Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life

When Orwell returns to England, Kopp has taken Richard back to Gwen. Orwell moves back into the London flat and hires Susan Watson as a nurse for Richard. Rather than interviewing Watson, he seems to court her, but he never actually makes any amorous advances. He tells her little of Eileen, saying only that he wished he had apologized for treating her badly. By this point, Animal Farm has been accepted for publication by Frank Warburg. Orwell begins to write 1984, inspired by Eileen’s work and poems and perhaps urged on by her letters dated shortly before her death.

Now that Animal Farm has been published and has made some money, Orwell wants to write more. His novel 1984 is slow going, and his frantic proposals to four different women suggest his belief that having a wife will help him to complete his work, as Eileen so often helped him do. He proposes to Sonia Brownwell, Celia Kirwan, and Anne Oliver Popham either after or in lieu of a perfunctory sexual encounter. They all turn him down—some gently, and some more forcefully. He describes his health to several of them, downplaying or omitting the tuberculosis, just as he has hidden it from Susan, in part to promise a short marriage and in part perhaps to garner sympathy. Notably, he seems to describe marriage in similar terms to a job description in an advertisement. When Anne asks him why he wants her as a wife, he can only describe what a wife would mean to him, rather than conveying anything specific to who she is as a person. He revisits Eileen’s letters and decides to go to Scotland as they had planned, in hopes that her advice will lead him beyond 20 pages in 1984.

An odd anecdote occurs when Orwell visits his friend Anthony Powell. When Powell leaves the nursery for a few minutes, Orwell gives Powell’s infant son a large knife to play with—whether sheathed or not is unknown—and when questioned about it, seems oblivious to the oddity of his actions.

Orwell arranges for Susan Watson and his sister Avril to come with him to Barnhill, the large farmhouse in Jura, Scotland, in order to help with the housekeeping and Richard’s care. The house is eight miles by foot and is completely isolated; there is no working telephone nearby. He refuses all of the landlord Margaret Fletcher’s offers of support and insists that he will be fine until his sister arrives. Susan arrives and discovers that Avril already there; Avril is unpleasant and cruel to Susan. Susan’s boyfriend visits and is disappointed to find his literary idol dull and cross. By the end of the summer, Orwell, Avril, and Richard are left alone, and by winter, Orwell returns to his flat in London. He has managed to write only 50 pages of 1984. When Susan arrives to pick up the last of her things, he tells her that he is very ill, and this admission is uncharacteristic of him.

Orwell, Avril, and Richard return to Jura the following summer. This time, they are accompanied by Richard Rees and Bill Dunn, who invest money and labor into the improvement of the farm. On three occasions, they have to venture the long journey to see doctors for emergencies. After Orwell and Avril’s elder sister Marjorie dies, her children come to visit. They have a lovely family camping trip that ends in near disaster when Orwell misjudges the tide table and the dinghy nearly sinks. If the boat had foundered, then Orwell, his son, his niece, and his nephew all would have drowned. In early December, Rees insists that Orwell see a doctor following the completion of the first draft of 1984. The doctor says that Orwell cannot return to the house in his condition, but he insists, so Rees drives him back.

Orwell spends six months in the hospital near Glasgow. After multiple medical procedures, he returns to Jura to finish the book. Barnhill is now occupied full-time by Rees, and Avril and Dunn have begun a relationship. Many of Orwell’s friends come to visit over the year, but none of them can do what Eileen did: type Orwell’s manuscript and decipher his notes. He finally retypes the manuscript himself in bed. When he finishes, he agrees to go to a sanatorium for his health.

Richard Blair remembers that on the way to the sanatorium, his father gave him boiled sweets and talked cheerfully despite his illness. Richard remembers being loved by his father, but Funder points out that Richard was very much at risk of contagion.

During her own time in Jura, Funder meets a woman who has recorded stories from people on the island. One is a story of Orwell; he once came to the pub and asked Flora McDonald, the first girl he saw, to pluck the dead hen that he was carrying.

While in the sanatorium, Sonia visits Orwell. He proposes again, and this time, because she is fresh out of a relationship, she accepts, treating the marriage like a job. She agrees to the companionship and the managing of his literary estate as his widow, but she refuses to care for Richard, who is consequently raised by Avril. Orwell’s adolescent love, Jacintha, whom he sexually assaulted, writes to him. He eagerly writes back and proposes to her, but she declines and never comes to visit, which she regrets later in her life. Sonia stays by his side, and Funder suggests that Sonia does this out of a guilt that lingered from the woman’s own adolescence. Orwell forbids Sonia or anyone else to ever write a biography of him.

He marries Sonia while he is still in the hospital. The plan is to go to Switzerland shortly after the ceremony so that he can recover at the sanatorium there. Orwell is happy to be married again and makes Sonia the executor of his literary estate. Shortly after the New Year and before they can get to Switzerland, Orwell dies from a massive hemorrhage.

Funder ends the book with a survey of her own office after having finished the draft. She recalls a story that her husband tells about when they first met. In his account, she was surprised by a dog and commanded it to sit, and her ploy prevented it from attacking. She recognizes that she used her mother’s voice on the dog. She goes into her kitchen and checks on her daughter, who is writing an essay on the biblical story of Lot’s wife. The essay argues that Lot’s wife is blamed for her disobedience in order to remove responsibility from the men and the gods.

The last thought of the book is conveyed from Norah’s point of view. Norah finds a biography of Orwell that was written by Richard Rees. She reads the whole thing, hoping to find a glimpse of her dear friend, Eileen, but Rees essentially ignores Eileen. However, Norah realizes that she still has Eileen’s letters. The book ends with the same excerpt with which it began, followed by Norah’s thought that rather than “the murder or separation” (401) that Eileen expected from her early days of marriage, “it was life itself she accomplished instead” (401).