Chapter II: Childbearing

A society’s view of childbearing greatly affects the attitude toward women of that culture.   The ability to be with child is, after all, what physically sets women apart.  It is impossible to consider a woman’s roles control over future generations; hence, every dystopian government takes an obtrusive role into the conception and birth of its citizens in order to have absolute assurance of its future citizens’ faithfulness and usefulness to the state.  In order to maintain in society without also considering her role as the vessel of life.  All dystopian governments, in one way or another, interfere with this natural role.  The oppressive regimes are concerned with two basic principles, power and stability.  One key element to maintaining these principles ifaithful and useful citizens, the government must also gain control over their emotions.  Pregnancy is a naturally emotional affair, and therefore, must be either harnessed by the government or somehow eliminated altogether.

Conception is the ultimate goal of the daily life in Gilead, the fictional society in which Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale takes place.  In Gilead, an extreme, Christian fundamentalist regime comes into power in reaction to the rocky, amoral times of modern America.  The rise of radical feminism, pornography, and various other social issues in the U.S. causes a coup, which results in a completely reactionary society.  Atwood’s narrative tells of the first rocky years of this government’s rise to power and of its recipe for success: a newly formulated social structure that relies heavily upon the subjugation of women. In a book review Ruth Cosstick explains the situation in Gilead:

Atwood has delineated a social and sexual revolution, or perhaps more accurately, an anti-social. anti-sexual revolution. Taking the text of her sermon directly from Genesis 30:1-3, where Rachel demands a child of Jacob through her handmaid, Atwood leaps ahead to a period when the environment has been destroyed because of an entirely credible combination of all-too-familiar circumstances. The birth rate has fallen alarmingly and radical measures must be taken to rectify the situation. (1 of 1)

A falling birth rate poses a huge threat to dystopian governments because the most important element in insuring the success and control of any ruling party is the promise of future generations that can carry on its beliefs.  Hence, what do all dystopian governments need?  They need children.  But, as Cosstick points out, there is one large problem in Gilead; with the spread of toxic pollution and sexually transmitted diseases in pre-Gileadean America, much of the population is left sterile.  Correction: much of the female population is left sterile.  Offred explains, “There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially.  There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law” (New 61).  Fertile women, such as the narrator Offred, become walking wombs in this society.  They are called “handmaids,” and their role is to try to conceive with a designated “respected” Commander so that he and his “morally upright” wife may raise the child, a rather misconstrued interpretation of the biblical story of Rachel and Jacob.

A handmaid’s worth in society is based entirely upon whether or not she can successfully conceive and deliver.  She is not seen as a person, but as a means to accomplish the government’s ends; she is a piece of property (indicated by the name she is given: Fred’s handmaid is “Offred,” Glen’s handmaid is “Ofglen,” ect.)  Every handmaid is “of-her commander” which takes her to a slave-like level where individuality and freedom are lost.  She is “of-her commander,” and her sole purpose is to create more children for his lineage and for Gilead.  This type of objectification of women for the sake of breeding future party members is also found in Orwell’s Oceania.  In Oceania women and men are only allowed to consummate in order to further the amount of people loyal to the ruling state.  Huxley takes a different approach to female objectification in Brave New World.  Women have been robbed of their right to conceive children.  Genetic engineering has replaced natural birth altogether so women are objectified no longer as baby breeders, but as objects for pleasure.  This topic will be explored further in Chapter 3: Sex.

In P. D. James’s Children of Men London is very similar to that of pre-Gileadan America, as presented through Offred’s memories.  However, there is one large difference.  In London, men and women have altogether lost the ability to conceive.  Instead of a gradual process of defertilization due to STD’s and pollution, sterility of the population comes suddenly in the year 1995.  “James does not attempt to explain her more drastic collapse of fertility, vaguely suggesting that it might be caused by some kind of sperm-killing virus” (1 of 7).  There is no time for a reactionary government to take hold of society and reverse the process of becoming less and less fertile or to come up with some other system or reproduction, like in most other dystopian works, because there is no process; it happens in an instant. 

A primary motivation throughout history for spurring people to goodness and progress is the appeal to the life of their children, and their children’s children.  No such appeal can exist in James’s sterile world, and so it slides into a state of confusion and corruption (2 of 7). With no hope for a future generation, no one cares about making the world of today a better place, except for a small dissident faction, the Five Fishes.  Nevertheless, women do still long to be mothers.  “They live in a world in which mothering appears by its absence to be still as socially approved as it was in the 1950’s” (1 of 7).  Julian, a member of the Five Fishes, becomes miraculously pregnant, thus becoming a beacon of hope for the future of all mankind.  In this scenario, pregnancy and women are venerated, not disgraced.  Julian’s pregnancy does not please the government, as a handmaid’s would.  On the contrary, her pregnancy worries the government.  It is practically an act of rebellion.  The government in The Children of Men is unique in that it thrives, not on the hope of future generations but on the lack of hope. New life upsets the status quo and thereby puts the established ruling party at risk.  When women no longer have the ability to reproduce, men feel control shifts in their favor more than ever before.  A need for power and the pride that is attached to it are two vices that men often exhibit.  Julian and her child are an allegory for the Virgin Mary and Jesus.  She, like Mary, bears a child that will bring hope and disrupt all the established hierarchy of power in her day.  She displays courage, intelligence, and poise.  Julian’s Madonna-like role is a far cry from the role of most dystopian leading ladies such as Brave New World’s brainwashed Lenina for whom mother is a foul word and marriage is laughable.

Lenina is just one example of the more typical, degraded female character.  She is perhaps the most degraded woman in dystopian literature.  Not only does her society view her as a purely sexual object, but she also sees herself in this light (Huxley 53). Of all the governments, The One State has done the most superb job of stripping conception and development of anything remotely natural.  Every aspect of life has been perfectly engineered to guarantee the government’s desire for stability.  The need for mothers has been completely eliminated, eliminating along with it that threatening social structure, the family unit.  The commander, speaking to a new group of students, vents about the past:

What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group!  Maniacally, the mother brooded over her children (her children)… brooded over them like a cat over its kittens; but a cat that could talk… (37).

Motherhood is the ultimate enemy of the state in Brave New World.  When citizens of the World State do come into contact with a mother, Linda, for the first time, she is every quality they have ever hated and feared.  She enters a large group of people:

There was a gasp, a murmur of astonishment and horror; a young girl screamed; standing on a chair to get a better view some one upset two test tubes full of spermatozoa.  Bloated, sagging, and among those firm youthful bodies, those undistorted faces, a strange and terrifying monster of middle agedness, Linda advanced into the room coquettishly smiling her broken and discoloured smile, and rolling as she walked, with what was meant to be a voluptuous undulation, her enormous haunches. (Huxley 150)

Linda not only has every physical quality the World Stater’s have ever hated, but she is also in a deplorable emotional state.  This further confirms their belief that Motherhood is unstable because it is filled with emotion.  Pregnancy, now a curse word, is one of the most emotional and cathartic stages of motherhood.  This can work either for or against dystopian governments, depending on how they harness it.  The World State realizes the danger of not having this emotional and physical process so inherent to the nature of most women and compensates with a medical process called a Pregnancy Substitute.  By making the process mandatory, the World State avoids the possible instability that may result from robbing 70% of women of their natural capacity to have children, and brainwashing the other 30% to never forget contraception.

In strong contrast to the Brave New World, the Republic of Gilead, rather than suppress the emotions of pregnancy, turns childbirth into a cult-like, Gilead-promoting affair. In chapter 21 Offred describes the nauseating ritual of the birthing ceremony for the baby of a fellow handmaid Janine and the ridiculous behavior of all the women present.  The birthing ceremonies promote the sanctity of birth and at the same time underscore the disunity of the women (a powerful tool in continuing the male dominance).  All the handmaids gather together, chant, and act as one.  Although they act as one, all the women of Gilead are, in fact, greatly divided.  

Even the wives of the commanders are in fierce competition to be of the most “value”.  After Janine’s baby is birthed Offred describes:

The Wives from downstairs are crowding in now, pushing us aside…they cluster around the bed, the mother and child, cooing and congratulating.  Envy radiates from them, I can smell it, faint wisps of acid, mingled with their perfume.  The Commander’s Wife looks down at the baby as if it’s a bouquet of flowers: something she’s won, a tribute. ( New 126)

In addition to the wives’ competition-based envy, the handmaids greatly envy the pregnant one, for she is now safe. “…she’ll never be sent to the Colonies, she’ll never be declared Unwoman.  That is her reward” (127).  Janine, like Julia in Children of Men, delivers a small glimpse of hope when she delivers the baby, but unlike Julia, the birth brings Janine the assurance of safety, while it brings Julia fear of death.  

The Commanders’ sterile wives feel very bitter towards all the handmaids whom they must watch consummate monthly with their husbands.  At the same time, they rely on these handmaids for their own social standing.  Serena Joy, the wife of Offred’s commander, makes her bitterness toward her own sterility and toward Offred apparent throughout the novel.  One day Offred sees a manifestation of Serena Joy’s resentful feelings:

One day I came upon Serena Joy, kneeling on a cushion in the garden, her cane beside her on the grass.  She was snipping off the seedpods with a pair of shears.  I watched her sideways as I went past, with my basket of oranges and lamb chops.  She was aiming, positioning the blades of the shears, then cutting with a convulsive jerk of the hand.  Was it the arthritis creeping up?  Or some blitzkrieg, some kamikaze, committed on the swelling genitalia of the flowers?  The fruiting body.  (153)

A literary critic, Margaret J. Daniels, explains, “Dystopian societies…advocate self and other loathing” (11 of 15).  The whole system of the Republic of Gilead works to tear women apart, under the pretense of promoting female unity.  Riding home from the birthing ceremony, Offred, characteristically highlights the irony.  “Mother, I think.  Where you may be.  Can you hear me?  You wanted a women’s culture.  Well, now there is one” (127).

Chapter III: Sex

Sex is dangerous for dystopian governments.  More specifically, the emotions and personal connections created by sex are dangerous because they have the potential to undermine loyalty to the state.  One of the most hazardous emotions associated with sex is lust.  As Thomas Horan explains, “Lust threatens the establishment because every dystopian world is built on cold, methodical logic, and lust is fundamentally illogical” (4 of 19).  In order to rob sex of any emotional significance, these male-dominated governments must distort sex into one of two meanings: a cut-and-dry conception service for the state or a meaningless pleasure to pacify the citizens.  In either case, women are objectified.  They are seen as vessels for pleasure or vessels for babies rather than seen as people.

Huxley’s Brave New World dilutes sex with overindulgence.  At the opening of the book, Lenina is having trouble keeping up with her society’s standards of promiscuity.  After revealing that she has been with only one man, Henry Foster, for the past four months, her friend Fanny is absolutely indignant.  The ensuing conversation reveals the distorted sexual norms of their society.  Fanny reprimands Lenina:

‘It’s such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man… Of course there’s no need to give him up.  Have somebody else from time to time, that’s all.  He has other girls doesn’t he?’  Lenina admitted it. ‘Of course he does.  Trust Henry Foster to be the perfect gentleman—always correct.’ (41-42)

Yes, “the perfect gentleman” in this society has sex with as many women as possible, never gets attached, and judges women purely on their sexual abilities.  Bernard, the misfit citizen in the Brave New World, seems to be the only person who sees Lenina in more than just a sexual light.  He is disgusted by the way men view Lenina, but is even more disgusted by the way Lenina views herself.  After a date with Bernard, Lenina anxiously inquires as to whether or not he enjoyed her.  A conversation that left both unsatisfied and confused followed:

‘Everyone says I’m awfully pneumatic,’ said Lenina reflectively, patting her own legs.  ‘Awfully.’ But there was an expression of pain in Bernard’s eyes.  ‘Like meat,’ he was thinking.  She looked up with a certain anxiety.  ‘But you don’t think I’m too plump, do you?’  He shook his head.  Like so much meat.  ‘You think I’m alright.’ Another nod.  ‘In every way?’ ‘Perfect,’ he said aloud. And inwardly.  ‘She thinks of herself that way.  She doesn’t mind being meat.’  Lenina smiled triumphantly. (Huxley 93)

This short dialogue shows the lack of depth, lack of self-respect, and the pure sexuality of Lenina.  She focuses entirely on being enjoyable for men.

The citizens of the World State dilute sex, not only with promiscuity but also with pornographic films called “feelies.” and with artificial pleasure caused by vibro-vac massage machines.  Feelies take sexual objectification to a whole new level by allowing the audience. not only to see pornographic films but also to share in the sensations felt by the actors.   Lenina takes John the Savage to a feely, and John, accustomed to a Shakespearean view of sexuality and morality, is disgusted (Horan 13 of 19). John’s high standard of respect for women strongly contrasts the base disrespect that permeates Lenina’s world and this causes him to seclude himself from the pleasure-seeking society. 

John’s irrepressible lust for Lenina transforms him from an ardent admirer of his new home to a social and political malcontent.  Since Lenina offers no revolutionary credo for John to adopt, he withdraws from the World Sate instead of rebelling against it.  And in allowing his peaceful emigration, the state treats him as a disaffected lover rather than a dangerous radical. (13 of 19)

John tries desperately to escape it all, but in the end, he succumbs to the World State in a large Orgy-Porgy, the World State’s main act of sexual perversion.  It is a quasi-religious orgy ceremony meant to advance the belief that everyone belongs to everyone and to deepen devotion to Ford.  John becomes caught up in the emotional frenzy of a large group chanting,

            Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,

            Kiss the girls and make them One.

            Boys at one with girls at peace;

            Orgy-porgy give release. (84)

The next day, when he awakens after the Orgy-porgy, “He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light then suddenly remembered---everything. ‘Oh, my God, my God!’  He covered his eyes with his hands” (259).  John is disgusted that he fell into the World State’s way of life, and proceeds to take his own life.

Because John is not originally born into the World State, he can reject the ideals the World State supports.  This course of action is less likely for the rest of the citizens because World State citizens are brainwashed into a psyche of constant pleasure seeking from birth.  The constant bombardment of pleasure and entertainment seems to leave Lenina and every other faithful citizen of the World State devoid of true passions.  They are even incapable of cultivating real relationships.  These same in capabilities are present in the complacent citizens of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 491.  Mildred and Montag’s relationship has been ruined by the instant-gratification society they live in.  Any activity that takes an investment of time, thought, or emotion, such as developing relationships, has been done away with.  English teacher Charles F. Hamblen explains:

No one communicates with anyone else on any but the most superficial level because the senses are completely inundated by constant sound and music blaring from vast TV-walls and transistor radios… Montag tries to get through to his wife.  ‘Oh, she walked to the bath again.’ ‘Did something happen [last night]?’ ‘A fire, is all.’  ‘I had a nice evening,’ she said in the bathroom.  ‘What doing?’  ‘The parlor.’  ‘What was on?’  ‘Programs.’  ‘What programs?’ ‘Some of the best ever.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Oh, you know, the bunch.’ ‘Yes the bunch, the bunch, the bunch.’  He pressed at the pain in his eyes and suddenly the odor of kerosene made him vomit.  Mildred came in humming.  She was surprise, ‘Why’d you do that?’  He looked in dismay at the floor, ‘We burned an old woman with her books.’ She fetched a mop and worked on it… The parlor was exploding with sound. (819)

Mildred is too distracted by the family on her entertainment system to care about her real relationship with Montag or to even realize that he is emotionally unstable at this time.  She is simply vague, her mind in another place.  This relationship dynamic that is all too real in 2009.  Although pornography is never explicitly mentioned in the novel, it can be assumed that a society so consumed by electronic entertainment and instant gratification would also fall to the base industry of pornography, also a problem found in society today.

Sexually satisfied citizens certainly help to ensure stability, but promiscuity and pornography are luxuries that some dystopian governments cannot afford to promote.  Promiscuity can be encouraged in Brave New World only because the government has developed technology that eliminates the risk of natural conception.  In other societies such as Orwell’s Oceania, Atwood’s Gilead, and Rand’s unspecified state, sex must be strictly controlled.  It is valued purely for the purposes of reproduction, and, therefore, the government must find a way to harness sex without letting emotions develop.

Sex is a regular chore for those in Gilead.  Atwood graphically describes the ugly form that sex takes when coldly performed by the handmaid Offred and her Commander.  In the zealously religious Republic of Gilead, sex is made into a sort of mock Ceremony.  First, everyone in the household gathers and waits for the Commander who is always late.  Next, the Commander arrives and reads from scripture an assortment of bible verses that have been distorted and taken out of context in order to act as support for the ensuing act.  He follows with a moment of silence for prayer.  Finally, the household help leaves the room and Offred lies down between Serena Joy’s (the wife) legs while the Commander attempts to impregnate Offred.  “This is not recreation, even for the Commander.  This is serious business.  The Commander, too, is doing his duty” (95).

Offred painfully endures the culmination of the “Ceremony” and when is it is finally over, she describes the Commander’s actions. “He nods, then turns and leaves the room, closing the door with exaggerated care behind him, as if both of us are his ailing mother.  There’s something hilarious about this, but I don’t dare laugh” (95).  Offred sees the extreme hypocrisy of her society.  She displays more insight than any other dystopian female figure by readily picking up on the laughable irony of the zealously “religious” man shutting the door as if he is concerned for the women after committing such an atrocity against them.  Offred is finally able to find some individuality and rebellion through an illicit relationship with Nick, a worker in her Commander’s household.  It is discussed in detail in Chapter 6: Rebellion.

Orwell’s 1984 likewise demonstrates a life of sexual repression and the rebellion that follows.  Oceania’s sexual repression is embodied in the Junior anti-sex League, an active extension of the state.  The government is even working to eliminate the orgasm.  This same dynamic of sexual repression by the government and the sexual perversion that follows can be found in the American culture in which we live in 2009 and is explored by Horan:

Even aside from efforts to legislate morality, consider our perverse cultural fascination with the sexual conduct of public figures and, even more intriguingly, our voyeuristic compulsion to spy on tawdry behavior through reality programs, web camera, and increasingly even television news broadcasts.  Fetishes of this kind are echoes in the covert, government-sponsored porn industry, pornosex, for which Julia works… (15 of 19)

Pornography is only allowed, along with cheap beer and a lottery, in order to keep the lowest class citizens, called Proles, sedated and complacent.  This too is reflected in present-day culture.  Among the Inner Party and Outer Party citizens, sex is completely prohibited unless it is employed to create “new material” for the party.  The societies that prohibit sex involuntary build sex up as the ultimate temptation and act of rebellion.  “Sexual hunger always reemerges as the catalyst for rebellious tendencies” (8 of 19) Winston, the story’s protagonist, loathes the ruling party and is, therefore, thoroughly intrigued when he receives a note from the seductive Julia that states, “I love you” (Orwell 16).  An illicit affair with Julia is his only hope for rebelling against the party. 

A rebellious relationship also develops in Ayn Rand’s Anthem.  In Anthem, sex is allowed during one time of the year only, when the government assigns every female to a male and they are to have sex in the City Palace of Mating in order to reproduce for the state.  Contemplating this time of year, Liberty feels uncomfortable; “Twice we have been sent to the Palace of Mating, but it is an ugly and shameful matter, of which we do not like to think” (41).  Any other sexual relations undermine the government’s desire to eliminate personal feelings and preference.  Again, sexual repression pushes the protagonist to rebel against the state when he comes to desire the Golden One.  Once Liberty has fallen in love with her, he can no longer tolerate the government’s purely reproductive constraint for relationships.

When examined at large, sex in dystopias subjugates not only women but men as well.  As with almost all activities in a dystopian society, sex is either the ultimate act of patriotism or the ultimate act of rebellion, depending on the individual state’s logistics.   In the end, as long as the government is seen as the ultimate authority, the minor logistics of sexuality are irrelevant.  Atwood’s “Ceremony,” Huxley’s “Orgy-porgy,” and Rand’s “Palace of Mating,” are all examples of sexual practices meant to promote the state, not the dominance of man, per say.  Since it seems that the Dystopian governments examined here are all ruled by a male hierarchy, it is not clear whether a female hierarchy would develop the same oppressive sexual practices.  That is a conclusion readers must draw for themselves.

Chapter IV: Inherent Weakness

Women in Dystopian literature, most especially in the earlier works, are characterized as weak or subservient. They are more vulnerable than men to the oppressive regimes in power and are the first to crack under the pressure of a miserable lifestyle.  They often lack all complexity and are significant only in that they are connected to a male character in some way.  With the exception of more recent works, such as Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the reader is not able to see the world from a female character’s point of view, and, more importantly, the reader is left with the impression that a female view would be ignorant, misconstrued, or altogether uninteresting.

In order to function properly, every dystopian society must have citizens that are completely complicit with the will of the state.  Although men and women alike fill this role, it is almost invariably the women who become overwhelmed by it.  It is as though they have some inherent weakness that makes them unable to cope with the conditions.  Women seem more vulnerable to losing themselves completely in their society’s culture, to a point of no return.   The strongest examples for this are Fahrenheit 451’s Mildred and The Brave New World’s Linda.

Mildred lives in a world dominated by instant gratification, meaningless entertainment, and no thought.  She buys into it completely and loses all ability to think for herself.  She never partakes in personal conversations, even with her husband, because she is too interested in her entertainment system or the meaningless radio always playing in her ears.  She fools herself into believing this is a life of contentment, but there is evidence early in the book that there is a fundamental unhappiness and unhealthiness in the way she is living.  She has made a nightly habit of taking sleeping pills, and one night, she is so distracted and oblivious to what she is doing and to what she is putting into her body that she consumes an entire bottle of pills instead of the nightly dose.   Montag, her husband, arrives home from a late-night book burning, and is shocked to find, “The small crystal bottle of sleeping tablets which earlier today had been filled with thirty capsules and which now lay uncapped and empty in the light of the tiny flare. (13)” He’s struck with terror, realizing that she has overdosed on these pills.

Montag calls an emergency team that comes and pumps her stomach and replaces all of her blood.  It is a very common house call in the world in which they live, but it shakes Montag to the core.  The following morning Mildred refuses to believe the incident ever occurred.  She is ignorant and delusional.  She refuses to face her true unhappiness and so escapes from it with drugs.  Montag, like many dystopian men, at one time bought into the role society set for him but is now starting to think for himself.     Thinking about that horrible night when he found Mildred overdosed, Montag states, “…that was another Mildred, that was a Mildred so deep inside this one, and so bothered, really bothered, that the two women have never met” (52).

This complete lack of self-knowledge is what conforming to the dystopian standard seems to do to women, but peculiarly does not occur as often to men.  Aldous Huxley’s Linda is in a situation similar to that of Mildred.  She numbs the pain of her lifestyle by killing all ability to feel.  Her escape route of choice is not sleeping pills, but a more advanced drug, soma.  She abandons life altogether and chooses to take soma until it kills her.  Her son John, full of anxiety visits her in the hospital only to find:

Her pale, bloated face wore an expression of imbecile happiness.  Every now and then her eyelids closed, and for a few seconds she seemed to be dozing.  Then with a little start she would wake up again…to a dream…transformed and embellished by the soma in her blood…and smile once more her broken and discoloured smile of infantile contentment. (200)

Linda clings so desperately to the ideals of the World State, and upon realizing she no longer can be accepted by that world, she abandons herself to drugs.

The young adult dystopia The Giver concentrates very little in comparison to most works of its genre on the weakness of females; however, the issue is mentioned.  Jonas, the books protagonist, has been chosen to be the next Memory Keeper, a very important and demanding position that is vital in maintaining the stability of his state.  While in the process of receiving all of mankind’s memories from the Giver, Jonas learns of a girl who preceded him in trying to complete this task.  Her name was Rosemary, and predictably she could not handle the pain and loneliness that came along with the transfer of unpleasant memories.  The Giver painfully explains to Jonas how Rosemary was affected by the memories:

‘Finally one afternoon, we finished for the day.  It had been a hard session.  I tried to finish--- as I do with you--- by transferring something happy and cheerful.  But the times of laughter were gone by then.  She stood up very silently, frowning, as if she were making a decision… I was notified by the Speaker that she had gone directly to the Chief Elder and asked to be released…So that was the failure Jonas thought… And he, Jonas would never have done it---never have requested release, no matter how difficult his training became. (Lowry 143)

Jonas, being male, is able to cope with the task that Rosemary was not.

Ayn Rand’s Golden One stands out from most dystopian women in that she is not over come by her culture, ignorant of her situation, or dim-witted, though she still displays an underlying weakness.  She, like all the rest, subjugates herself to the will of a man.   She is entirely submissive to the will of the male protagonist, Equality 7-2521.  Rand’s treatment of women is in a way even more demeaning than Aldous Huxley’s because in The Brave New World the women at least have an excuse for subjecting themselves to the will of men without any qualms.  The women of The Brave New World, Lenina and Linda, are entirely ignorant.  They have been so brainwashed by hypnopedia and the culture they live in that one could hardly expect them to suddenly break free from the mould and demand respect.  Lenina especially cannot be blamed.  She has never been shown any other way to act and does not have the intellectual capacity to discover any alternatives on her own.

The Golden One’s judgment and intellectual capacity seem to far outstrip that of Lenina.  She intuitively knows Equality 7-2521’s concerns without his ever voicing them.  This is a far cry from Lenina’s cluelessness when it comes to all of the men in her own life.  When the Golden One interprets Equality’s silent concern about her own innocence, he admits, “We think that in the wisdom of women the Golden One had understood more than we can understand” (45). The Golden One also makes it clear through her rebellious communication with a male and through some of her comments concerning her “brothers” in the state that she is in opposition to her current way of life.  She is no mindless flake that simply goes along with whatever is dealt her.  Rand sets her up as a self-aware and independent thinking individual, and because of this her actions can presumably be taken more at face value than those of other brainwashed or ignorant dystopian women.  The Golden One’s actions should reflect how an independent thinking woman would truly act. 

 Unfortunately, the only action that the Golden One takes and the majority of the dialogue she speaks are centered on her devotion to Equality 7-2521.  When Equality 7-2521 flees to the wilderness in fear for his life, she follows him there.   Upon catching up with him, the Golden One proclaims her subservience:

We have followed you…and we shall follow you wherever you go.  If danger threatens you, we shall face it also.  If it be death, we shall die with you.  You are damned, and we wish to share your damnation…Do as you please with us, but do not send us away from you. (82-83)

 Ironically, it is Rand’s initial respect for his female character that makes her actions all the more insulting to the dignity of women.  The Golden One is submissive to her love interest not out of ignorance or brainwashing but out of her own free will.  Rand seems to feel that subservience of women is natural.  While other dystopian author’s show female subservience within the corrupt structure of a dystopian government, Rand adds insult to injury by having the Golden One choose it with a clear intellect, out in the wilderness, free of the constraints of the government.

Female weakness can be found in almost every dystopian work; however; there are some dystopian females who break this mold.  The attitude towards women in Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and Anthem may not be a function of dystopian works, but rather a sign of the times in which they were written and the attitudes of the male authors who wrote them.  As the genre moves forward into the twenty first century, female characters grow more complex and finally gain a voice as Atwood’s Offred.

Chapter V: Rebellion

Every Dystopian author takes his or her own approach to the rebellion of the main characters; however, in nearly every circumstance, relationships and words (in the form of literature or prohibited communication) are key players.  Women have been cast in nearly every role: the temptress, the staunch believer, the “idiot,” the independent thinker, the radical; but not until The Handmaid’s Tale is their desire for rebellion the centerpiece of the work.  Generally, the woman’s main function is to bring a man to rebel.

In Brave New World, John the Savage is an outsider to the World State.  He has undergone none of the genetic, hypnopaedic, or environmental conditioning that leaves the World State citizens incapable of rebellion.  He is incited to rebel twice in Brave New World, and both occasions are in response to a woman he loves.  The first rebellion is incited by the promiscuity of his mother, Linda.  He has grown up confused by the unhealthy sexual relationships his mother has had with many men.  Then, as he begins to read and live through the characters of an old copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, he sees his mother’s sex life and main partner, Popé, in a whole new light. 

It was as though he had never really hated Popé before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him… These words and the strange, strange story out of which they were taken (he couldn’t make head or tail out of it, but it was wonderful, wonderful all the same) --- they gave him a reason for hating Popé. (Huxley 132)

This hatred that the language of Shakespeare helps materialize drives John into a fit of rage when he finds Popé and his mother in bed together again.  John grabs a knife and, in rebellion, stabs Popé to death.

The second act of rebellion occurs when John the Savage realizes Lenina’s true character.  She is simply not the Juliet he fantasized her to be, and the realization of this is devastating to him. 

His newfound vocabulary also allows him to realize his love for Lenina, even as it causes him to misinterpret her conditioned sexual advances as deliberate and licentiousness and condemn her under the Elizabethan moral code he found in Shakespeare. (Horan 13)

Lenina makes sexual advances toward John the Savage that would be considered perfectly conservative to any World Stater, yet as Horan explains, John’s moral code causes him to view her advances as appalling.  When trying to communicate their feelings towards each other, it is as though there is a language barrier.  John speaks in the poetry of Shakespeare while Lenina speaks in the rhymes of the World State hypnopedia.  After John confesses his love, Lenina is certain he wants to have sex with her because that is all she knows.  She strips off her clothes:

Still wearing her shoes and socks, and her rakishly tilted round white cap, she advanced towards him. ‘Darling. Darling! If only you’d said so before!  She held out her arms. But instead of also saying ‘Darling!’ and holding out his arms, the Savage retreated in terror… (Huxley 193)

He violently stops her advance and screams, “Whore!” (194). He is outraged and broken by this encounter.  Thereafter, he chooses to live as a recluse away from all the corruption he sees in Lenina and in the World State. 

As in Brave New World, language and relationships instigate rebellion to some degree in 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and The Handmaid’s Tale .  For John, it is the combination of Shakespeare and shallow-minded women that he, nevertheless, loves that drives him to rebel.  In 1984, Winston’s original knowledge of the Party’s doublespeak plays a role in his hatred of the government, but it is the seduction of Julia that truly turns him against the Party.

Julia and Winston’s subversive sexual relationship is perhaps the most well known in dystopian literature.  From the opening of the book, Winston’s abhorrence of Big Brother and his life under the all-knowing eye is obvious; however, as Horan points out:

He represents no real threat to the Party because he feels helpless and has completely resigned himself to the idea that resistance is futile. ‘Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference… The Thought Police would get him just the same” (Horan 8 of 19)

It is not until Julia initiates a relationship with him that Winston finds the hope of rebellion.  Julia is introduced early on as an object of Winston’s sexual frustration.  During a Two-Minute Hate, a service for the state that is used to concentrate emotions and frustrations into a frenzy so as to release them from the citizens, Winston reveals the pent up frustration he feels around the beautiful Julia:

He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because round her sweep supple waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.  (Orwell 17)

When that aggressive symbol of chastity turns out to be only a facade of party loyalty and Winston and Julia finally have sex for the first time, it is described as a rebellion.  “Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory.  It was a blow struck against the Party.  It was a political act” (Orwell 105) Winston becomes a true rebel and looks to become a member of the Brotherhood, an underground resistance group that is rumored to exist.  Julia does not believe in the Brotherhood.  She is interested only in rebelling against the Party when it affects her personally.  She has no desire to contemplate mass rebellion or Party doctrine as Winston does.  Orwell presents Julia in rather shallow terms:

The problem with Orwell’s depiction of Julia is that it reflects a disappointingly immature and characteristically male attitude toward women.  Like Bo Dereck running on the beach in a swimsuit, the image of Julie trotting through the Golden Country is not that of a liberated woman, but of a woman liberated for men. (Horan 10 of 19)

She is not completely her own person, but seems to be objectified as “for men” which detracts from her individuality.

Individuality is important to consider when studying this topic.  It is easy to clump characters into generalized descriptions that correspond to their gender rather than view characters individually, but a great deal is missed when generalizations are accepted.  The same is true of gender relations in everyday life.  Not every woman is a femme fatale, like Julia, or a mindless sexual being, like Lenina.  Fahrenheit 451 shows the multiplicity of reactions women may have to oppression.  The point is further driven home in A Handmaid’s Tale.

Three women affect Montag’s thinking in Fahrenheit 451: his young neighbor Clarisse McClellan, his wife Mildred, and an old lady whose name is not given.  They each bring about rebellion in a unique way, and as in 1984 and Brave New World, words, more specifically books, also play a significant role.  Clarisse is a young, inquisitive seventeen-year-old that simply does not fit in with her society.  She has one very strange behavior; she thinks.  She takes time to see the small things that no one notices anymore like the man on the moon and dew on the grass in the morning (Bradbury 9).  These are small acts of rebellion in her high pace, mindless world.   She asks questions that evoke thought in Montag, and thinking makes Montag very uncomfortable.  He is especially disturbed after she asks, “Are you happy?” (10). It awakens a realization in him:

He was not happy.  He was not happy.  He said the words to himself.  He recognized this as the true state of affairs.  He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back. (12)

One of the sources of his unhappiness is his wife, Mildred. She is a foil of Clarisse and the typical mindless dystopian female.  She, like Huxley’s Lenina, brings about rebellion, not through her own radical doctrine or actions but, ironically, through her total absorption of her society’s ideals.  She represents every repulsive aspect of their culture, and convinces Montag further that their way of life is not the right one. 

The last woman that has an impact on Montag is an older lady who defies the law and fills her house with books.  The firemen, who in this day and age start rather than put out fires, drench her house in kerosene when they discover her illegal possessions.  She will not leave the house, but instead, stays with her books and starts the fire herself.  It is an act of defiance and a stands against the oppressive practice of book burning.  She would rather die than live in a bookless world.  Montag tries to explain the effect Clarisse and this woman have had on him to Mildred:

That woman, the other night, Millie, you weren’t there.  You didn’t see her face.  And Clarisse. You never talked to her…  But I kept putting her alongside the firemen in the House last night, and I suddenly realized I didn’t like them at all, and I didn’t like myself at all any more.  And I thought maybe it would be best if firemen themselves were burnt. (32)

This radical thinking leads Montag to reject his society all together and to try to read books and learn from an old English professor he met about a year earlier.  Together, he and the professor devise a plan for overthrowing the entire intellectually oppressive system.

Although women are given some individuality and variety of action in Fahrenheit 451, the focus is still primarily on the male protagonist.  The females remain rather flat characters.  A fully developed dystopian woman does not emerge until The Handmaid’s Tale.  The first rebellion in The Handmaid’s Tale is accounted through Offred’s memories of her mother.  She was “a woman on her own, burner of pornography and marcher to take back the night, who desired a “woman’s culture” much different than the one that has ironically, come to pass” (Feuer 4).  This first feminist rebellion, which occurs before the novel actually begins, obviously did not achieve its desired end, but instead landed Offred and every other Handmaid in every woman’s nightmare, Gilead.  The main concept Offred desires to rebel against is the loss of her individuality.  As the commander, himself, points out, “women can’t add one and one and one and one and get four because what they always get is one and one and one and one, a sense of the irreducible value of the individual” (New 273). 

Offred takes a hold of her individuality and begins a rebellious, sexual relationship with Nick, a man who works for her Commander.  He does not see her as just another handmaid to try to impregnate but as a person. “It is through Offred’s affair with Nick, as through her friendships with other Handmaids, that her re-created self desires and rebels” (Feuer 3 of 7).  Secret liaisons with Nick give Offred a distraction from the painful life she is endures and give her the thrill of doing something dangerous.  Ironically, Offred’s affair with Nick provides a physical rebellion from Gilead, but at the same time, makes her more complacent and attached to her new way of life.  When Ofglen, a fellow handmaid, tries speaks to her about the underground resistance, Mayday, she simply does not pay attention because she is too busy daydreaming about Nick.  Ofglen makes it clear that Mayday could find a way to get her out of Gilead if completely necessary but Offred admits to herself, “The fact is that I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom.  I want to be here, with Nick, where I can get at him” (New 271).

Earlier in the story, the Commander allows Offred to accompany to him to an underground brothel where she finds her rebellious, irreverent friend Moira whom the reader has gotten to know through Offred’s many memories of her (234-255).  This brothel and Offred’s relationship with Nick are two examples of the hypocrisy and rebellion that is spurred by a government rooted in sexual repression, and extreme sexist ways of Gilead.  In Gilead, gender defines a citizen’s role, not personality, skill, or unique capabilities.

Abstractions about gender are a major threat to individuality, in Offred’s society as in ours.  The novel’s characters debate the theory of “essentialism,” the notion that gender distinctions denote some fundamental and crucial differences between human beings. (Feuer 5)

It seems that in our present culture less and less people are conforming to the archaic stereotypes of male versus female and more and more people are seeing the individual.

Chapter VI: Conclusion

In modern culture, we continually move away from labeling attributes as strictly feminine or strictly masculine.  Just take, for example, the rise in “stay-at-home” dads and working mothers, men’s cosmetic product lines and women’s athletic gear.  We are in no way free of gender; however, it seems to dictate less and less what is expected of a person.  Individuality instead is emphasized.  This shift in culture is also reflected in the dystopian genre.  Taking individuality into consideration, dystopian literature has become more complex and seems more hauntingly real.  The reader can better relate to the downtrodden characters when they have less “cookie-cutter” reactions to oppression that confronts them. 

Several factors play into the overall view of women in dystopian literature.  The dominant factors are fertility, sex, inherent weakness, and rebellion.  It is very interesting to consider the role of pregnancy separate from the role of sex because these works of literature show what a huge impact the attitude toward pregnancy has on women in everyday life.  It would be interesting to investigate this connection throughout history and in other cultures in order to see how the attitude toward pregnancy has shaped women’s roles in civilization.

As I have worked through this thesis, I have discovered that the role of women in dystopian literature is not quite as narrow as I had originally assumed. On the whole, women are misrepresented, but there are several female characters that are developed free of prejudices and stereotypes.  In the past, men have generally been the focus of dystopian literature, but as culture shifts and women move out of the kitchen, women have begun to play a more dominant role in literature. 

Though I did not initially set out to do so, every chapter seems to demonstrate that Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is the pinnacle of a fair representation of women in this genre.  Taking this into account, I would like to end with her thoughts about the role of women and the concept of a “feminist dystopia.”  Atwood explains:

The majority of dystopias—Orwell’s included—have been written by men, and the point of view has been male.  When women have appeared in them, they have been either sexless automatons or rebels who’ve defied the sex rules of the regime.  They’ve acted as temptresses of the male protagonist, however welcome this temptation may be to the men themselves…  I wanted to try a dystopia from the female point of view—the world according to Julia, as it were.  However, this does not make The Handmaid’s Tale a ‘feminist dystopia,’ except insofar as giving a woman a voice and an inner life will always be considered ‘feminist’ by those who think women ought not have these things. (Oryx 516)

So, should women have a voice and an inner life?  You be the judge.

Works Cited

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