Describe Bernard's relationship with Lenina in Brave New World.

The culture in Huxley's Brave New World demands that no one participates in monogamous relationships. Everyone is supposed to date and sleep around, but at the beginning of the book, Lenina has been repeatedly dating a man named Henry. After feeling a little peer pressure from a coworker, and in an effort to preserve her reputation as the polyamorous society demands, Lenina decides to accept Bernard's offer to go on a trip from London to New Mexico.

Lenina decides to go into the men's locker room to find Bernard and talk with him about their plans. The men, she notices, look at her and know her because she has dated most of them. She is counting on them to be talking about her later, because she is popular. So when she goes up to Bernard and tells him in front of everyone that she is excited to go on their big trip together in July, she accomplishes her task to let everyone know that she is not falling into monogamy with Henry.

Bernard, on the other hand, is embarrassed at Lenina's public display. He offers that they should talk somewhere more private about the details, and she vocally laughs and declares that she is not embarrassed to be discussing a date in this public manner. Where Lenina seems to show that she has no shame, Bernard, however, swims in it. After he and Lenina talk a little bit about the New Mexico date, she jumps in a helicopter and leaves with Henry. This is typical and socially correct behavior in this culture; however, Bernard is frustrated with her behavior, as described in the following:

Lenina was making him suffer. He remembered those weeks of timid indecision, during which he had looked and longed and despaired of ever having the courage to ask her... Well, now she had said it [yes] and he was still wretched. . that she should have found him funny for not wanting to talk of their most private affairs in public. Wretched, in a word, because she had behaved as any healthy and virtuous English girl ought to behave and not in some other, abnormal, extraordinary way. (63–64)

There are a couple of things going on in this passage above. First, Bernard seems paranoid or takes Lenina's behavior too personally. Then, Lenina acts from her own agenda and does not care for Bernard's feelings in the matter. Interestingly enough, Bernard doesn't care about Lenina's feelings, either—just his own and how he feels. Needless to say, The New Mexico trip does not go well, because these two are not about creating a good time for one another but for themselves. Bernard also winds up thinking of his career more than Lenina on the trip, and because of the extreme conditions she experiences, she takes enough soma to sleep for a few days in order to recover. Overall, Lenina and Bernard do not have a connected, but a self-serving relationship.

Bernard and Lenina are a somewhat odd pairing, though it is completely typical for an alpha, who are all men in the novel, to be dating a beta woman.

Bernard, however, is slightly unusual, leading to gossip that something went wrong with his test-tube. Alphas, at the top of the social hierarchy, are usually the tallest caste, with the heights descending by caste. Epsilons, the lowest caste, are usually quite small. Bernard, however, is short for an alpha, which makes him stand out in an undesirable way and gives him an inferiority complex.

Bernard, as an alpha-plus, is also a bit too much of free thinker for his society in some ways, though perfectly conditioned in others. For example, he likes the idea of solitude, which is a sign of deviance in the world state where everyone belongs to everyone else.

Lenina is very attractive and desirable and an almost perfectly socialized beta. Her only slight sign of deviance is wanting to stay too long in one relationship—not an unusual deviance, we are told, but one she is trying to cure by dating Bernard.

Lenina and Bernard like each other well enough, but each is using the other. Lenina is a good catch for Bernard, the kind of woman who will enhance his status with other men for the time their dating relationship lasts. Bernard, in turns, gives Lenina the chance for a coveted and rare trip to the Savage reservation.

Bernard is ultimately a little too "out there" for Lenina (he will be exiled at the end of the novel), and Lenina is ultimately a little too boring for Bernard, but they get along reasonably well while together, though not without conflict.

Bernard and Lenina are two sides of the same coin. They are both looking for a change in their routine, but for different reasons. They find this change in each other.

Bernard is a member of the elite, an Alpha plus, but his looks make him appear to be of a lower status. Because of this, and probably unconsciously, he cultivates behaviors that challenge societal norms. He turns off all the lights in the helicopter and listens to the night, distressing Lenina. He openly shows his disgust at a friend's descriptions of his sexual exploits. He sees himself as rebellious, but his rebellion is only skin deep and used to cover his own perceived inadequacies. This cover is betrayed at the end when Bernard begs not to be exiled.

Lenina is the perfect Beta: beautiful, hardworking, promiscuous, and consumeristic. She fits into society perfectly and has only one idiosyncrasy: she is attracted to unusual men, perhaps bored with men who all seem the same. These men include Bernard and John, neither of whom fit perfectly into society. At the end, Lenina simply moves on and is presumably unaffected by the book's events, or at least she suffers no more than can be fixed by a soma holiday.

It is interesting to note that their names are Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne, perhaps to represent the similarities of Brave New World's society to Marxism-Leninism and where that society might go if followed to its most radical conclusion.

Lenina is a typical Beta-plus: well-adjusted and conditioned to live happily in the World State as a consumer, worker, and superficial friend. However, she recently has not been feeling promiscuous, a problem she confides to her friend Fanny:

“I hadn’t been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately. There are times when one doesn’t. Haven’t you found that too, Fanny?”

Fanny nodded her sympathy and understanding. “But one’s got to make the effort,” she said, sententiously, “one’s got to play the game. After all, every one belongs to every one else.”

Bernard Marx, an Alpha-plus is conveniently available for her to date so that she isn't violating social norms by focusing too exclusively on Henry. Also, she wants to go with Marx to the Savage Reservation, a novelty for her. She dismisses the warnings of the others that he is strange, saying she thinks he is "sweet." Nevertheless, his questioning of social norms and his desire sometimes to be alone, including hovering over the water with her in his helicopter, strains their relationship. He is a bit too different for her to understand him, though he is nothing compared to John the Savage.

Compare and contrast the personalities, desires, and self-perceptions of Bernard and Lenina in Brave New World.

Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne are almost complete opposites in every respect. Bernard is a thinking man, an intellectual who's come to realize the true, sickening nature of the dystopian society in which he lives. Unlike those around him, he's able to distinguish between true feelings—the feelings of the heart—and those implanted in people's brains by the state's systematic process of brainwashing. Bernard has a high regard for the innate dignity of each human being, which explains, for example, why he's so upset to overhear a group of men talking about a woman as if she were nothing but a piece of meat.

Lenina has a completely different attitude to life. She's the ultimate conformist, passionately devoted to the state and its rules. Her desires are not really her own; they do not come from the heart. Instead, she's been brainwashed into acting and thinking in a certain way and has internalized how the state expects her to behave. When she goes out on a date with Bernard, she expresses the desire to play a game and then have what will be casual, meaningless sex. Again, these aren't Lenina's real desires, ones that she's freely chosen for herself; she's been brainwashed to talk and act this way.

Bernard knows that there's something seriously wrong with this society; he knows that there's a better way. Deeply unsatisfied, he wants to change his life and the lives of those around him. Lenina, on the other hand, accepts the artfully constructed fantasy world around her without a moment's thought. The very idea of challenging society's norms and values doesn't enter her head for a nanosecond. She finds Bernard so incredibly odd for wanting to take her on a walk in the Lake District. In this society, such simple pleasures in life are considered at best eccentric, at worst deeply subversive. Lenina's been so thoroughly brainwashed that any activity which doesn't involve instant gratification is simply too weird to contemplate. She seems perfectly content with her lot, but as we and Bernard know, this is a purely artificial contentment, cynically induced by the state to keep her under its control.