The devastating emotional cost of being married to a serially philandering writer is one of the sensitive topics explored in Anna Funder's extraordinary third book, Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life. A devoted fan of George Orwell's work, Funder (Stasiland; All that I Am) was inspired to write Wifedom after discovering that Orwell's first wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, a brilliant Oxford graduate, was largely erased from history. Not only did Orwell neglect to credit her for her immense support, but his biographers barely mentioned the woman who worked on Animal Farm with her husband, supported him financially, and edited all his work--and whose literary style greatly influenced him.
The building blocks of Wifedom are letters written by Eileen during her marriage to Orwell from 1936 to 1945 and addressed to her best friend from college. Inspired by Eileen's "electrifying" voice, Wifedom is a skillfully crafted counternarrative of the Orwells' marriage story, unveiling the woman "cancelled" by patriarchy. Surprising details include the fact that Orwell's masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, bears a title similar to the dystopian poem Eileen wrote in college, "End of the Century, 1984." Funder, offering a glimpse of her own struggles against modern-day patriarchy, considers why her subject subjugated her career and, tragically, her health in service of a husband who cheated repeatedly and often openly, including with Eileen's friend Lydia. Importantly, Funder distinguishes between Orwell the great writer and Orwell the deeply flawed husband, determined to avoid the "tyranny" of cancellation because "from there, no art comes." Wifedom is an enthralling saga of how the talented woman behind Orwell's success was "buried first by domesticity and then by history." --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer