Keep the Aspidistra Flying

by George Orwell

Gordon thought of Ravelston, his charming, rich friend, editor of Antichrist, of whom he was extravagantly fond, and whom he did not see so often as once in a fortnight; and of Rosemary, his girl, who loved him — adored him, so she said — and who, all the same, had never slept with him.

Life on two quid a week ceases to be a heroic gesture and becomes a dingy habit.

You don’t suffer real physical hardship on two quid a week, and if you did it wouldn’t matter. It is in the brain and the soul that lack of money damages you. Mental deadness, spiritual squalor — they seem to descend upon you inescapably when your income drops below a certain point. Faith, hope, money — only a saint could have the first two without having the third.

He was growing more mature. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. He had reached the age when the future ceases to be a rosy blur and becomes actual and menacing.

‘They’re more than a difficulty, they’re a bloody curse. That is, if you’ve got no money. A woman hates the sight of you if you’ve got no money.’ ‘I think that’s putting it a little too strongly. Things aren’t so crude as all that.’ Gordon did not listen. ‘What rot it is to talk about Socialism or any other ism when women are what they are! The only thing a woman ever wants is money; money for a house of her own and two babies and Drage furniture and an aspidistra. The only sin they can imagine is not wanting to grab money. No woman ever judges a man by anything except his income. Of course she doesn’t put it to herself like that. She says he’s SUCH A NICE man — meaning that he’s got plenty of money. And if you haven’t got money you aren’t NICE. You’re dishonoured, somehow. You’ve sinned.

‘Veuillez le dire donc selon Que vous estes benigne et doulche, Car ce doulx mot n’est pas si long Qu’il vous face mal en la bouche.’

‘Women! What nonsense they make of all our ideas! Because one can’t keep free of women, and every woman makes one pay the same price. “Chuck away your decency and make more money”— that’s what women say. “Chuck away your decency, suck the blacking off the boss’s boots, and buy me a better fur coat than the woman next door.” Every man you can see has got some blasted woman hanging round his neck like a mermaid, dragging him down and down — down to some beastly little semi-detached villa in Putney, with hire-purchase furniture and a portable radio and an aspidistra in the window. It’s women who make all progress impossible. Not that I believe in progress,’ he added rather unsatisfactorily. ‘What absolute NONSENSE you do talk, Gordon! As though women were to blame for everything!’ ‘They are to blame, finally. Because it’s the women who really believe in the money-code. The men obey it; they have to, but they don’t believe in it. It’s the women who keep it going. The women and their Putney villas and their fur coats and their babies and their aspidistras.’

‘It doesn’t matter who invented it, the point is that it’s women who worship it. A woman’s got a sort of mystical feeling towards money. Good and evil in a women’s mind mean simply money and no money. Look at you and me. You won’t sleep with me, simply and solely because I’ve got no money. Yes, that IS the reason. (He squeezed her arm to silence her.) You admitted it only a minute ago. And if I had a decent income you’d go to bed with me tomorrow. It’s not because you’re mercenary. You don’t want me to PAY you for sleeping with me. It’s not so crude as that. But you’ve got that deep-down mystical feeling that somehow a man without money isn’t worthy of you. He’s a weakling, a sort of half-man — that’s how you feel. Hercules, god of strength and god of money — you’ll find that in Lempriere. It’s women who keep all mythologies going. Women!’