olivea21db's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
michcee68's review against another edition
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Doesn’t read like non fiction- couldn’t put it down!
luci_ja's review against another edition
4.0
A heartbreaking but highly illuminating book, an almost archeological excavation of an amazing woman who has been buried in history - by (male) biographers, her own self-erasure, and also by her husband, George Orwell. A painful but extremely important read.
My only issues - the book's length and the last 50 pages that we could honestly just do without, to allow for more time to grief. Otherwise it would be (almost) 5 stars.
My only issues - the book's length and the last 50 pages that we could honestly just do without, to allow for more time to grief. Otherwise it would be (almost) 5 stars.
sarec's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
5.0
ashtrimmmer's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
archytas's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
If there was one thing I was sure about going in, it is that I was going to love this book. I have never failed to love a book by Anna Funder, I adore Orwell's writing and am critical of his life, and as a middle-aged woman, the travails of sexism in marriages is a daily conversation among my friends. And yet - I really did not like this book. I found it irritating at best, infuriating at worst, and am still trying to unpack why.
There is a trick to biography in making the reader feel that they know and understand the subject, that the author is revealing, not creating, the story. Funder tackles this head-on in Wifedom, making it clear at the outset that her motivation in "finding" Eileen Blair is connected to her anger at hers and her friends, unfair and unreasonable domestic load. Her friends, all feminists, Blair notes, feel guilt that they have not managed, with often supportive partners, to conquer sexism in these arrangements:
"They tell me all this quietly, as if it were something that should have been fixed long ago, and as if it were up to each of them, alone, to sort out. Another item on their to-do list: birthday present for Saturday/get chairs fixed/anti-fungal/dog: leptospirosis vaccination/make work and self visible/fix patriarchy." This is all incredibly relatable content - conversations which also make up my day-to-day, only not as wittily articulated.
And Funder is furious about this, a fury which fires through this book, centred ever hotter on George Orwell, who merely has to marry to get a full-time housekeeper, literary editor, typist, personal assistant, sex partner and comforter. She puts her own career on the shelf and centres his needs as her core purpose. It is infuriating. And the letters recently unearthed make it clear she did this neither unknowingly nor entirely happily. Her death, ultimately, Funder clearly believes, was a direct result of prioritising Eric/George's needs over her own. And yet, Orwell failed even to name her in Homage to Catalonia, minimising her to a support rather than an agent (Funder is great at exposing the judicial use of the passive tense here), and also failed to credit her for her role in shaping Animal Farm. After her death, she shows an Orwell desperate to remarry, not so much for sex as for the necessary labour with his work and legacy, and then for comfort.
And yet, despite Funder's fabulous prose, I felt that I couldn't see Eileen at all, but only larger Funder's version of her. This is exacerbated by the placing of Eileen's letters into fictionalised scenes, in which Anna tries to imagine/reconstruct Eileen for us.
Perhaps this is inevitable in any biography, and it is to Funder's credit that she lets us see it (she is almost as incensed by their erasure of Eileen as by Orwell's treatment of her). But there is something in how ferociously Funder insists that she is revealing Eileen that makes me uneasy, given how much Funder needs to see her in a particular light. It certainly isn't that I challenged any of the narrative - there is little to read about Orwell that makes him seem like anything but a miserable sod to those who loved him (and one thing worthy of note here is simply that Funder shows us how much of his infidelity consisted of/started with sexual harassment, and at times, assault), as if he reserved the best of his humanity for his writing. It may have been that I was reading this at a difficult time, with multiple pressures of my own making me inevitably negative and without the necessary headspace for reflection for a book like this. But I wasn't convinced that the voice that shone through her letters wanted to be avenged as much, perhaps, as to be heard. And I'm not sure there was enough space here for that.
There is a trick to biography in making the reader feel that they know and understand the subject, that the author is revealing, not creating, the story. Funder tackles this head-on in Wifedom, making it clear at the outset that her motivation in "finding" Eileen Blair is connected to her anger at hers and her friends, unfair and unreasonable domestic load. Her friends, all feminists, Blair notes, feel guilt that they have not managed, with often supportive partners, to conquer sexism in these arrangements:
"They tell me all this quietly, as if it were something that should have been fixed long ago, and as if it were up to each of them, alone, to sort out. Another item on their to-do list: birthday present for Saturday/get chairs fixed/anti-fungal/dog: leptospirosis vaccination/make work and self visible/fix patriarchy." This is all incredibly relatable content - conversations which also make up my day-to-day, only not as wittily articulated.
And Funder is furious about this, a fury which fires through this book, centred ever hotter on George Orwell, who merely has to marry to get a full-time housekeeper, literary editor, typist, personal assistant, sex partner and comforter. She puts her own career on the shelf and centres his needs as her core purpose. It is infuriating. And the letters recently unearthed make it clear she did this neither unknowingly nor entirely happily. Her death, ultimately, Funder clearly believes, was a direct result of prioritising Eric/George's needs over her own. And yet, Orwell failed even to name her in Homage to Catalonia, minimising her to a support rather than an agent (Funder is great at exposing the judicial use of the passive tense here), and also failed to credit her for her role in shaping Animal Farm. After her death, she shows an Orwell desperate to remarry, not so much for sex as for the necessary labour with his work and legacy, and then for comfort.
And yet, despite Funder's fabulous prose, I felt that I couldn't see Eileen at all, but only larger Funder's version of her. This is exacerbated by the placing of Eileen's letters into fictionalised scenes, in which Anna tries to imagine/reconstruct Eileen for us.
Perhaps this is inevitable in any biography, and it is to Funder's credit that she lets us see it (she is almost as incensed by their erasure of Eileen as by Orwell's treatment of her). But there is something in how ferociously Funder insists that she is revealing Eileen that makes me uneasy, given how much Funder needs to see her in a particular light. It certainly isn't that I challenged any of the narrative - there is little to read about Orwell that makes him seem like anything but a miserable sod to those who loved him (and one thing worthy of note here is simply that Funder shows us how much of his infidelity consisted of/started with sexual harassment, and at times, assault), as if he reserved the best of his humanity for his writing. It may have been that I was reading this at a difficult time, with multiple pressures of my own making me inevitably negative and without the necessary headspace for reflection for a book like this. But I wasn't convinced that the voice that shone through her letters wanted to be avenged as much, perhaps, as to be heard. And I'm not sure there was enough space here for that.
laura_storyteller's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
2.0