Looking for Eileen: How George Orwell erased his wife from his story

 

Eileen Orwell. Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

“As I came to recognise the methods of omission, they fascinated me. When women can’t be left out, they are doubted, trivialised, or reduced to footnotes in eight-point type. Other times, chronology is manipulated to conceal. But the most insidious way the actions of women are omitted is by using the passive voice.”

Eileen Blair clearly had an enormous influence on her husband’s work yet she has barely been mentioned by Orwell and his biographers.

Read more: The Guardian

Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder is published on 17 August by Viking