A Clergyman's Daughter (Paperback)

~ (Author) "AS THE ALARM CLOCK on the chest of drawers exploded like a horrid little bomb of bell metal, Dorothy, wrenched from the depths of some..." (more)
Key Phrases: angelica tea, handwriting lessons, memo list, Knype Hill, Miss Mayfill, Miss Millborough (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At the distance of a half-century, this satiric social fiction is both a treasure and a disappointment. Orwell's wit is priceless--and ruthless--as he describes rural Church of England parish life; the transitory culture of the hops harvest; a brothel's soiled linen; not to mention when his heroine hobnobs with the Trafalgar Square homeless of a bitter winter's night or bullies bored students in a fourth-rate private school: "Last term the girls had behaved badly, because she had started by treating them as human beings, and later on, when the lessons that interested them were discontinued, they had rebelled like human beings. But if you are obliged to teach children rubbish, you must not treat them as human beings.... Before all else, you must teach them it is more painful to rebel than to obey."

Orwell's compassion for Dorothy Hare, ensnared by faith, birth, and gender to toil thanklessly as her minister father's unpaid curate, is admirable, and his evocation, early in the novel, of a woman's consciousness totally subsumed by the mostly trivial demands of others stands shoulder to shoulder with the best feminist fiction. The dialogues between Dorothy and her dissolute middle-aged suitor, Mr. Warburton, concerning human nature, faith, and morality, are smart and fun to read. The problem (and here Orwell commits the sort of sin he denounces in Dickens) is that the novel's plot--Dorothy's picaresque amnesiac travels through the seamy side of English life--feels manufactured for the author's satiric purposes. Orwell never relinquishes his cleverness, or his maleness, to become his heroine, with the result that the reader never surrenders wholly to the fiction. Thus A Clergyman's Daughter, while a pleasure to pick up, is not quite a book one can't put down. --Joyce Thompson

Product Description

Dorothy, the heroine of this novel, performs good works, cultivates good thoughts, and pricks her arm with a pin when a bad thought arises. She then has a series of unexpected and degrading adventures after becoming a victim of amnesia. Though she regains her life as a clergyman’s daughter, she has lost her faith.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 3rd THUS edition (January 1, 1950)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156180650
• ISBN-13: 978-0156180658
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #218,943 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Story by Dickens, script by Joyce, philosophy by Camus, May 8, 2008

By	H. Schneider "Hermit" (window seat) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Some say, this is the weekest of Orwell's 6 novels. I am not so sure.
But even if it is, it is still so much more interesting than most other writers' 'good' novels.
If it is a bad novel, it is still a very good book.
Sure, the text is uneven. The chapters talk a different language. So?
Chapter 1 is a 'plain' tale of a young woman in Suffolk, a spinsterish, neurotic, sex-phobic, obedient, pious, nice person, called Dorothy. She has a bad hypertrophy of sense of duty. She lets herself be exploited as an unpaid church helper. Her father, the clergyman, is maybe the biggest idiot in his profession that you can find in literature. This life happens in Knype Hill in Suffolk, the small town that you never want to get to know.
Chapter 2 is the catastrophe: Dorothy had a blackout, and at awakening, she is not in any kind of Ozish wonderland, but has lost 8 days of her life plus her memory plus her self. Who is she? She somehow joins a small band of bums who go hop-picking in Kent. This chapter is maybe the worst; Orwell grafts his own diary texts about hop picking on Dorothy's life. It is not working. A very odd text. She finds out who she is and realizes that her disappearance was a major scandal at home: her small home town thinks she eloped with an older man of disreputable morals. She appeals to her father for help and gets no answer.
Chapter 3 is brillant: Dorothy has ended up with the homeless crowd at Trafalgar Square. A Joycean text of multiple voices, which rarely attends to Dorothy, but never lets us forget where she is. Arrest is a step to salvation.
Chapter 4 and then 5 go back to straighforward narration. Father, through a relative, has somehow managed to get her saved from the street. She gets a job as a teacher, and finds herself in servitude to the worst school owner that you can find. The job is hell. She gets fired, but then there is another level of rescue: she may come home, she has been rehabilitated. Chapter 5 shows her in the dreariness of her sad prospects: unpaid church helper, a father who will leave her poor when he dies in maybe 10 years, no other prospects than oldmaidhood and poor jobs. And worst: she has lost faith, but she can not resign herself to the view that life is meaningless. Like a proper Sisyphus she keeps pushing the rock upwards on the hillside.
Yes, this is not smooth. The neurological aspects of the story (amnesia, regaining self-identification) seem dubious. (Maybe Oliver Sacks could have a look?). The text also has some of Orwell's less agreeable characteristics: he was something of a racist as a young man. This seems to have been worked out of his sytem later. Here he still writes about the gypsies, that they have 'oafish, oriental faces', that they exude 'dense stupidity, untameable cunning'. Come on, George/Eric! There is a 'Jew' who lusts after Dorothy in a way that could have been taken straight from the 'Stuermer'. Sure, Jews could have been lusting after her, but so might all the others. Where was the point here?
The novel is a highly interesting 'Bildungsroman', in a reverse sort of way. Reading my own review now I conclude that I would consider it one of Orwell's best productions.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I enjoyed this book, May 29, 1999

By A Customer

While The Clergyman's Daughter may not be 1984 it is still an amazing piece of literature. Orwell's satirical look at England through the eyes of a fanatically pious woman is amazing. He points out alot of social, religous and personal issues without being preachy. Trough it all you care about the fate of Dorathy Hare and that makes the end a little unsettling. Although, the story is sometimes to "convinient" and it is not as powerful and gripping as Orwell's other works I think any true Orwell fans will like this book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Up there with his best, April 23, 1999

By A Customer

I think this is a great novel, as atmospheric and moving as my other favorite novel by him, 1984.

To me, the most incredible and resonant parts of the book are those about homelessness - the nightly routines - trying to sleep in trafalgar square, being allowed to sit in the cafe from 6 AM etc. It is all so intimately described that you feel as if you are there. In this way it recalls 'down and out in paris and london'.

Definitely a winner