Orwell could be tongue-in-cheek about this, too, as when he wrote to his friend Brenda Salkeld in 1934: I had lunch yesterday with Mr Ede. He is a bit of a feminist and thinks that if a woman was brought up exactly like a man she would be able to throw a stone, construct a syllogism, keep a secret etc. He tells me that my antifeminist views are probably due to Sadism! I have never read the Marquis de Sade’s novels — they are unfortunately very hard to get hold of.
