A Clergyman's Daughter Trivia Quiz

Answer: Kiss Mr Warburton

Dorothy' s life is a constant struggle. As well as looking after her father, the Rector of the parish, and assisting him in his duties, she is obliged to run the household as best she can on a very inadequate income. She is deeply religious and has many private austerities, among which are taking cold baths and depriving herself of food for a penance. She keeps a pin handy to prick herself with whenever she has an unchristian thought, and mortifies herself by deliberately taking the Cup at Holy Communion straight from Miss Mayfill, who is a rather repulsive-looking old woman with slobbery lips.

Mrs Pither is one of her father's poor and ailing old parishioners. Rubbing down her rheumatic legs is an act of kindness, one of many unattractive tasks that fill Dorothy's day.

Mr Warburton is a middle-aged man with a bad reputation in the small country town where Dorothy lives. But in spite of his attempt to grab Dorothy and kiss her when they first met (tearfully repulsed by her), she has come to think of him as a friend.

Answer: Take no notice of the butcher

Dorothy's father is quite unruffled by the amount of money they owe to the local tradesmen. He tells Dorothy to "take no notice of the fellow; go to the other butcher."

Orwell is mainly celebrated as a political writer, and not usually thought of as capable of subtle characterisation, but in "A Clergyman's Daughter", the central figures are well-drawn and varied. The Rector, with his refusal to live in the modern world of the book (the nineteen-thirties), is amusing and true to life. The conversation between him and Dorothy at breakfast is one of my favourite scenes in the novel. It establishes his personality and the relationship between him and his daughter, and we see the details of the frustrations he creates in her life.

The Rector begins breakfast with a complaint about the fact that they are having bacon yet again. Dorothy replies that the bacon was so cheap that it seemed a sin not to buy it. "Ah Danish, I suppose," says the Rector. "What a number of Danish invasions we have had in this country," (they are in East Anglia), "first with fire and sword, and now with their abominable cheap bacon. Which has been responsible for the most deaths, I wonder."

After breakfast, Dorothy makes a desperate attempt to explain to him how serious their financial position is. "You can't blame him if the butcher's angry when his bill's not paid, father," she says.
"I most certainly can blame him," replies the Rector, (who despises the lower classes unless they are properly respectful and touch their caps to him.) "It is abominable the way these people take it upon themselves to behave these days. But that is the kind of thing we are exposed to in this delightful century. That is progress, as they are pleased to call it." He goes on to tell Dorothy that when he had been at Oxford, he had found that his father still hadn't paid some of his own bills from thirty years before, perhaps thinking this will comfort her.

Answer: Making costumes for the school children's play

Against her better judgement, Dorothy is persuaded to visit Mr Warburton at home that evening. He gets over her reluctance by assuring her he has also invited other guests, a married couple; but when Dorothy arrives she finds herself alone with him. Eventually, after listening to a lot of his witty and would-be shocking talk, she realises how late it is getting, and she tells him she must go home as she has work to do. The school children are to perform a play about Oliver Cromwell, and although their parents are supposed to make their costumes, it is usually Dorothy who ends up with this monotonous task. She has had years of practice in making helmets, armour and boots out of glue and brown paper.

"What a life you lead," marvels Mr Warburton. "Messing about with glue and brown paper in the middle of the night. I must say that there are times when I am a little thankful that I am not a clergyman's daughter."

Answer: "Are you on the beach, kid?"

When Dorothy doesn't understand this slang, he rephrases the question as; "Are you on the bum?" which is no less baffling.

Both expressions mean is she completely destitute, broke, down and out. George Orwell was familiar with the speech of Cockney tramps and beggars from his experiences among these outcasts of society. Although he genuinely found himself without money several times in France, his "tramping" experiences were mostly undertaken as a form of research into conditions among London's homeless. He reports on these in his first book, "Down and Out in Paris in London", published in 1933. At the end of the second part of the book, there is a dictionary of slang current in London at the time. Included in this are the expressions "on the beach" and "on the bum".

Dorothy finds she has half a crown in her pocket, on which Nobby and the other two persuade her to join up with them. Nobby takes charge of her half-crown, saying he will look after it for her.

There is definitely something of Charles Dickens's Artful Dodger about the character of Nobby. He is very young, but is already quite an accomplished thief, and remains cheerful even under the most miserable circumstances.

Answer: They walk, taking a roundabout route

Dorothy is in a dazed state, not able to remember anything about herself or her past life. She tells the others her name is Ellen, as the first name that comes into her head. They set off on foot, none of them having more than the vaguest idea of the way or how long it will take them. Actually the distance is not so great, but they are obliged to go miles out of their way every day in order to search and beg for food, once the half crown is spent.

At night they light the best fires they can, although it is often pouring with rain. Nobby is an expert at getting fires lit in wet weather, also at begging and at supplementing their food by stealing apples and chickens and anything else he can lay his hands on. He is quite used to this sort of life, but the other two, Flo and Charlie, are simply working class Londoners who have only recently ended up on the streets. They are appalled by the distances they have to walk, and never stop grumbling. Eventually they disappear when Nobby and Dorothy are asleep, and are assumed to have hitchhiked back to London.

Once Dorothy and Nobby get to Kent, there are further troubles finding work. They have to walk from farm to farm, asking to be taken on as pickers.

Obviously these experiences were something Orwell knew about at first hand, as were the later scenes of "A Clergyman's Daughter" among the down-and-outs in London. It is the detailed descriptions of Dorothy's and Nobby's plight that makes this part of the novel fascinating.

Answer: She reads it in the newspaper

Dorothy finds picking hops hard physical work, with barely time to eat and sleep; so she has no leisure to wonder about herself. She had heard gossip among the others on the way down to Kent about a scandalous case of a runaway rector's daughter, but it meant nothing to her. It is not until Nobby lends her a trashy tabloid newspaper one Sunday and she glances at it idly, that she finds she is reading all about herself. All at once her memory comes back to her.

"A Clergyman's Daughter" has been regarded as one of Orwell's weak novels, by those few critics who were even aware it existed. This was Orwell's own attitude to the book; he was obviously not proud of it in later years, and described it as "Like the curate's egg - good in parts." (This is a well-known saying, implying that the other parts are rotten.) In a letter to a friend, telling them in disparaging terms about his novel "Coming Up For Air", he says, "There is an even worse one called 'A Clergyman's Daughter'".

However, there is much in the book that is very good and absorbing. The plot is original and intriguing, and most of the ends are tied up. The fact that Dorothy loses her memory is perfectly likely, after it is shown in the end of Part One how totally exhausted she is, mind and body. (However, we never find out exactly how she was conveyed to London and robbed of her clothes and gold cross). The dialogue among the very different classes of characters rings true and is often amusing. Also in this early novel (published in 1935), George Orwell already shows signs of developing the style which became well known in his other, more famous, books and his many articles and essays.

Answer: She was last seen getting into Mr Warburton's car at midnight.

It is the town gossip, who unluckily lives next door to Mr Warburton, who has given this slanderous information to the newspapers. Everyone in the town knows what a liar this woman is. Her stories are always scandalous and usually make the unfortunate victims out to be perverted in some way. On this occasion she claims that Dorothy was seen in an intoxicated condition and scantily clad only in a nightdress, being driven off in Mr Warburton's car. As Mr Warburton had left to go abroad the following day he was not there to contradict the story.

Poor Dorothy is horrified to think that her father and her neighbours might believe that she has eloped with the immoral Mr Warburton, or simply run off with him. At the first opportunity she sends a telegram to her father asking for help. However, the days go by and she receives no answer.

Answer: She speaks with an upper-class accent

The women who interview Dorothy are of all different types, and scattered all over the London suburbs. They have one thing in common, though: as soon as Dorothy opens her mouth and they hear her speak, they are taken aback, then become alarmed and suspicious. What is a girl of her class doing seeking work as a servant? She does not know how to disguise her accent, and as she is strong, willing and used to hard work, she imagines at first that she will be able to get a job quite easily. But no one wants her, and once her money has gone, and she can no longer pay for her room, there is nothing she can do but wander on to the streets and spend the night there among the other homeless Londoners.

This is the part of the book which attracted the most adverse criticism, mainly because those who did read it claimed that it was "cribbed" from similar scenes in the works of James Joyce. Orwell, a great admirer of Joyce, even admitted this himself. Also the scene is rather too long; and another criticism has been that it is somewhat unconnected to the rest of the book. Unlike the rest of "A Clergyman's Daughter", it is written in dialogue form, like a play, which seems to indicate that Orwell felt uncomfortable with it. The characters who share Dorothy's cold hungry nights on the Square are a sordid mixture: there is an old Irishwoman who has spent her life on the streets, a de-frocked vicar who utters blasphemies, a Cockney woman whose husband has beaten her up and thrown her out, someone who claims to be a private detective, a deaf old tramp and a couple of others. Orwell certainly did have first-hand experience of sleeping rough, which he puts to good use in this scene.

Answer: Sir Thomas Hare

Sir Thomas Hare is Dorothy's second cousin, who has had no contact with her father for years - this is understandable as the Rector has a habit of borrowing money from his richer relations. Sir Thomas probably would not have cared particularly what befell Dorothy, but he is infuriated by the fact that his name is same as the notorious "Rector's daughter" in the newspapers. Being rather brainless himself, he instructs his manservant to find Dorothy, which happens just as she is taken up for begging.

Sir Thomas believes all the stories printed in the paper about Dorothy, so he expects to find her a "rouged and powered siren" and is taken aback to see she is a "countrified, spinsterish girl". He gets her a job as a school teacher in a small private school by paying the owner of the school a bribe.

Answer: Good, medium and bad payers

Mrs Creevy is another good creation, and also reminiscent of a Dickensian character. Her speeches are typical of her personality and this part of the book is very entertaining, although it has a serious intent (George Orwell was making a mild protest about the existence of cheap private schools which were not subject to the examination system or to any particular curriculum).

On her first day at the school Dorothy is told by Mrs Creevy: "I don't want you to go thinking all the girls are to be treated the same, because they aren't, by any means." She hands Dorothy three lists of names, which she has to learn by heart.

The "good payers" are parents who pay whatever Mrs Creevy decides to charge them, without questioning extra half-crowns sneaked on to their bills. The "medium payers" are the parents who Mrs Creevy gets to stump up eventually, but only with a lot of reminding and re-sending in of bills. The three "bad payers" are many terms behind and Mrs Creevy says she is thinking of a solicitor's letter. "I don't mind what you do to that lot," she says; on the other hand Dorothy is on no account to hit any of the "good payers". Not only in the classroom, but at school lunch there is still discrimination. Mrs Creevy serves the lunch, and "shows extraordinary dexterity" in ladling out the fatty bits of meat to the "medium payers" and the lean bits to the "good payers". "As for the three 'bad payers', they ate a shamefaced lunch out of paper bags."

Answer: It reports that England lost a battle.

Dorothy is horrified by the history reader that the school has been using. It is not history at all, but simply a collection of over-patriotic fantasies that attempt to prove England's superiority to every other nation. She finds the children have learned absolutely no history. The only historical characters they have all heard of are Columbus and Napoleon. She asks the children if any of them knows when motor cars were invented, and one of the girls replies: "About a thousand years ago, by Columbus."

Their knowledge of other subjects is equally dismal. She finds they know absolutely nothing, owing to the fact that Mrs Creevy is only interested in the fees and in having copies in the girls' exercise books to show off to the parents. Previous teachers simply made the children recite and copy things parrot fashion.

Dorothy finds a proper history book in the library and also has an inspiration - she starts the children making a historical chart with illustrations to pin round the classroom walls.

Mrs Creevy protests that when she opens the history book "the first thing I read was that England had lost a battle somewhere. That's a nice thing to go teaching children! The parents won't stand for that sort of thing, I can tell you."

Answer: She has a solitary picnic in the woods.

Dorothy is quite content to spend the day away from Mrs Creevy, and her Christmas dinner consists of a hard boiled egg and a couple of sandwiches. It is a warm day for December and she is able to sit outside with her picnic and a book. Life at the school during the holidays is worse than ever; Mrs Creevy resents the fact that she has to feed Dorothy while she is not working, and meals become more scanty than ever. The house is always cold and there is no comfortable place to sit. Dorothy is also starved for society of any kind. She had a religious crisis and lost her faith when she when was down and out. Even so she attends the local church at the request of Mrs Creevy, who tells her to keep a look out for any potential pupils among the congregation.

Mrs Creevy despises Christmas as much as she despises the clergy ("They're only after your money"), and claims it is just a swindle got up by the shopkeepers. So her Christmas celebrations only go as far as dusting off a few bits of last year's tinsel and nailing them up.

Answer: She has found a cheaper teacher.

Dorothy is no match for her employer in cunning. When Mrs Creevy begins to treat her very slightly better, even allowing her to have marmalade for breakfast (!) and talking about what they will do next term, Dorothy is naive enough to believe that Mrs Creevy has come to appreciate her hard work. In fact, like a lot of crafty people, Mrs Creevy believes everyone to be as crafty as herself, and she is careful not to let Dorothy know she is planning to get another teacher. She thinks Dorothy will start poaching pupils and take them to another school if she does.

Reading "Macbeth" with the children did get Dorothy into bad trouble with the parents when she reached the scene where MacDuff boasts he is able to kill Macbeth because he is "not of woman born" and she has to explain the word "womb" to them.

Dorothy does hit one of the girls when she loses her temper with them one day. The children become unmanageable, because Dorothy has promised Mrs Creevy and the parents hat she will go back to the old routine of copying and reciting, and has to stop the girls from making the historical chart and the plasticine map, which they loved. Poor Dorothy is in an impossible position now. She had begun to enjoy teaching, in spite of her very low wages and uncomfortable surroundings, and the children had responded eagerly to her ideas. Now they deliberately behave badly and torment her because they are bored and resentful. Every single day Dorothy tells herself she will not lose her temper, and yet every day without fail, she loses it. On this occasion she walks up to the nearest girl who is making a noise and smacks her. "Happily it was only one of the medium payers."

Answer: The Anglican Atheists

Mr Warburton is exercising his sarcasm and wit here, at Dorothy's expense. Dorothy confesses that she has lost her faith; to her it is a major event that turns her inner life upside-down, but he simply can not understand what she is worrying about, or why she needs to have some sort of meaning to her life. She says in spite of her changed views, she will stay with her father and help in the church parish as she used to, as her father cannot afford to pay anyone to help him, but she foresees it will make things even more difficult for her to be taking part in rituals she no longer believes in. This is when Mr Warburton remarks that probably half of the parson's daughters in England are in the same predicament, not to mention the parsons. "You are practically a sect in yourselves, the Anglican Atheists."

The religious discussions between Dorothy and Mr Warburton, who is blatantly a hedonist and lives only for the moment, as well as deliberately trying to shock Dorothy, are quite interesting and show that Orwell had a good knowledge of the Church of England practices. In spite of his progressive political beliefs, he also had a deep love of the English countryside and of certain traditions of English life. He is buried in the Church of All Saints in the village of Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire.

Answer: She expects to spend the next ten years as an unpaid curate.

First of all, she knows she can never marry. This is told to us at the beginning of the book, and it is a convincing part of Dorothy's character. She has a physical revulsion towards men which dates back to her childhood and which she does not even want to overcome. Therefore, marriage is not an option.

Her father's debts have begun to mount up again, even before Dorothy returns to the Vicarage, in spite of the creditors' meeting held by local tradesmen, after which he was forced to sell out some shares and pay what was owing. As Mr Warburton says, the Rector will probably live just as long as his dwindling capital lasts out, and then he will die leaving Dorothy penniless. Until then, she will carry on with all the wearisome and monotonous jobs that no one else wants to do in the parish. In fact, as she muses on her future in this last scene, she is already starting to make costumes for the school children's Pageant out of glue and brown paper. She reflects that she will no doubt go back to school teaching in the end, although she imagines she can find a slightly better establishment than Mrs Creevy's.

There is a one great difference in her situation, although it appears on the surface that she is exactly the same position: typing out her father's sermons, visiting the parishioners, making costumes for the play out of brown paper and worrying about the church belfry collapsing. She has lost her faith, as she tried to explain to Mr Warburton, and this makes her round of duties seem meaningless. However in the last pages of the book Dorothy, searching for some answer to the question of what is the point of life on earth, does find some comfort in her reflections.

I find the character of Dorothy throughout the story to be sympathetic and convincing. She has many touching personality traits and all her actions and thoughts ring true.

George Orwell's later, more famous, achievements were documentaries (such as "The Road To Wigan Pier", "Homage to Catalonia") and political satires ("Animal Farm"), but he obviously had a talent for novel-writing which he may have developed further if he had lived to a greater age.