On my plane ride to Virginia this Christmas, I read a decent Orwell article in the latest issue of the mostly-Catholic magazine First Things. They've put it online now, so have a read.
The first half of the article holds nothing new, but the second does a fair job of highlighting Orwell's anti-doctrinal approach, summarized in this paragraph:
First, there is the conviction that there is a natural moral order whose fundamental contours are evident to those whose perceptions and consciences have not been malformed—or, as Orwell would prefer to say, to those whose ordinary decency is still in place. Second, there is the conviction that tyrannical oppression, whether of one by many, many by one, or many by many, is a paradigmatic offense against the natural moral order. Third, there is the conviction that a principal cause of the dissolution of ordinary decency is the deformation of language and thought to accord with the demands of a doctrinal system—with, that is, the attempt to ascend further up the ladder of theory than is appropriate to the case.
Posted by Ben Brumfield at December 30, 2004 07:55 AMThere is a lot to like about the Griffiths article. But towards the end I felt that any reader unfamiliar with Orwell would come away thinking he considered abortion and contraception two of the horrors of modern times.
I don't doubt he loathed the idea of terminating a pregnancy, but if he did it may have reflected the traditionalist in him rather than the moral absolutist (and perhaps more his attitude towards women). And outside of the passage from Keep the Aspidistra Flying, I can't recall him forcefully stating a position either way.
It is odd that first Griffiths dismisses KTAF as a bad novel (come on: bad?)then later quotes from it to make his point. I'll agree that the fact of a novel's badness does not exclude the possibility of it containing base truths; and it's true the tissue separating Orwell from his main characters is not of the two-ply variety. Still, it's a mistake to put a man with Orwell's literary output on the Right-to-Life barricades based on the narrative of a single fictional character.
I mention this, not to be picky, but because Griffiths raises the abortion flag seven times. That's fine for a Catholic magazine. But you can't raise the Orwell banner up the same pole and expect all of us to salute.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at December 31, 2004 05:59 PMI actually do think that Orwell considered abortion and contraception two of the horrors of modern times based on CEJL, but without a doubt Griffiths overstates how often he mentions them. I suspect that this is a not entirely honest effort to sell Orwell to the First Things readership. Griffiths also gets weasly when mentioning Catholic support of Franco, and glosses over Orwell's remarks in HC taking pleasure in the use of cathedrals as outhouses.
Then again, it could be that Orwell's comments on both issues are more common in the CW than they seem from the selctions for CEJL, and Griffiths isn't overemphasizing them.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at December 31, 2004 07:01 PMYes, I am off the mark about Orwell's position on abortion. Rereading KTAF, I see this was a strongly anti-abortion stance. I also find in The English People this somewhat strong statement:
In the England of the last thirty years it has seemed all too natural that blocks of flats should refuse tenants with children, that parks and squares should be railed off to keep the children out of them, that abortion, theoretically illegal, should be looked on as a peccadillo, and that the main aim of commercial advertising should be to popularise the idea of "having a good time" and staying young as long as possible.
There is no getting around his opinion there but I think it's useful to note that the above comes in a section of the essay devoted the practical problem of a low English birthrate. One almost gets the sense, as well, that he puts the horror of abortion on the same moral plane as the horror of fenced in parks.
I am interested in more examples. Again, I don't doubt he was aghast at the practice but I fail to see how (and I am not arguing with you because I think you raise the same point) how anyone could safely categorize him as a Pro-Life warrior. This is likely my third reading of The English People in the last couple years and I hadn't caught the abortion position until this morning. Now, it is true I can be a very sloppy reader. On the other hand, I don't see Orwell the Anti-abortion proponent jumping off the page.
Posted by: bobby farouk at January 1, 2005 04:43 AM