DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ “Thank God I’m a man” – the implications of masculinity in George Orwell’s life and non-fiction Császár Ivett 2012 Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ Császár Ivett “Thank God I’m a man” – the implications of masculinity in George Orwell’s life and non-fiction Irodalomtudományi Doktori Iskola Dr. habil. Kállay Géza, a Doktori Iskola vezetıje Modern angol és amerikai irodalom program Dr. habil. Péter Ágnes, a program vezetıje A bizottság elnöke: Dr. Sarbu Aladár DSc. Hivatalosan felkért bírálók: Dr. Friedrich Judit CSc. Dr. Juhász Tamás PhD. A bizottság titkára: Dr. Czigányik Zsolt PhD. A bizottság további tagjai: Dr. Pellérdi Márta PhD. Dr. habil. Ferencz Gyızı, Dr. Komáromy Zsolt PhD. (póttagok) Témavezetı: Dr. Takács Ferenc PhD., egyetemi docens Budapest, 2012 Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 4 A decade of “destructive elements”............................................................................... 14 Social concerns ...................................................................................................................... 14 Literature immersed in politics ........................................................................................... 15 The ‘smell’ issue.................................................................................................................... 22 The winding up of the decade .............................................................................................. 26 Thirties’ literature: a scene for “young(ish) males” .......................................................... 28 The facets of Orwell....................................................................................................... 33 Becoming a “national institution” ....................................................................................... 33 Whose Orwell? ...................................................................................................................... 39 Dragging him to the right..................................................................................................... 42 …to the left ............................................................................................................................ 45 An S.S. man in disguise? ...................................................................................................... 46 Or perhaps he could have joined the clergy? ..................................................................... 48 The roots of Orwell’s “emotional attitude” .................................................................. 53 A female milieu...................................................................................................................... 53 Gutless Blair – Tough Orwell .............................................................................................. 57 Failure: a means of self-justification................................................................................... 60 The traps of memory ............................................................................................................ 62 St Wulfric’s versus St Cyprian’s ......................................................................................... 67 The worth of a failure........................................................................................................... 71 The essay as propaganda...................................................................................................... 73 Performing manliness through sport: ‘The Slack-bob’..................................................... 76 The man “with a grouse” .............................................................................................. 84 1 Failure: the source of success............................................................................................... 84 A mind of rigid categories .................................................................................................... 90 Hardships of his own seeking............................................................................................... 95 The story by five authors...................................................................................................... 98 Prejudice and violence........................................................................................................ 102 Women on paper.......................................................................................................... 112 The feminist revision .......................................................................................................... 112 The charge: anti-feminism and woman hatred................................................................ 120 A doubtful evolution of attitude......................................................................................... 125 Ambivalent homophobia .................................................................................................... 130 Women in life............................................................................................................... 138 Those lovely Burmese days ................................................................................................ 140 Eleanor Jaques and Brenda Salkeld ................................................................................. 145 Marriage .............................................................................................................................. 150 Illnesses and loves ............................................................................................................... 158 The depressed years of war................................................................................................ 161 The agony of dying without a ruling ................................................................................. 165 What is a ‘literary wife’ worth? ........................................................................................ 169 After Eileen.......................................................................................................................... 172 The interplay of masculinity and patriotism............................................................... 175 Making the patriotic bolt.................................................................................................... 180 Awaking to the fruits of a patriotic middle-class education............................................ 185 Getting under the illusion of national unity: intellectuals and wealthy women, please stay outside… ...................................................................................................................... 192 A conservatively innovative criticism of popular art....................................................... 202 Procreation as a source of national vitality ...................................................................... 206 2 The ultimate submission to the homeland: let’s save our ordinary women for motherhood.......................................................................................................................... 209 Patriotism and war from a feminist perspective: Virginia Woolf’s Three Guinea s...... 216 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 226 Bibliography................................................................................................................. 230 3 Introduction “To insist on the limitations of Orwell’s thought is only to establish the limits within which we admire him.” (Conor Cruise O’Brien: Writers and Politics ) But for his last two works, Animal Farm and Nineteen-Eighty Four , Orwell would not have become part of the literary canon – there seems to be consensus about this in the literature on Orwell. Beyond his best-sellers his novels are acknowledged as mediocre by critics. He achieved a lot more in the genre of the essay and journalism: as his first biographer put it, “much critical opinion now locates his genius in his essays.” (Crick, A Life , xv) In much of his output he discussed public issues – he was particularly obsessed with social and economic inequalities, the independence of India, or the looming danger of communism and fascism. In other words, he was more of a political writer (Bernard Crick) and intellectual hero (John Rodden) than a literary writer. Part of my fascination for Orwell was his search for social justice, however, his categorical way of thinking, the rigid patterns of his mind and the resulting prejudices seemed to contradict, to some extent, undermine his “decency.” As a feminist reader the most urging question to be examined became the issue of his thoughts on women and the underlying notion of gender in his writings. How can Orwell be an intellectual hero and not speak for half of humanity? – Rodden attributes rightly this question to feminist critics or simply to female readers of Orwell. What is most intriguing in the Orwell corpus is that his social sensitivity goes hand in hand with an intolerant attitude towards certain groups, among them women, feminists, pacifists, Jews, homosexuals, fellow left-wing intellectuals, the Irish, the Scots etc. Orwell handed down his contradictions to his critics. Since he was a political writer very much engaged in the social and public