A Clergyman's Daughter
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A Clergyman's Daughter is a novel by George Orwell. It is probably Orwell's least read novel. It details the trials and tribulation of Dorothy Hare, a woman whose sad existence, devoted to 'good works' is turned upside down.
This book has a great effect of showing how scandal can affect prominent community members. Dorothy goes "missing" after she kisses the villages most disreputable character. During her time as a missing person she learns new experiences such as sleeping in the streets and picking hops for a meagre wage. These elements are informed by Orwell's own experience with homelessness and poverty as described in Down and Out in Paris and London. Dorothy eventually finds a job as a schoolteacher, an experience that also parallels Orwell's own life.
The book is largely experimental, with Orwell attempting to echo passages of James Joyce's 'nighttown' from Ulysses in it. Orwell himself disowned it as 'tripe', but it certainly helped develop his reputation as an up and coming novelist in the 1930s.
External links
- A Clergyman's Daughter (http://www.george-orwell.org/A_Clergyman%27s_Daughter/index.html) - Searchable, indexed etext.
- HTML online text (http://www.litfix.com/orwell/clergymansdaughter/index.html)