Discipline and moral labor: A literary-sociological reading of schooling in George Orwell’s A Clergyman’s Daughter

Abstract

George Orwell’s A Clergyman's Daughter (1935) has received relatively limited sociological attention as a critique of education, despite its rich portrayal of disciplinary practices, moral regulation, and gendered inequality within interwar Britain. This study examines Chapter IV of George Orwell's A Clergyman's Daughter through a qualitative literary-sociological approach based on close reading, drawing on Michel Foucault's concept of disciplinary power, Paulo Freire's critique of the banking model of education, and Pierre Bourdieu's notion of symbolic capital. This study contributes by proposing an integrated literary-sociological framework showing that disciplinary power, pedagogical practice, and symbolic capital operate as mutually reinforcing mechanisms that produce gendered moral governance within Orwell's educational setting. The findings reveal that Ringwood House operates as a disciplinary institution where surveillance, moralized pedagogy, and female respectability function together to normalize obedience while reproducing classed and gendered hierarchies. Rather than portraying an ineffective school alone, Orwell exposes education as a moral economy where virtue itself becomes symbolic capital sustaining institutional authority. These findings extend literary sociology by illustrating how fictional narratives can illuminate enduring mechanisms of educational power and moral governance. As an interpretive analysis limited to one chapter of a novel, the conclusions should be understood within this analytical scope.