Wifedom by Anna Funder

Wifedom by the Australian author Anna Funder is a controversial book. It certainly raises lots of questions, with many being either impossible to answer or very hard to answer categorically. It was published in 2023, and is proving a very popular book club book in 2024. (Presumably it is selling well too as bookshops have piles of copies!)

It is neither fiction nor straight non-fiction but something that Funder calls ‘Counterfiction’.  (We don’t know what the exact meaning is but, literally, it means ‘against fiction’.)  The story is based on the marriage years of Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) and Eileen O’Shaughnessy.

It is a mixture of facts based on the biographies of Orwell, his novels and his book Homage to Catalonia, and on 6 recently discovered letters written by Eileen to her good friend Norah. This is all set in the 1930s and during the Second World War in Europe. Funder also intrudes into this narrative with her own personal details of her experiences as a 21^st century wife, with ideas and commentary on the patriarchy still extant.

This is the second book we have read by Funder, the first being Stasiland (our post) which we read in 2012. 

First impressions:

• I understand that this book has divided many book groups so it will be interesting to see Minerva’s reaction. I enjoyed it, however less Anna Funder comments would have been better. I have reread Animal Farm and 1984 recently, and found them compelling and relevant for the present day. Orwell makes powerful points about the totalitarian states we are now seeing, especially in China and Russia. I have also read the recently released Julia” A retelling of George Orwell’s 1984 by Sandra Newman. Julia is the partner of Orwell’s character Winston Smith and shows great insights. 
• I liked the structure of Wifedom, its back and forth from the history to the modern day, but at times it seemed a bit disjointed. I think it shows Orwell as someone needing an ‘administrator’ which Eileen did for him. It also shows Orwell as a bastard and brought back memories of the biography of Charles Dickens, another author of similar proclivities. Orwell is insensitive, possibly gay, and possibly a rapist. 
• I am still reading it and enjoying it immensely. I have been listening to the new Julia’s Book Club segment in Julia Gillard’s podcast, A Podcast of One’s Own. The first book she discussed was Wifedom, and I recommend it. 
• I found it wonderfully written but the subject is difficult. It is very good to hear more about this important writer.
• It raised two big questions for me. The first is, in writing biographies how do you do it objectively and what biases do you bring to it. Funder clearly has an agenda. And the second is that old one of can we like the work when we don’t like the writer? 
• I liked this book, although I got bored by the carrying on and some of the behaviours.
• I was never a fan of George Orwell and I haven’t read Homage to Catalonia. Orwell appears thoughtless and careless. Eileen had a little money so she didn’t have to submit to the privations she suffered, but she did. Was it worth it ?
• I didn’t like the book.  As an older woman I found Funder’s interruptions annoying and I have heard these arguments about hard-done women, too often. I thought she was privileging her voice over Eileen’s even though she didn’t want to do that (see page 22).

Discussion

Our discussion moved back and forth around many subjects, which we have tried to pull together here into some sort of order.

The idea of patriarchy was a dominant point of our discussion. One aspect of this theme was that the book is not only a biography of the Orwell’s marriage, but also about how you research a biography to make women visible.

We discussed Funder’s point about the use of the passive voice. She argues that Orwell’s biographers used it constantly, resulting in O’Shaughnessy not being directly credited for her assistance and intellectual input.

The led to our discussing how women often undervalue their worth in relation to men, due to societal conditioning. Many women like to look after men, although some don’t and want their own lives. Funder believes that Eileen was conflicted. She wanted to care for Orwell, Funder believes, but, like Funder herself, she also wanted to do ‘her thing’.

On George

And then, some in the group felt that Orwell did not want looking after as he didn’t care for domesticity, albeit he couldn’t in fact live without the domestic support. (This becomes obvious after Eileen’s death when he is desperate for a carer for his son and for himself when he is critically ill.) 

Some in the group also tried to understand Orwell’s behaviour. He had had a difficult childhood in a low income family. And, he was a scholarship boy at posh boarding schools, where he was bullied and didn’t really flourish, an experience that can permanently change a person’s outlook on life. In addition, after school Orwell was sent to Burma, where he worked as an Imperial Policeman in the late colonial era. It was a difficult situation, and we thought he probably had to endure awful times. This may have helped de-sensitise his feelings?

On biography – and Funder’s approach

How did does an author research a biography to make women visible. In all the biographies of Orwell, Funder tells us Eileen’s contribution to Orwell’s life and writing is barely acknowledged. 

Male biographers, in particular, gloss over the domestic and ‘servile’ for the male-focused stories. Eileen was not only doing all the housework under extremely difficult conditions in a squalid-sounding house, but she also did all the typing and editing for Orwell. She was an English literature graduate from Oxford (where she was taught by Tolkien), and helped write and edit Orwell’s manuscripts, especially Animal Farm. Her intellect was important to Orwell. Many commentators have observed that his writing improved after he married Eileen. 

We felt that Funder was good with the imaginative accounts of Orwell and Eileen’s interactions. We found them engaging and, for some of us, more interesting. There is differentiation in the typescript in the book to identify different forms or sources. Excerpts from Eileen’s letters appear in italics, while Funder’s imagined sections are indented, and open and close with a little curlicue symbol. Indeed, the first chapter of the book is one of these imagined sections, though it also contains excerpts from a letter to Norah.

Some in the group suggested that from ‘our’ perspective, the 21^st century woman can make too much of the load they carry. One suggested that Annabel Crabb’s book, Wife drought, just needed to be an essay.

Many in the group found the book a bit choppy or disjointed, and part of the reason suggested was that Funder tried too much to analyse her own life and the patriarchy, her own challenge of balancing the writing she wants to do with family and domesticity, even with a very helpful husband.

Back to Eileen – and their marriage

We wondered why Eileen stayed with Orwell, and came up with various reasons. We felt that she did have alternatives to her very hard life with Orwell. She had a few choices open to her, including her supportive wealthy brother. However, it is also apparent that her work before her marriage was very badly paid and she certainly didn’t earn much after her marriage. She supported them both during part of the Second World War when she worked in the Civil Service, but it was barely enough. Some felt she was too kind and too generous. She wanted a child, but couldn’t have one with George. She didn’t achieve her potential in life, which seemed a sad conclusion.

One member suggested Eileen was a rescuer. She loved Orwell but with tender amusement, and seemed to see him as being naïve at times. He needed Eileen as she could ‘give it all to him’.

Others argued, however, that Eileen seemed to like the excitement he brought to her life, including when they were in Spain during the 1936/7. We also felt she truly cared for him, which is why she put her own life on the line many times. We discussed her last letter to Orwell, written when she was seriously ill just before she went into hospital. It felt tragic, particularly in the lack of self-esteem apparent in her saying she was not worth money being spent on proper medical treatment. (We don’t know exactly what condition she had – cancer, fibroids, endometriosis? – that necessitated the hysterectomy during which she died.)

In contrast, many of us were appalled by the numerous marriage proposals Orwell made to young women, after Eileen’s death and when he knew himself to be dying. He needed someone to care for him, and to be his literary executor. 

There was some discussion of Orwell’s sexual orientation. He had many affairs before and after marriage to Eileen. There are suggestions that he may have been homosexual but there is no definitive evidence for this. All these affairs Funder talks about must have hurt Eileen but she stayed with him which shows amazing resilience. We thought Orwell had little emotional connection (and lacked emotional intelligence) with women – if Funder is correct in her summaries of his relationships. 

We were reminded of Leonard Woolf who spent time in Ceylon before its Independence and endured similar colonial administrative work to Orwell’s in Burma. However, his reactions were not like Orwell’s. He was sympathetic to people generally and very supportive of his wife, Virginia Woolf. (See a very good biography by Victoria Glendinning, Leonard Woolf: A life). However, the Woolfs were comparatively wealthy versus Orwell and Eileen, so it was easier for them to be kinder and more creative with each other.)

Funder suggests that O’Shaughnessy was a frustrated writer but had been told early in her life that she wouldn’t get published. However, it was she who gave Orwell the idea for Animal Farm. It was also Eileen’s dystopian poem, 1984, which inspired that novel. Eileen was also instrumental in adopting a child, at George’s request, as she and George couldn’t conceive. Funder reports Eileen’s friend Lydia as saying that she had never seen Eileen and George as content as they were when they first had this baby, Richard. It was sad, we felt, that Richard ended up with his aunt Avril, Orwell’s younger sister, as she was the one person Eileen didn’t want as a step-mum for their son.

Do we get to know anything about Norah, the recipient of the found letters? There are clues but nothing definite. (Why didn’t she visit Eileen, given Eileen couldn’t visit her due to Orwell’s tendency to get problematic?)

To what extent do biographers, who are interpreting their subject all the time, assume the best in their subject? 

Cancel culture – and our conclusions

Turning to ‘cancel culture’, we looked at the question of whether we can still like the works of authors we don’t like? Can we like Animal Farm and 1984 still? Most of us felt that, yes, we can appreciate the works no matter what we think of Orwell as a man. His work still stands up and Animal Farm is still one of the most (if not, the most) popular texts for schools. Similarly, we still study T.S. Eliot despite his Nazi sympathies. 

Every great achievement is a group project. When you think of Eileen’s background it is easy to see that Orwell and O’Shaughnessy connected with Animal Farm – there was a ‘frisson’.  However, in Homage to Catalonia, Orwell, says Funder, mentions his wife 39 times without ever naming her. But one of us argued that the book is not about their life in Spain but about his life as a soldier on the front. Others responded that Eileen’s work in the POUM office in Barcelona provided much support to him and the wider cause on the front, and that she was critical to their escape from Spain, but she is not specifically credited with this in his book. The systems in place favour men, and tend to suppress the role of women. 

Some members agreed with the critics who criticise Funder’s book for being too disjointed. It needs to be pulled together. Funder, herself, speculates that Eileen wouldn’t like her book because she gives due credit to her. We will never know!

Finally, we couldn’t help thinking about our current crisis in Australia of domestic killings – called domestic violence. That term alone undervalues the problems many women face in 21^stcentury Australia. Orwellian newspeak perhaps?

Present : 8 members