Julia and Lenina.
Feminist utopias and dystopias! I shrieked like a fangirl when I read the call for subs, probably waking up my roommates. Dystopian fiction is my favourite SF sub-genre. I first read 1984 and Brave New World when I was much younger and they scared the shit out of me, because I couldn’t imagine how I could live in either of those worlds.
Over the years certain little things about the novels began to bother my proto-feminist self. Why didn’t Julia care about big ideas like Winston did? Why was Lenina so ditzy? Just like the protagonists, they refuse to conform to society - Julia leads a sensual and promiscuous life in a world where biologists try to “abolish the orgasm”, Lenina pursues the unattainable Savage while everyone else is content with instant gratification. I might want to cheer for them if they’d been portrayed with more depth and personality - but as it is, their rebellion just seems so passive, really just a reflection of their male counterparts’. And when it comes down to it they’re not really nonconformists at all. Lenina’s materialistic to the end, and she never really grasps why she momentarily breaks out of her old patterns of behaviour. Julia doesn’t particularly care about whether the Party is right or wrong or is defeated in the end. Damn, I wish I had 1984 to quote from but I lent it out. Anyway, her lover Winston Smith realizes this and tells her, “You’re only a rebel from the waist down.”
The Revolution Will Not Be Sexualized.
It’s a bit of a downer, realizing that your favourite books are just like those trashy old science fiction novels where you know there’s gonna be a sex scene simply because a female character is introduced (kind of like Chekhov’s gun-on-the-mantel thing, hahaha). It gets scary-depressing when you read the feminist blogs and take in a piece on Joe Francis one day and teen virginity pledges the next and realize that the pressures on women in 1984 and Brave New World still exist simultaneously here, so that resisting one is giving into the other. And we haven’t come so far that all the “good guys” are okay with a woman who rebels from the waist up, too.
Come for the rock, stay for the klezmer.
SPOILER ALERT: THERE IS A VAGINA IN THE ROOM! SEX SHALL ENSUE IN THE SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS!
Am I the only one that replies to her posts now?
Hey hi,
I’m reading 1984 at the moment (http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/0.html), and as I came upon that particular quote I searched for it, and found your blog :)
Anyway, I just wish to say that I understand how you feel, but I do not agree.
Why must Julia care about ‘big ideas’? As she herself says, ‘I’m not interested in the next generation, dear. I’m interested in us.’ They were both rebels, but of two different types. Winston was upset about the loss of history, while Julia was upset over personal freedom (love and sex). What’s important to Winston doesn’t have to be important to her.
Actually if she was the same as Winston, it could be said that she served only to further substantiate Winston. Rather, I feel that she is her own person who throws away and pokes holes at Winston’s ideals.
I’m a male and I’d love to hear your view on my reply. Also, apologies for not writing clearly.
Arul
P.S Regarding what I said above … ‘Actually if she was the same as Winston, it could be said that she served only to further substantiate Winston.’ ……. I am wondering if it can it be said of the feminists? Yet I’m quite worried I’ll upset a whole lot of people.