After the publishing of George Orwell’s 1984, communist governments and organizations around the world condemned the book as “anti-Soviet slander” and “capitalist propaganda.” Orwell died only eight months after the book’s release and his personal feelings on the details of the story are limited to a few personal letters to friends and publishers.
Orwell was a Democratic Socialist, but even he was disturbed by the path that socialist movements had taken in light of genocidal far-left governments. His criticisms of Stalinist politics were treated by leftists as a betrayal.
However, it was Orwell’s depiction of women within authoritarian systems that angered the political left most of all. They have attacked 1984 for decades as “misogynistic”and “blind to gender oppression”. But as time passes, Orwell’s views on leftist women have proven more and more prophetic and they were written well before second wave feminism became a reality. In 1984, the character of Winston Smith described them thus:
“He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy…”
“She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none, that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her…”