chooses to do this (and no-where in this book did I derive that Eileen did anything for Orwell other than from her love and dedication to him) and her husband benefits from this, does this automatically make her a victim of patriarchy? The book was based on a handful of letters, vague recollections from people who knew Eileen and George during their marriage and most astonishing of all - the Authors interpretations of what she believes was "left out rather than included" in books, both written about and by Orwell. I feel the Author took great liberties in the context and interpretation of the material she used for this book and her own personal musings derived from this. Onto the writing itself: I found the way the book was written very incoherent. It felt to me that there was never enough material for this to be a book and most certainly not one of 400 plus pages. The Author packed it out by including segments of her own life (which I found fractured the book) and then a whole section of around 70 pages "After Life" based on Orwell after Eileen passed. For a novel that was purported to reveal the invisible life of Eileen it focussed a heck of a lot more on George Orwell instead. Read with an open mind.
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