Eileen O'Shaughnessy - Influence On Orwell's Writing

Influence On Orwell's Writing

Some scholars believe that Eileen had a large influence on Orwell's writing. It is suggested that Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four may have been influenced by one of O'Shaughnessy's poems, "End of the Century, 1984", although this hypothesis cannot be proven. The poem was written in 1934, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Sunderland Church High School, which she had attended, and to look ahead 50 years to the school's centenary in 1984.

Although the poem was written a year before she met Orwell, there are striking similarities between the futuristic vision of O'Shaughnessy's poem and that of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, including the use of mind control, and the eradication of personal freedom by a police state.

The writers Peter Stansky and William Abrahams noted in their study of Orwell that, "Very likely the tininess of The Stores, -,appealed to her fantasy side. She was deeply imaginative, and enjoyed 'inventing' another world, populated with farmyard animals whose traits of personality she developed with the skill of a psychologist or a novelist, bestowing names upon them (Kate and Muriel were the goats at the Stores) and creating for them series of adventures. For a time she thought of incorporating them into a children's story that would be set in a farmyard." This project was abandoned when the war came; - " it survived only in the conversations she and would have in bed at night, amusing themselves as the bombs fell inventing new adventures: foibles and follies for the animals of their imaginary farm. "