Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [788]

As he fastened the belt of his overalls he strolled across to the window. The sun must have gone down behind the houses; it was not shining into the yard any longer. The flagstones were wet as though they had just been washed, and he had the feeling that the sky had been washed too, so fresh and pale was the blue between the chimney pots. Tirelessly the woman marched to and fro, corking and uncorking herself, singing and falling silent, and pegging out more diapers, and more and yet more. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 788

Note

‘Corking and uncorking herself’ reduces the prole woman to a mechanical figure in a single grotesque verb, while ‘more and yet more’ stretches the sentence to match the infinite repetition of her chores. The washed sky and flagstones give the scene a deceptive freshness that makes the coming capture feel like a storm the reader should have seen — but the paragraph’s calm is exactly what hides it.