Feminist retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four approved by Orwell’s estate
- https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/ ... lls-estate
Here are some choice excerpts from the article:
Publisher Granta said that Julia understands the world of Oceania “far better than Winston and is essentially happy with her life”. As Orwell puts it in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “in some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda … She also stirred a sort of envy in him by telling him that during the Two Minutes Hate her great difficulty was to avoid bursting out laughing. But she only questioned the teachings of the Party when they in some way touched upon her own life. Often she was ready to accept the official mythology, simply because the difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her.”
“She has known no other world and, until she meets Winston, never imagined one. She’s opportunistic, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics. She routinely breaks the rules but also collaborates with the regime whenever necessary. She’s an ideal citizen of Oceania,” said Granta. “But when one day, finding herself walking toward Winston Smith in a long corridor, she impulsively hands him a note – a potentially suicidal gesture – she comes to realise that she’s losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world.”
It would appear the world of 1984 only seemed so grim all these years due to male bias. For a balanced view on authoritarianism it's only proper to publish a woman's view on it. And if the woman's view becomes more popular, ought it follow that it become the better of the two texts to recommend? And surely we can't expect people to have to read both books. So it only makes sense to continue publishing the more popular one, and slowly discontinue the old one. And if there is only going to be one text for 1984, shouldn't it just be called 1984, instead of Julia?