Patrick West
It’s been an unrelenting dynamic of hyperliberalism that when it comes to the teaching of history and literature, it’s imperative that the works of dead white males must be sidelined or erased. In their place must be inserted women and ethnic minorities, whose significance has been hitherto ‘overlooked’ or ‘hidden’.
Thus it’s no surprise to read in the Telegraph today that one of the UK’s most popular English A-level courses will from this September be removing George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London from its set text. In its stead will be taught Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life,by Anna Funder, a controversial 2023 biography which claims that his first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, was mistreated by her cheating husband and was a victim ‘cancelled by the patriarchy’.
While Orwell was indeed a womaniser and at times a selfish and neglectful spouse, this combined development is both horribly predictable and likely to mislead and misinform students approaching the man’s work for the first time.
Even if the examination board responsible for this development, OCR, insists that Wifedom ‘is not replacing’ Orwell’s experiences of the Great Depression, it certainly accords with its broad agenda, as made clear by other works on its list. These include books by deaf, autistic and anxiety-plagued authors and a British writer of Kashmiri heritage.
