A Clergyman's Daughter

I've read 1984 and Animal Farm several times each, but this is the first time I've ventured on anything else by Orwell. I wasn't disappointed.

It does seem that Orwell got a good ways into this book and decided he wanted to write an entirely different sort of novel than it had been becoming up to that point. What begins as a fairly straight-forward satire on Christianity (especially Anglicanism) and provincialism abruptly becomes by turns a sort of mystery story, a proto-Grapes of Wrath, and then tries on some Dickensian dressing (David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, and Hard Times), almost dropping into a sort of Stand and Deliver/Dangerous Minds plot of "underprivileged kids make good academically," adding a bit of satire on show more non-conformist (fundamentalist) Christianity for good measure. The whole thing ends with a return to the state of things at the beginning of the novel, but with the heroine irrevocably changed inwardly.

Structurally--formally, I'm not sure what to make of it. Somehow it feels as though all of the elements of the novel (the prose itself, characterization, plot, etc.) are perfect but somehow mismatched. Nevertheless, it was (for me) one of those rarest of books that are enjoyable to read, mercifully short (one doesn't always want epics--even me--and one does tire of novels overly long by virtue of having been serialized), and still manage to leave one with a feeling of both intellectual stimulation and a certain blessing of goodwill from author to reader. show less

Orwell notoriously categorised his own novel as "bollocks" in a letter to Henry Miller shortly after its publication — you can see his point, but Orwell even on a bad day still has something. The outer sections of the book may be rather routine and forgettable, but the hop-picking chapter is powerful stuff, and even the slightly clumsy James Joyce pastiche in the Trafalgar Square section manages to be quite effective from time to time. Orwell is able to write with conviction when he's talking about living rough, although there's a lot of overlap with Down and out in Paris and London, of course.
(The school chapter is also clearly based on personal experience, but oddly enough doesn't work as well: Orwell just comes across as too show more bitter to be convincing.)
So it's not a total waste of time, but the whole thing doesn't really mesh together to make a working novel. Probably because Orwell was weak enough let Dorothy be plucked out of poverty by a fairy godfather, as we knew she ought to be, but then couldn't force himself to write a romantic happy-end, so that we're left high and dry between cold pessimism and rosy optimism, not knowing where we are meant to be... show less

he second of Orwell's published novels.
As in the first (Burmese Days) the reader is confronted with the total powerlessness of the lead character. It is tough reading the life of a person unable to make choices. Dorothy is a Rector's unmarried daughter, and her life choices seem to have all been made for her. Life is a grind, and there are decades of it to come.
The plot is spiced up by a plot twist detour into penury and street living - but choices remained a distant prospect.
I'm enjoying the reading, but if Orwell hadn't written Animal Farm and 1984, I think both he and his other fiction would have been forgotten by now.

George Orwell's second Novel The Clergyman's Daughter is set on a small town in England where attendance at mass is dwindling and the church is falling into disrepair. The Clergyman is a crotchety old fellow who relied on his daughter for every need-tending to three meals a day, paying the bills, assisting the church schoolchildren with their play, and other things that pit incredible demands on her time. She struggles to convince her father to help her by selling off some trinkets so as to pay off certain debts, but he steadfastly refuses. And she faces other worries from a local playboy who tried to seduce her. Soon enough she falls asleep late at night stressed and overdue with work. Before she knows it she is lying on a street in show more dirty clothes without any memory of where she is or how she got there. From here the tale takes a different direction entirely, with Dorothy struggling to survive as a migrant worker and then as an abused schoolmistress. She suffers the pangs of poverty, and sees what it is truly like for the first time. She learns to pick herself up and adapt to the circumstances, and benefits from her middle class accent and connections to distant but rich relatives. All of this changes Dorothy, who was an obedient but prudent young woman just trying to do right by her father. She learns how hard life is for some, and what it takes to truly survive. In the end she loses her religion, which disconcerts her. But she feels no connection to God after this experience, and struggles to say a meaningful prayer. Dorothy is finally rescued by Mr. Warburton, the local playboy who finds her in hiding and asks her hand in marriage. She returns to her father and to the town where she lived, and falls back in to the daily rhythms of life. The bills start to pile up again, and demands on Dorothy's time begin again to grow. She doesn't avoid this life; she fully accepts it, despite the demands on her and the incredible challenges she has just been through. But Dorothy wants normalcy and predictability in her life, which is what we all want. She forgets the poverty she saw, but then again this makes her life easier.

This third effort by George Orwell is an improvement over his previous novel, Burmese Days, which tried too hard to tell a story. A Clergyman's Daughter again focuses on a single character who struggles with the society around her. It is through her eyes that we see the struggles of poverty, of getting a good education, of social class, of religion, and of a woman's role. Many of these experiences reflect George Orwells's view of how the world operates and reflect his own personal experiences.

I liked this book for its simplicity, although Dorothy was not someone I closely identified with. I felt sorry for her, but disappointed that she didn't change her lifestyle after all she had been through. She was an interesting character, but not one too cheer for in the end. show less

A very funny, heartwarming, sad novel about the tribulations of the title character. This has much to say about the mores and attitudes of 1930s small town life. Brilliant stuff.

3611. A Clergyman's Daughter, by George Orwell (read 8 Aug 2002) This book (the ninth I've read by Orwell) was first published in 1935, but I don't think it was published in the US until after Orwell's death in 1950. The attitude in this book, about Anglican church life, is of the opposite side thereof to Barbara Pym's fetching accounts of such. Orwell is an atheist and hostile to organized religion, but while he has his protagonist lose her faith he also shows how lost and meaningless life is without faith. So I don't think the story really downgrades faith as Orwell intended. Orwell really finds little good to say about anything--there is nothing in the book but down-putting, but the book has power and is thought-provoking but its show more most powerful message to me is to show the barrenness of life without God. I now believe I have read all Orwell's fiction. show less

Well, apart from experiencing the crappy lives proscribed for women in England in the 1800s, we also experience what it's like to be homeless and sleep in Trafalgar square. This is taken from Orwell's autobiographical"Down and out in Paris and London." Still, enjoyable.