Mrs Jones
The farmer's wife. She is asleep and snoring on the first page, watches the Rebellion from the bedroom window, flings a few possessions into a carpet bag and slips out of the farm by another way. Her green tablecloth becomes the flag, and a piece of her blue ribbon is what tempts Mollie in the farmhouse.
The book
At a glance
- The wife of Mr Jones, the farmer at Manor Farm
- Never given
- Not described
- A few possessions in a carpet bag
- A blue ribbon on the dressing-table and a green tablecloth in the harness-room
- Chapters I and II
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeAnimal Farm is a short novel by George Orwell, published in 1945, in which the animals of an English farm drive out the man who owns it and run the place themselves. Mrs Jones is that man's wife. Her name appears five times in the whole book, and she does not speak in any of them.
She turns up in the second sentence. Mr Jones has locked the hen-houses for the night but is too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes; he lurches across the yard with his lantern swinging, kicks off his boots at the back door, draws himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery and goes up to bed, where Mrs Jones is already snoring. As soon as the bedroom light goes out, the animals gather in the big barn to hear Old Major, a prize boar, tell them that man is their enemy and that they should get rid of him. She sleeps through the meeting.
Three months later the farm rebels. Mr Jones goes into Willingdon on Midsummer's Eve, gets so drunk at the Red Lion that he does not come back until the following midday, and his men milk the cows and go off rabbiting without feeding anything. By evening the animals are still unfed. A cow breaks the door of the store-shed with her horn, the whole farm starts helping itself, and Jones and his four men come out with whips. The animals turn on them, and all five men run down the cart-track to the main road with the animals behind them.
Mrs Jones is upstairs while this is happening. She looks out of the bedroom window, sees what is going on, hurriedly flings a few possessions into a carpet bag and slips out of the farm by another way. One creature goes with her. Moses, a tame raven who was Mr Jones's especial pet and had been fed on crusts of bread soaked in beer, springs off his perch and flaps after her, croaking loudly. He is gone from the farm for years.
After that she exists as her belongings. The animals go through the farmhouse that morning on tiptoe, afraid to speak above a whisper, and find Mollie, the pretty white mare who used to pull Mr Jones's trap, alone in the best bedroom with a piece of blue ribbon from Mrs Jones's dressing-table held against her shoulder. A chapter later Snowball, one of the two pigs then leading the farm, comes across an old green tablecloth of hers in the harness-room and paints a hoof and a horn on it in white. It goes up the flagstaff in the farmhouse garden every Sunday morning as the flag of Animal Farm.
The book never says where she went or what became of her.
How the book draws them
- Asleep on the first pageShe is in the second sentence of the novel, snoring, while her husband comes up to bed too drunk to have shut the hen-house pop-holes. The meeting in the barn that plans the rebellion happens directly beneath her, and she sleeps through it.
- She never speaksOrwell gives her no line of dialogue, no first name, no age and no description of her face or figure. Her name appears five times in the book, and three of those are attached to things she owned rather than to her.
- The bedroom windowWhile the animals are driving her husband and his four men out of the yard, she looks out of the window, sees what is happening, hurriedly flings a few possessions into a carpet bag and slips out of the farm by another way. The men are chased down the cart-track and the five-barred gate is slammed behind them. Nobody chases her.
- The raven goes with herMoses, the tame raven, was Mr Jones's especial pet and used to be fed on crusts of bread soaked in beer. As she leaves, he springs off his perch and flaps after her, croaking loudly. He is the only creature on the farm who follows her, and he stays away for several years.
- The blue ribbon on her dressing-tableThe animals tiptoe through the farmhouse the same morning and touch almost nothing in it. Mollie, the white mare, goes missing from the party and is found in the best bedroom, holding a piece of Mrs Jones's blue ribbon against her shoulder and admiring herself in the glass. The others reproach her sharply.
- The green tableclothSnowball finds an old green tablecloth of hers in the harness-room and paints a hoof and a horn on it in white. Hoisted every Sunday morning, it is the farm's flag: green for the fields of England, Snowball explains, and the hoof and horn for the Republic of the Animals to come.
- After the rebellion, nothingShe is never mentioned again after Chapter II except through the things she left behind. The book does not say where she went, whether she and her husband found each other again, or what happened to her afterwards.