George Orwell’s 1984, the literary equivalent of a klaxon screaming “WARNING: TOTALITARIANISM AHEAD!”, has now been fitted with… a warning. A preface, to be precise, from the hand of one Dolen Perkins-Valdez, who informs readers that the book’s protagonist, Winston Smith, holds views about women that are “despicable.”
Apparently, the fictional character in a novel about mind control, censorship, and the slow boiling of individual thought in the stew of state propaganda has now committed the gravest sin of all: he failed to pass a 2025 HR sensitivity seminar.
This is the 75th-anniversary edition of 1984. That’s three-quarters of a century of warning bells, wake-up calls, and high-school essays on why Big Brother is bad. And now we’re being told by the publisher, Berkley Books, that the book needs a moral escort to make sure no one gets the wrong idea.
The irony is now wearing neon body paint and dancing in the street.
Perkins-Valdez opens her commentary with an admission: she read the book and tried to “enjoy the novel on its own terms.” Good for her. That’s usually how reading works.
But then she hits a snag: the line, “He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones.” At this point, she confesses she might’ve given up on the book entirely had she read it earlier in life.
Yes, Winston Smith, whose life is orchestrated by telescreens, secret police, and public hangings, who is quite literally erased from existence for thinking unauthorized thoughts, is now being written off as a problematic figure for…insufficient gender positivity.
Perkins-Valdez also writes that “a sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity,” noting the absence of black characters.
Let’s not forget: this is fiction. A warning. A nightmare. The literary equivalent of being screamed at by a man in a trench coat under a flickering streetlamp. It’s meant to scare the living hell out of you.
It’s not that Winston Smith is a misogynist. It’s that the entire book is about a society where even noticing the difference is illegal. The whole plot is a lesson in what happens when the state starts dictating what is acceptable to think and say.
And now, we’ve appended a preface that effectively tells readers what’s acceptable to feel.
