21. What does the Rector advise Dorothy to do about the unpaid and mounting butcher's bill?
From Quiz A Clergyman's Daughter
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.