Mrs. Orwell

The contributions of George Orwell’s wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy Blair, get their due in this brisk and emotionally charged graphic novel based on her life from Chalupa (In the Shadow of Stalin) and Revel (Now Let Me Fly). Born in 1905, Eileen rallies against sexism as a university student and young poet, then runs a typist firm, improving a refugee scholar’s manuscripts on the sly. Her conventional, middle-class family bristles at her dating Eric Blair, a rakish, volatile author who publishes under the pen name George Orwell. Despite Blair’s flirtations with other women, the two wed (Eileen is shown objecting mid-ceremony to one vow: “I will not ‘obey’ ”) and almost immediately set out for the Spanish Civil War, where Eric gets injured. Traumatized and mourning “comrades arrested and killed,” they return to a disquieted existence on an English farm. There the plot of Animal Farm takes shape in a conversation between the two. The couple adopt a baby, then Eileen dies during a hysterectomy in 1945. Chalupa’s script emphasizes Eileen’s hot temper and Eric’s manipulative tendencies, while Revel’s jaunty character designs sport exaggerated, cartoony facial expressions (Eileen, for example, recalls a 1930s Hopey from Love and Rockets). This energetic portrait brings to vivid life a critical influence on the work of Orwell—and the personal costs of activism. (Mar.)