Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder
Publisher: Penguin non fiction
ISBN: 978-0-241-48274-2
I paid 16€
This book was recommended to me by the team in Shakespear and Co. It didn’t disappoint on any level.
It was quite the roller coaster of a read. This writer was / is so skilled, she navigates you though the hidden life of Eileen O’ Shaughnessy.
Eileen was a young girl studying in university. Know to be an intellect in her own right. Much to her friend’s disappointment she gave up herself to be the hidden wife of George Orwall.
When I put down the book after the last page my main thought was, well there you go, another women who make ‘it the man. I also lost respect for him fast. Like many men of his time treating women as he did was excused by society. This brilliant author brings you through the impossible task to be forced to reflect on the attitudes of men and society then between the 2 great wars and attitudes today.
How do women fair today as from then.
I loved this book, I felt I was plunged and then rescued from issues which we face daily as did Eileen O’haughnessy did then. Which choices do we take, did she take. I needed to put this book down many times just to breath and think, reflect. Eileen was the balance to George Orwell but she paid a price. Like many genius men in history, who had a dark side, society seems to forgive this side of them at the cost to a woman. Would these men be geniuses if they didn’t have women facilizing them. The woman is hidden at the time and written out of the history books, not this time.
This book was more than I thought when I read the back cover, I loved it and I will read it again and again as there are many layers. I’ll leave you with a quote from Caroline Cuado-Perez author of “Invisible women” Astonishing…. Wifedom is no less than the rescue of a remarkable woman from the deliberate ellipse of default male history.