By Abbey Cannan
“We all live in patriarchy, as far as I know there’s no other place,” says Anna Funder in conversation with Kristin Williamson on Thursday 27 July at The J Theatre in Noosa.
The duo dived into Anna’s new book Wifedom – Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life.
“Last night I was asked a question if the book was an attack. If a woman’s point of view is an attack then that’s why I’ve written this book,” Anna said.
Wifedom speaks to the unsung work of women everywhere today, while offering an intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the 20th century. Part biography, part story, part polemic, the book defies genre.
When asked how much of the book she took from her own life, Anna laughed, “It’s very hard to write about a marriage if you want to stay in it.”
“My husband now says funny things now like – ‘Patriarchy, it was fun while it lasted’ and ‘You couldn’t have written this book without me’.”
Anna has admitted to being an enormously privileged, white post-menopausal writer. So why is this issue of ‘Wifedom’ only hitting her now?
“It was probably an understatement of mine to say it’s only hitting me now,” she said.
“I grew up with a second-wave feminist mother. She spent her life as a psychologist and demographer investigating the economic situation of women after divorce in this country.”
Anna said her mum once told her a story about one of their ancestors who was given the advice to “advertise for a maid, choose the prettiest one, and marry her. And that way you get it all for free”.
I couldn’t help but notice the crowd laughing, while filled mostly with couples from the generation who grew up with a similar state of mind.
“This is the kind of feminist education that I had. Which was a view of Wifedom where the services of a woman were traditionally thought of being obtained by marriage for life,” Anna said.
“Being my mother’s daughter and coming to it from a demographic or statistical point of view, in Australia women on average now earn a million dollars less than equivalent men over their lifetime. That’s a lot of money.
“We have a gender wage gap which is outrageous and it seems to me that we are not in a world in which women have half the power, half the money, and half the leisure time. And that’s not because we are golfing or riding around in lycra, it’s because of the vast amount of largely invisible and sometimes invisible to us, work of life and love that we do sustaining families, communities, and ultimately the nation.
“The UN has looked at this and said this applies in every society on the planet. Every ethnicity and every skin colour everywhere, there is that vast disparity between the work of men and unpaid work of women. If it had to be paid for it would cost 10.9 trillion US dollars a year.
“It seems to be that this work we do is both essential and invaluable, and I want to make it visible now. Even in my little privileged life with my nice husband, my children, and a depressed French exchange student.”
