Compare the role of women in the societies of Huxley’s Brave New World And Orwell’s 1984.In this essay an analysis of the role of women in Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 shall be compared. Both books were written before 1950, and are science f
...ongs to everyone else.’ The more important aspect of femininity and being female, that of giving birth has been subdued by the society. Birth and motherhood are both disgusting and vile ideas in Brave New World. (‘Try to realize what it was like to have a viviparous mother…That smutty word again. But none of them dreamed, this time, of smiling.’ In 1984 Sexual intercourse is seen as a ‘duty to the party’. An alternative is also given similar to that of the dehumanised ‘decanting’ in Brave New World; ‘Artsem’ (Artificial Semination). In both books no female characters hold a position of power, they do not possess as much intellectual capacity as their male counterparts do. With the exception of Julia in 1984, who has the potential to see but chooses not to as it does not affect her immediate life ‘ Life as she saw it was quite simple. You wanted a good time; ‘they’, meaning the party, wanted to stop you…you broke the rules as best you could.’ . She is more realistic of the situation, than Winston she admits Big Brother cannot be fallible, whereas Winston does. In Brave New World gender is exploited to control people, yet love is not involved however Lenina displays signs that she is feeling emotions of love (The only one to do so from the conditioned world): ‘Lenina suddenly felt all the sensations normally experienced at the beginning of a violent passion surrogate treatment’ In both books the female protagonists, are shown to display signs of affection and love for the sake of love itself. But from the male protagonist perspective it is not love, but the political act of being able to do so that is seen more important: ‘Listen the more men you’ve had, the more I love you…the simple undifferentiated desire…the force that would tear the Party to pieces.’ . In 1984 there is a strong sense of misogyny, both in the views of Winston: ‘He disliked nearly all women and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies’ And surprisingly in Julia herself: ‘always in the stink of women! How I hate women!’. This misogyny is prevalent in BNW too through the views of Bernard, Helmholtz and John: ‘Ford, how I hate Them…Like meat, like so much meat…and what makes it worse, she thinks of ...