Winston's mother
A tall, statuesque, rather silent woman with slow movements and fair hair, who disappeared when Winston Smith was ten or eleven. She is dead or in a labour camp before the novel opens and appears only in his dreams and his memory, and she is the measure the book uses for everything the Party has abolished.
To keep both her children fed, and to keep loving the one who is robbing the other. She goes on giving Winston the larger share and goes on asking him not to be selfish, and neither the giving nor the asking works.
The book
At a glance
- Winston Smith's mother, in memory and in dreams
- The purges of the fifties, when Winston was ten or eleven
- A husband taken in the same period, and a baby daughter
- Never established; killed, or sent to a forced-labour camp
- Part One, Chapter 3; Part Two, Chapter 7
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeWinston Smith's mother vanished in the great purges of the fifties, along with his father, when Winston was about ten or eleven. He remembers her as tall, statuesque, rather silent, with slow movements and magnificent fair hair. He never learns what happened to her. She may have been killed; she may have been sent to a forced-labour camp. His younger sister, a tiny, feeble, silent baby with large watchful eyes, went with her.
What he remembers most clearly is the hunger, and his own behaviour in it. There was never enough food, and he nagged, shouted and whined at her for more. She gave him the biggest portion as a matter of course and it was never enough. On the day a chocolate ration was issued — a two-ounce slab between the three of them — he demanded the whole piece, argued her down to three-quarters, then snatched his sister's quarter out of her hand and ran. He ate it in the street, came home hours later, and his mother and sister were gone. Nothing had been taken from the room, not even her overcoat.
She returns in a dream at the start of the novel. She is sitting in the saloon of a sinking ship, far below him, with the child in her arms, looking up at him through darkening water while they are sucked down and he stays in the light. Winston's later reading of her is the point Orwell is making with her: she was not an unusual woman or an intelligent one, but the standards she obeyed were private ones, her feelings were her own and could not be altered from outside, and it would never have occurred to her that an action which changes nothing is therefore meaningless. Holding a dying child does not produce more chocolate. She did it anyway.
How the book draws them
- How he remembers herTall, statuesque, rather silent, with slow movements and magnificent fair hair. His father is vaguer: dark and thin, in neat dark clothes, remembered chiefly by the very thin soles of his shoes.
- How she movedSlowly, and with a curious lack of superfluous motion: Orwell compares her to an artist's lay figure moving of its own accord. Her large shapely body settles naturally into stillness. Winston remembers her eyes as large, and anxious, and fixed on his face.
- The gas ringThe domestic image that recurs. Her body bent over a gas ring, stirring at something in a saucepan, in the years of continuous hunger and the fierce sordid battles at mealtimes.
- The chocolateTwo ounces between three people. She told him not to be greedy, argued, gave in to the extent of three-quarters, and called after him to give his sister back her chocolate when he grabbed the rest and ran.
- The gestureHer arm drawn round the child, the small face pressed against her breast. Winston sees at the time that it means his sister is dying, and spends the rest of the book working out what the gesture itself meant.
- The sinking shipThe dream that opens Chapter 3: his mother and sister in the saloon of a ship going down, still able to see him through the green water, with no reproach in their faces, only the knowledge that they must die so that he can live.
- Private standardsWinston concludes that her loyalties were to individual people and could not be altered from outside, which is what the Party has since made impossible. Told the story, Julia rolls over half asleep and says all children are swine.