THe Washer-Woman: a Character Sketch

THe washer-woman, in 1984, is a prole: a member of the lower, proletarian class. After Winston rented the room above Mr. Charrington's shop. he heard singing, looked out the window, and saw the washer-woman. She was described as follows:

"a monstrous woman, solid as a Norman pillar, with brawny red forearms and a sacking apron strapped about her middle, was stumping to and fro between a washtub and a clothes line pegging out a series of square white things which Winston recognized as babies' diapers. Whenever her mouth was not corked with clothes pegs she was singing in a powerful contralto:

It was only an hopeless fancy,
It passed like an April day,
But a look and a word and the dreams they stirred!
They have stolen my heart away!

... the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound."

Later on, after Julia bursts into he room with illegal goods and commodities of the past (coffee, tea, bread, sugar, jam), Winston again looks out of the window.

... Down in the yard the red-armed woman was still marching to and fro between the washtub and the line. She took two more pegs out of her mouth and sang with deep feeling:

They say that time heals all things,
They say you can always forget,
But the smiles and the tears across the years
They twist my heart-strings yet!

She knew the whole drivelling song by heart, it semed. Her voice floated upward with the sweet summer air, very tuneful, charged with a sort of happy melancholy. One had the feeling that she would have been perfectly content, if the June evening had been endless and the supply of clothes inexhaustible, to remain there for a thousand years, pegging clothes and singing rubbish."

First of all, the lady is a proletariat, a member of the lower class. Later on in the book, the statement "she would have been perfectly content ... to remain there for a thousand years" is reflected in the Party's political philosophy: the willingness of the proletariat to remain in their station, and their failure to rise above their rank. For Winston, the Washer-Woman is a relic of the past: an unsuccessful prole, willing to remain in her rank. She is, after all, seemingly content with her station, and makes the best out of her situation, singing the songs designed to keep her happy. To Winston, the Washer-Woman was an important influence. Orwell was not aimless with her inclusion in 1984. The Washer Woman serves to remind Winston that things have not changed- that no matter what the Party says or does, the proletariat will always exist- he gains courage and initiative to join the Brotherhood and fight against the Party. The unofficial, to him, with his relationship with Julia, his illegal goods, and the defiance of the proletariat, which is alive and well, and it is more evident to him than ever that the Party is incorrect in its statements of fact.