Discussion Topic
The role of relationships, sex, and intimacy in 1984
Summary:
In 1984, relationships, sex, and intimacy are portrayed as political acts of rebellion against the Party. The Party seeks to control and suppress these aspects of life to eliminate personal loyalties and ensure loyalty only to Big Brother. Winston and Julia's affair exemplifies this rebellion, as their intimacy becomes a form of resistance against the oppressive regime.
What is the role of relationships and intimacy in 1984? What function does the Party's sexual directive serve?
The Party encourages, or rather simply allows, intimacy for the purpose of procreation. At one point, we are told it's also allowed for the pleasure of (only) men, but this just appears a temporary expedient, because O'Brien boasts that the Party currently has its neurologists working on how to "abolish the orgasm."
In other words, the Party is puritanical about sex in a way that makes traditional religions seem almost liberal. Why is this? It's the opposite of the dystopia of Huxley's Brave New World, in which complete sexual freedom is the norm and people are encouraged to operate according to the pleasure principle. Among early reviewers of 1984, C. S. Lewis considered this aspect unrealistic; in his view, an atheistic society would not be anti-sex as the Party is.
The explanation in Orwell 's narrative is that the Party considers intimacy between men and women as a...
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counterforce to its power and therefore seeks to suppress it. If men and women feel strongly attached to each other, then that attachment or relationship is where their loyalty chiefly lies, rather than being directed solely toward the regime, as the Party intends. The intention is always to keep people unsatisfied and crushed into the earth so that their frustrations and anger can be channeled against the Party's enemies.Julia understands this better than Winston and explains to him that when people are making love, their energies are directed positively, and they feel good about themselves. This is the opposite of what the Party aims for in the totalitarian world it has created.
Readers, critics, and general commentators have argued for decades over which of the two most famous dystopias, Huxley's or Orwell's, is more realistic and more likely to be the correct prophecy, assuming either one, or something resembling it, will take shape in the future. It is a fascinating point for debate, but most readers, I think, would probably feel that the 1984 vision regarding intimacy is anomalous in some sense, disconnected from the other aspects of the society depicted in the novel. One would think it's just common sense that people who are sexually frustrated, or are made to think sex shameful or disreputable, would be angrier and more likely to rebel against such a regime. Yet the paradox of a reactionary attitude about sexuality in an atheistic world adds to the fascination readers have had with 1984 and is one of the more striking aspects of its dystopia.
Close relationships, particularly sexual ones, are forbidden by the Party because they create divided loyalties. In the Party's world, the citizen must have absolute and undivided faith and trust in Big Brother and the Party alone. As O'Brien explains to Winston (Part III, ch. 3),
We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends .... Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother.
With all competing loyalties abolished, the citizen will be able to become exactly what the Party wishes him to be at any moment.
Forbidding sexual relationships and any real intimacy also has the effect of frustrating Party members due to the blocking of a natural drive, and building up a store of violent emotion that can be directed by the Party into other channels. As Julia's intuition tells her, "sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and hero-worship" (Part II, ch. 3) Thus, sexual intimacy is seen by the Party as robbing it of energy that it should by rights be able to utilize, a type of political rebellion.
Relationships and intimacy are not allowed, and the Party's directives on sexual interaction serves to advance the influence of the Party.
The Party does everything it can to destroy feelings of empathy and loyalty between individuals because all such attention should be focused on the Party itself. Recognizing the potential of the sex instinct to "create a world of its own which (is) outside the Party's control, the Party controls relationships with more than Puritanical zeal. Sexual urges open the door to love and caring about others, which is counterproductive and even dangerous to the Party's goals. Youth is conditioned to actively campaign for chastity, and promiscuity is anathema; marriages must be approved by the Party on an individual basis, and exist solely for the purpose of procreation, thus ensuring more future members for the Party. The children produced in the context of marriage are brainwashed at an early age to spy on their parents and report any deviance in their behavior, thus perpetuating and strengthening a system in which intimacy is impossible, no one trusts anyone else, and every action or thought is observed and controlled - all for the advancement of the Party (Section 2, Chapter 3).