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A Clergyman's Daughter

Penguin Modern Classics

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A Clergyman's Daughter

By: George Orwell
Narrated by: Catherine Bailey
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Intimidated by her father, the rector of Knype Hill, Dorothy performs her submissive roles of dutiful daughter and bullied housekeeper. Her thoughts are taken up with the costumes she is making for the church school play, by the hopelessness of preaching to the poor and by debts she cannot pay in 1930s Depression England.

Suddenly her routine shatters and Dorothy finds herself down and out in London. She is wearing silk stockings, has money in her pocket and cannot remember her name. Orwell leads us through a landscape of unemployment, poverty and hunger, where Dorothy's faith is challenged by a social reality that changes her life.

©2020 George Orwell (P)2020 Penguin Audio Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Political England

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He does get a bit preachy sometimes and he really didn’t like people! The way in which he shows poverty before the welfare state and just his impossible it was to get out of it is a must read for anything who thinks that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is just a matter of effort. The world is set up to help those with money. It was then and it still is now.

The sheer quality and clarity of his writing

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Orwells writing style is so clear and easy to consume. The reading is really brilliant!

Great reading, great book!

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narrator's voicing of Mr Warburton is terrible supercilious and disgusted ALL OF THE TIME, even though very often this is not the tone intended by the author. it paints, thus, an inaccurate picture of the character. her general performance is very good and clear, though. the story is, st best, a weird one, and not in a very good way. the most interesting section, I found, was rather an obvious fictionalisation of experiences Orwell had himself, and which are better captured in an earlier book of his.

narrator misses the mark

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A Clergyman's Daughter is a strange novel by Orwell, who I believe disliked the story. Dorothy Hare – a spinster in her late twenties, is the dutiful daughter to her father clergyman, a selfish and self centred man who thinks he is above the common man. Dorothy suffers amnesia and ends up in London not knowing anything about herself or how she got there. Hop-picking and begging, eventually she remembers who she is. The chapter in Trafalgar Square is odd and easily forgettable. She begins a teaching position, is dismissed after a term, and finally ends up back home with her father doing the same thing as before. Dorothy lacks the ability to direct her own life and ends up as a trapped victim in every situation.
I feel Orwell wrote about how little opportunity for women like Dorothy was back then - little education, relatively poor, stuck in life. The amnesia was an escape mechanism, a breath of fresh air that turned sour. I think Dorothy wanted more for herself, rather than being a wife and mother to a self serving man. However, she ended up being back with her father, trapped again.
The narration is top notch from Catherine Bailey. It's an interesting story, and you can't help but feel for Dorothy.

An interestingly strange novel.

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