A Clergyman's Daughter
George Orwell
A Clergyman's Daughter
Dorothy Hare, the overworked daughter of a Suffolk rector, loses her memory and finds herself on the road: hop-picking in Kent, sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square and teaching in a squalid private school, before she returns to a faith she can no longer feel (1935).
About the book
Published in 1935, A Clergyman's Daughter follows Dorothy Hare, the dutiful daughter of a selfish rector in a Suffolk town, whose days are consumed by parish work, unpaid bills and the struggle to hold on to her faith. When she suddenly loses her memory and finds herself in London, her life takes her far from the rectory, to the hop fields of Kent, the streets of the city and a shabby private school. George Orwell uses Dorothy's journey to survey the England of the Depression, drawing on his own experiences of hop-picking, sleeping rough and teaching. The novel is experimental in places, including a long passage written as a play, and it asks what remains to a person when the certainties of belief fall away.
Characters
Dorothy Hare — Protagonist
The rector’s hard-working daughter, who runs the parish and the house while struggling to keep her faith.
The Reverend Charles Hare — Dorothy’s father
The rector of Knype Hill, a selfish and snobbish man who leaves his debts to his daughter.
Mr Warburton — Family friend
A cheerful, disreputable middle-aged bachelor and freethinker who enjoys shocking Dorothy.
Mrs Pither — Parishioner
An old woman in the parish whose sufferings Dorothy tends to on her rounds.
Victor Stone — Schoolmaster
The young church schoolmaster, eager about ritual and full of opinions.
Nobby — Young vagrant
A cheerful young tramp and petty thief who travels with Dorothy to the hop fields.
Mrs Creevy — Headmistress
The mean and calculating owner of a shabby private school for girls.
About the author
George Orwell (1903–1950) was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, an English novelist and essayist who turned plain, exact prose into a political act. Born in India and schooled at Eton, he served five years in the imperial police in Burma, then lived among the poor of Paris and London, and was shot through the throat fighting Franco's forces in Spain — and each of those became a book. He wanted prose to be "like a window pane", and distrusted any language built to hide what it meant. Animal Farm made him famous; Nineteen Eighty-Four, finished on a Scottish island while tuberculosis was killing him, gave the world Big Brother and doublethink. His work also includes Burmese Days, The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia.