Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [635]

It was evident even to Winston that she was waiting for something that she knew must happen. She did everything that was needed – cooked, washed, mended, made the bed, swept the floor, dusted the mantelpiece – always very slowly and with a curious lack of superfluous motion, like an artist’s lay-figure moving of its own accord. … For hours at a time she would sit almost immobile on the bed, nursing his young sister, a tiny, ailing, very silent child of two or three, with a face made simian by thinness. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 635

Note

The mother’s gestural economy — every motion necessary, none superfluous, an artist’s lay-figure — is rendered through the inventory of chores, and the ‘simian’ face of the starving child is a precise visual that does not soften. The list rhythm enacts the very mechanical motion described.