Orwell and Katharine Burdekin

Critics have commented on the resemblance between Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (1937) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Is it possible that Orwell’s dystopian novel, published twelve years after Burdekin imagined the consequences of a Nazi victory, was influenced by Swastika Night’s plot and themes? This chapter does not attempt to prove a direct link, but it does bring the novels face to face, to examine their meeting points and divergences and to position Burdekin and Orwell as worthy contemporaries. The chapter considers how each text treats gender, how they interrogate or normalize sexual violence, their attitudes to reproduction and the body, the worship of heteronormative desire and the family, the taint of homophobia, and the defence of individual freedom. It argues that while Swastika Night may be the lesser-known novel, it deserves to be remembered as a compelling response to contemporary politics, exploring the same questions as Nineteen Eighty-Four but with a decidedly feminist and gender-conscious voice.