Scenes from a Literary Marriage

George Orwell was a man in need of a better half. Reserved and awkward, he was inept at manual tasks and perennially sick. For most of his brief life he looked like he was starving to death. Yet those aspects of his character do not complete the picture he presented to a would-be spouse. Although he could wield a fierce pen, he was known for his kind manner. Richard Peters, whom Orwell tutored as a boy in 1930, recalled that when working with students the great writer “had a slow disarming sort of smile which made us feel that he was interested in us yet amused by us in a detached impersonal sort of way. He would discuss anything with interest, yet objectively and without prejudice.”

“Without prejudice” is a revealing phrase. It forms part of the edifice of St. George that has built up since Orwell’s death nearly 75 years ago. His stature as an icon of British rectitude stems from widespread admiration of a figure known for being honest, brave, and willing to face . Orwell has been the subject of, —who did not believe in saints—prefaces his favorable assessment of the author’s oeuvre with Orwell’s biases against women, Jews, gays, and the poor. These prejudices, while common enough in Orwell’s time, have not aged well. Hitchens had his own blind spots in gender politics, but he was onto something in concluding that “Orwell wrote for a male audience.”