A Feminist Re-reading Of George Orwell

George Orwell is an important figure in the 20th century literary world. Orwell's outstanding essays and literary critiques are eventually overwhelmed by his two most famous novels: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, which were later translated into over 60 different languages, and made his name a household word in the western world, thus presenting a spectacular cultural phenomenon.Orwell sympathizes with the proletariat. He is against colonialism and is a professed socialist. However he is also an avowed enemy of communism and writes furiously against any kind of dictatorship. For decades critics'attention has been concentrating on the politics and ideologies of his work. Heated debates have been going on between the left and the right, both claiming Orwell's literary legacy. However it is generally agreed that Orwell is an outstanding truth-teller.This dissertation is to re-read Orwell's work– chiefly his fictions– from a feminist perspective. Orwell's strong misogyny and his absolute androcentric world view– something that has long been ignored by the male dominated critic circle– is displayed through close text analysis.From Orwell's letters, reviews, diaries and non-fictions, we can see clearly his degradation of and prejudice against women. Women wielding authority especially were the most repulsive type for him. Orwell eulogizes male superiority in both physique and intelligence, and holds the belief that women should maintain the angel-in-the-house image as a patriarchal society demands. For him, women are not made up by individuals, but by various flat stereotypes. Prejudice and hostility towards modern women have greatly damaged Orwell's serious political thinking. He cannot see the truth of class structure and political institutions, but simply lay all the blame on women. As a literary critic, Orwell is particularly attracted to writers promoting male superiority. His admiration for their excellence in ridiculing and degenerating women abounds, and he never hesitates to show the same male ideology in his own fictions.Since there is a deep link between androcentrism and colonialism, Orwell, with his androcentric world view, can never become a true critic of imperial colonialism. The hero in Burmese Days is so preoccupied with his gender role that he can hardly break up with those colonialists he constantly criticizes. His pursuit of the so-called"normal"male identity eventually leads him to suicide, which greatly weakens the book's anti-colonialism significance.A Clergyman's Daughter is the only fiction Orwell writes about a woman. However, because of his lack of understanding of female experience and his obstinate male narrative perspective, this novel turns out to be his worst failure. Denigration and depreciation of women are found everywhere in the book. The heroine serves merely as a passive lens of the male narrator. She is deprived of subjectivity and the ability to think, and remains unchanged from beginning to end. On the whole, the novel is loose in structure, unreal in plot and characterization, which makes it a great disappointment.Keep the Aspidistra Flying is the most autobiographical novel written by Orwell. The hero in the book links money with women, and sees the pursuit of money as the essence of femininity, and further defines this femininity as the root of all evil. Although the hero eventually shoulders his traditional male responsibility– gets married and makes a decent salary, the novel's political message seems na?ve and absurd. Orwell's preoccupation with male identity and superiority has hurt his rational analysis of money/power relationship and the class and social truth beneath it.Coming up for Air marks the turning point in Orwell's fiction writing. There is a sharp contrast between the hero's longed-for past and the ugly present with imminent war threat. To a certain extent, it shows the social reality of Britain before the Second World War. However, the contrast between past and present is illustrated by showing different stereotypes of the"other"– women. Modern women were shown as stupid and trivial, representing all evils of modern society. The hero's longing to take a break from modern life turns out to be his effort to escape from the trap laid by women. In this sense, the book shows Orwell's misogyny in full play.The well known dystopia Nineteen Eighty Four continues Orwell's pursuit of the past. The hero Winston longs to overthrow Big Brother's dictatorship, yet at the same time, he cannot help admiring power, brutality, dominance and other characters linked with masculinity. Since women and the proletariat in the book are all portrayed as stupid and passive, Winston is left with no other choice but to submit to the dictatorship represented by O'Brien. Once again, Orwell's idea of gender hierarchy and his androcentric world view weaken the political message he wants to convey. As Orwell cannot solve the conflict between his promotion of equality and his strong belief in male superiority, his vision is inevitably bleak and desperate, and this book becomes a nightmarish political fable.Women have never been the center of Orwell's fiction. However even in his few sketches of women, they are treated as the"other". He willfully comments, ridicules and denigrates women, and demonstrates all his misogyny and androcentrism freely. Although equality has always been Orwell's watch word, he never doubts gender hierarchy and male superiority. This conflict blurs his understanding of the proletariat, and partly explains his conservatism in challenging colonialism and authority. Orwell admires the so-called"masculinity"such as power and dominance, and sees it as the essence of manhood. Since for him male represents all human beings, he fails to see the dichotomy between dominance/submission, center/other, subject/object, and cannot see any possibility of human progress. Consequently, Orwellian heroes are all lonely failures, and Orwellian fictions are almost all bleak and desperate.