I just got around to trying out the Google book search and, naturally, my first search was for "Orwell".
Came across a book which I'm sure some here have read: The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology. I read the first few pages of the introduction, and so can you.
She makes some interesting points and some puzzling ones which I assume would be clarified if I read more of the book. Some parts that stuck out for me:
"The premise of this book is that the essential ideology at the heart of Orwell's work as a writer and a thinker can be understood only by exploring his ideas about masculinity and femininity."
"The major strategy that has evolved over the past few decades for dealing with the problem of Orwell's frequent less-than-decent verbal assaults is to briefly acknowledge, only to brush aside, this aspect of his writing, as if it were a minor and perhaps regrettable lapse but no serious reflection on the man."
"To cite Orwell in support of one's position is, therefore, to assert the self-evident rightness of that position."
"...his writings were useful to the antisocialist cause as early as The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), with its violent attack on socialist cranks."
Well, obviously I can't say anything about the book after three pages, but thought these were interesting claims that might spark some discussion.
Posted by Alan Hogue at December 22, 2005 02:44 PMDaphne Patai came up a number of times on the Scottish Newsgroup. Fundamentally she doesn't seem to like Orwell, which bothers me. It's true that the man never really learned much about women, but that's not a reason to devalue the things he did notice and say well. And I still maintain that his Dorothy character is pretty amazingly perceptive about female enslavement through the trap of Proving One's Personal Goodness Through Good Works. Perhaps because Orwell himself had a male-role case of the same disease and recognized it.
Now, this notion that people tend to claim Orwell's backing as a means of proving their own essential rightness... she might have a point there... Just maybe...
But she doesn't have to go all Raymond Williams when it comes to Orwell's inside-the-family criticisms of lefty culture and such criticisms' usefulness to outside folks who find the entire notion of human equality distasteful. I mean, the man had the guts to take the risk that his writings, intended as correctives to a movement he fundamentally loved, would be used as weapons against everything he ever cared about. And unfortunately that's exactly what happened. Which is a tragedy inflicted on Orwell, not a crime to be held against Orwell himself.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at December 23, 2005 11:16 AMNow, this notion that people tend to claim Orwell's backing as a means of proving their own essential rightness... she might have a point there... Just maybe...
Try setting up a Google news alert for "Orwell" and see if you still think she's on shaky ground here. The name has an absurd talismanic quality for most people.
What strikes me as particularly odd is that the author considers his ideas about masculinity and femininity as the key to understanding him. He really seems to be a pretty average man of his time when it comes to that. Why is that the one big important thing?
Posted by: Alan Hogue at December 23, 2005 12:33 PMNonono, I was joking. Of course the name is invoked all the time as a claim to unimpeachable rightness.
Re: Orwell and gender, it seems to me his attitudes about gender roles were just about the dullest thing about him: he was, yes, no better and no worse on the subject than most people of his time.
Then again it's true that probably he felt driven to do some of the things he did by a pretty intense personal investment in proving his own masculinity, and of course we argued the closet-case reaction-formation "belly muscles of steel" stuff into the ground years ago.
Also, Beatrix Campbell does have an excellent point that in *Wigan Pier* all we hear about the (female) mill workers is the sound of their clogs at the start of the book, and it might be because coal mining is more romantically masculine than, for example, the aboveground maintenance of weaving machines.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at December 23, 2005 02:25 PM