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G E O R G E O RW E L L * 2 5 J U N E
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• Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his

pen name George Orwell, was an
English novelist, essayist, journalist,
and critic. His work is characterised
by lucid prose, social criticism,
opposition to totalitarianism, and
support of democratic socialism.
 FUN FACTS ABOUT
GEORGE ORWELL
• 1. George Orwell attended prep school as a child—and hated it.
• 2. He was a prankster.
• 3. Orwell worked a number of odd jobs for most of his career.
• 4. He once got himself arrested—on purpose.
• 5. Orwell had knuckle tattoos.
• 6. He knew seven foreign languages, to varying degrees.
• 7. He voluntarily fought in the Spanish Civil War.
• 8. Orwell's manuscript for Animal Farm was nearly destroyed by a
bomb.
• 9. He had a goat named Muriel
• 10. George Orwell coined the term Cold War.
• 11. He ratted out Charlie Chaplin and other artists for allegedly
being communists.
• 12. He really hated American fashion magazines.
• 13. He nearly drowned while writing Nineteen Eighty-Four.
A CLERGYMAN‘S DAUGHTER
A Clergyman's Daughter is a 1935 novel by English author George Orwell.
It tells the story of Dorothy Hare, whose life is turned upside down when
she suffers an attack of amnesia. It is Orwell's most formally experimental
novel, featuring a chapter written entirely in dramatic form, but he was
never satisfied with it and he left instructions that after his death it was not
to be reprinted. Despite these instructions, Orwell did consent to the
printing of cheap editions "of any book which may bring in a few pounds
for my heirs" following his death.
A CLERGYMAN‘S DAUGHTER
CHARACTERS
 Dorothy Hare
A spinster in her late twenties (28 at first), she
lacks the ability to direct her own life and
ends up as a trapped victim in every situation.
She is successively dependent upon her father
for a home, upon a fellow transient (Nobby)
for means of survival and direction, upon
fellow pickers for food in the hop fields, upon
her father's cousin to find her employment,
upon Mrs Creevy whose school appears to
offer the only job available to her, and finally
upon Mr Warburton to bring her home.
Rev. Charles Hare
Dorothy's father, he is a self-centred
clergyman whose spirituality and charity
exist only in formal terms. He believes
that tradesmen and the working class are
beneath him, and refuses to pay them.
He has some money, albeit dwindling, in
stocks, and accumulates gargantuan
debts.
 Mr Warburton Mrs Evelina Semprill

An easy-going and friendly bachelor in Knype Hill's malicious gossip monger,

his late forties. He has three illegitimate she gets her comeuppance when she is
children (whom he refers to as "the sued for libel.
bastards") by his Spanish mistress,
Dolores. He is seen as highly immoral.
 Nobby
A vagrant who lives by begging, casual
work and petty crime. He is eventually
arrested for theft while working in the
hop fields.
Sir Thomas Hare
A "good-hearted, chuckle-headed"
baronet – a caricature Wodehousian
aristocrat.

Mrs Creevy
The mean proprietress of a small
school – she is tight-fisted and enjoys
minor victories at the expense of
others.
A CLERGYMAN‘S DAUGHTER
MAJOR THEMES
 Dorothy is economically pressed to
work extremely hard.
Her low earnings, in all cases, restrict her escape
and function to perpetuate her dependent state.
Orwell draws a picture of systematic forces that
preserve the bound servitude in each setting. He
uses Dorothy's fictitious endeavours to criticise
certain institutions.
The hop harvest
Orwell criticises the way in which wages are
systematically lowered as the season progressed and
why the wages are so low to begin with. He describes
the life of a manual labourer, down to the constant
state of exhaustion that somehow eliminates any
potential to question circumstances. Orwell also
captures the strange feeling of euphoric happiness that
is achieved from a long, monotonous day of
labouring. He describes the attitude of the seasonal
worker who vows not to return the following year, but
somehow forgets about the hardship and remembers
only the positive side during the off season, and
inevitably returns.
 In the case of the private-school system in the
England of Orwell's era, he delivers a two-page
critique of how capitalistic interests have
rendered the school system useless and absurd.
His attack on the commercial imperative is
conveyed in Mrs Creevy's primary
focus: "It's the fees I'm after," she says, "not
developing the children's minds". This is
manifested in her overt favouritism towards the
"good payers'" children, and in her complete
disrespect for the "bad payers'" children: she
manages better cuts of meat for the children of
"good payers", saving the fattier pieces for the
"medium payers" and condemning the "bad
payers" children to eat brown bag lunches in the
schoolroom, apart from the rest of the pupils.
The novel also explores the role of religion
and charitable giving. Dorothy questions
her religious beliefs throughout the novel,
concluding that there is "no possible substitute
for faith; no pagan acceptance of life as
sufficient to itself; no pantheistic cheer-up stuff,
no pseudo-religion of 'progress' with visions of
glittering Utopias and ant-heaps of steel and
concrete. It was all or nothing. Either life on
earth is a preparation for something greater and
more lasting, or it is meaningless, dark and
dreadful."
A CLERGYMAN‘S DAUGHTER
PLOT
 CHAPTER ONE
A day in the life of Dorothy Hare, the weak-willed daughter of a disagreeable
widowed clergyman. Her father is Rector of Knype Hill, a small town in East
Anglia. She keeps house for him, fends off creditors, visits parishioners and
makes costumes for fund-raising events. Throughout she practises mortification
of flesh to be true to her faith. In the evening she is invited to dinner by Mr
Warburton, Knype Hill's most disreputable resident, a middle-aged bachelor who
is an unashamed lecher and atheist. He attempts to seduce Dorothy, having
previously tried once to force his attentions on her and using any opportunity to
"make casual love to her". As she leaves he forces another embrace on her and
they are seen by Mrs Semprill, the village gossip and scandal-monger. Dorothy
returns home to her conservatory late at night to work on the costumes.
 CHAPTER TWO
Dorothy is transposed to the New Kent Road with amnesia. Eight days of her life are
unaccounted for. She joins a group of vagrants, comprising a young man named
Nobby and his two friends, who relieve her of her remaining half-crown and take her
with them on a hop-picking expedition in Kent.
Meanwhile, the rumour is spread by Mrs Semprill that Dorothy has eloped with Mr
Warburton and this story captivates the national press for a while.
After hard work in the hop fields, culminating in Nobby's arrest for theft, Dorothy
returns to London with her negligible earnings. As a single girl with no luggage, she is
refused admission at "respectable" hotels and ends up in a cheap hotel for "working
girls" (prostitutes). Her funds are constantly dwindling, so she is forced to leave the
hotel and live on the streets. She takes up residence in Trafalgar Square.
 CHAPTER THREE
Dorothy spends the night sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square in a chapter
presented entirely as dramatic dialogue between Dorothy and a cast of
tramps. The vagrants discuss the difficulties of life on the road, including
paying for hot water, finding food, avoiding police, and prostitution. Mr
Tallboys, a defrocked minister, performs a mock-religious ritual as Dorothy
dreams of "monstrous winged shapes of Demons and Archdemons." After
spending ten days on the streets, she is arrested for vagrancy and ends up in
a police cell for twelve hours for failure to pay the fine.
 CHAPETER FOUR
Dorothy believes that her father, distraught at the rumours of her running
away with Mr Warburton, has ignored her letters for help. In fact he has
contacted his cousin Sir Thomas Hare, whose servant locates her at the
police station. Hare's solicitor procures a job for her as a "schoolmistress"
in a small "fourth-rate" private girls' "academy" run by the grasping Mrs
Creevy. Dorothy's attempts to introduce a more liberal and varied education
to her students clash with the expectations of the parents, who want a
strictly "practical" focus on handwriting and basic mathematics. The work,
which initially she enjoys, quickly becomes drudgery. Mrs Creevy
eventually dismisses her, without notice, when she finds another teacher.
 CHAPTER FIVE
Shortly after Dorothy steps out of the door of the school Mr Warburton turns
up in a taxi to say that Mrs Semprill has been charged with slander, and that
her malicious gossip has been discredited. He has come, therefore, to take her
back to Knype Hill. On the trip home he proposes marriage. Dorothy rejects
him, recognising but disregarding his argument that, with her loss of religious
faith, her existence as a hard-working clergyman's daughter will be
meaningless and dull, and that marriage while she is still young is her only
escape. It is suggested (here and earlier in the novel) that another reason for
Dorothy's refusal of Warburton's proposal is her sexual repression. The story
ends with Dorothy back in her old routine, but without the self-mortification.
 O RW E L L S AY E D “ I T WA S W R I T T E N
S I M P LY A S A N E X E R C I S E A N D I
O U G H T N ’ T TO H AV E P U B L I S H E D I T,
B U T I WA S D E S P E R AT E F O R M O N E Y ” .
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