George Orwell’s 1984 is one of my favorite novels, and its themes feel more apposite today than ever—it’s all too easy to recognize the many Orwellian parallels with the current administration, especially their efforts to “memory hole” any history they consider inconvenient, with a seemingly gleeful emphasis on erasing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts in general, and women’s achievements in particular.

Anna Funder uses this stark situation to highlight another memory-holing of a woman: Eileen O’Shaughnessy, wife to George Orwell. Writing for Time magazine, Funder exposes a hidden definition of Orwellian:

Orwell had a brilliant wife who was erased from history, and he started it.

Never heard of her? That’s because Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s name, along with her enormous contribution to Orwell’s life (she saved it) and work (she helped make it) have gone down the patriarchal memory hole.

She wrote a book, Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life, in which she explores:

[…] just how a woman so crucial to a man’s life and work can be erased from the story while she is alive, and then, after she dies, from history.

O’Shaughnessy sounds fascinating:

[…] an Oxford graduate in literature, a writer and editor who’d studied under famed British author John Ronald Reuel Tolkien—

Yes, that would be J.R.R. Tolkien. She also had the word “obey” removed from her wedding vows, and appears to be a significant contributor (at least!) to Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Funder links O’Shaughnessy’s erasure to this regime’s all-out campaign to scrub women from our history books. She closes with a jab—optimistic, perhaps—at the agencies who shamefully complied:

I just hope they backed up their databases first, so that when this memory-hole era is over, they can put the women who made history back into it with a click.

Funder is doing her part to restore O’Shaughnessy’s name to the narrative.

(Via @briankrebs → @amydiehl.)