Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life

Wifedom was an engagingly written but infuriating read, deliberately so. It looks at the life of Eileen O'Shaughnessy, otherwise known as the wife of George Orwell. The focus is particularly on their marriage, her contributions to his life and career, and the way he and his biographers have undervalued and erased those contributions. Funder also considers her own writing career and marriage and comments more generally on the unpaid and unrecognized labour of women. I found her arguments based on newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend plus informed, considered speculation to be plausible and persuasive. I was left questioning exactly what Eileen, clearly intelligent and well-educated, a go-getter with support from friends and family, saw in Orwell and why she remained with him.

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leanneymu's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

A fascinating biography of Eileen Blair, George Orwell's first wife, who was written out of his story by subsequent biographers of Orwell, despite the fact that she did LOADS of the work to ensure that Orwell was able to write his masterpieces. I love books that restablished maligned women, and this book is a magic trick, essentially re-instating the reputation of a women who was vanished out of history by the systematic misogeny of 1930s-40s England.

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minniepauline's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Funder’s book is extremely well-researched, thoughtful and thought-provoking. She cares deeply about her subject and it comes through on every page. She writes with the beauty of a novelist, or maybe a poet. But what she has surmised (which is set apart from the rest of the text) fits well with the evidence, as well making me cry in various places. I would love to see this book make the Women’s Prize shortlist. And thank you to the Women’s Prize for putting it on your first even nonfiction longlist, which is how it fell into my hands.

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rhi_'s review against another edition

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dark reflective sad slow-paced

2.0

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nanc_282's review against another edition

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informative sad medium-paced

4.0

It’s difficult to read this book and not think about all the literary men and the unacknowledged work of the women in their lives, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Shelley,
Who listen, edited, organised a household to create space for men to write. For me, the real success of this book, is to look at the life of Eileen Blair and consider how her ‘Wifedom’ under pinned George Orwell’s literary career.
It’s impossible not to have to reconsider Orwell’s legacy in view of what this book reveals.
Anna Funder’s autoethnographic sections are excellent.

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