[Part One of this essay can be found here.]

IN George Orwell’s famous novel 1984, the main character Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth, a colossal bureaucracy that disseminates lies. Smith is a bureaucrat playing a small part in the enormous task of editing and censoring published material in Oceania, one of three super-states, supposedly at war with each other but really working together, that comprise the globe. Oceania is ruled by the all-seeing dictator Big Brother.

Materials offensive to the Party are permanently deleted by Winston and his coworkers by being literally tossed down the “Memory Hole,” fed by a system of pneumatic tubes in the Ministry headquarters.

Winston first meets the main female character of the book in the hallways of the Ministry:

He did not know her name, but he knew that she worked in the Fiction Department. Presumably—since he had sometimes seen her with oily hands and carrying a spanner—she had some mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines. She was a bold-looking girl, of about twenty-seven, with thick hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements. A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound several times round the waist of her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips. Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because of the atmosphere of hockey-fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean-mindedness which she managed to carry about with her. 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 nosers-out of unorthodoxy.

Julia has noticed Winston and in time she surreptitiously passes him a note and requests a meeting.

The Oceania regime permits marriage but stigmatizes sexual love. Winston is married to Katherine, whose natural ability to love has been destroyed by propaganda promoting distaste for sex. She is wooden and incapable of intimacy. They separate out of mutual unhappiness. Winston even contemplates murdering her.

Julia and Winston meet in a secluded wooded spot outside of the city. They revel in this interlude of privacy among the birds and the trees. Winston immediately learns that Julia is not a Party zealot. She had sensed that he was a thoughtcriminal too. Within minutes, he is brutally honest with her:

‘I’m thirty-nine years old. I’ve got a wife that I can’t get rid of. I’ve got varicose veins. I’ve got five false teeth.’

‘I couldn’t care less,’ said the girl.

That he is happy to be with him as he is instantly charms him. They commit more political crimes together shortly after they meet:

He knelt down before her and took her hands in his.

‘Have you done this before?’

‘Of course. Hundreds of times—well, scores of times, anyway.’

‘With Party members?’

‘Yes, always with Party members.’

‘With members of the Inner Party?’

‘Not with those swine, no. But there’s plenty that WOULD if they got half a chance. They’re not so holy as they make out.’

His heart leapt. Scores of times she had done it: he wished it had been hundreds—thousands. Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope. Who knew, perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity. If he could have infected the whole lot of them with leprosy or syphilis, how gladly he would have done so! Anything to rot, to weaken, to undermine! He pulled her down so that they were kneeling face to face.

‘Listen. The more men you’ve had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?’

‘Yes, perfectly.’

‘I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.’

‘Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I’m corrupt to the bones.’ ‘You like doing this? I don’t mean simply me: I mean the thing in itself?’

‘I adore it.’

That was above all what he wanted to hear. Not merely the love of one person but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces. He pressed her down upon the grass, among the fallen bluebells.

1984 was published in England in 1946. This date is noteworthy given that obscenity standards are not what they are today. For instance, the novel by D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which seems no more explicit about an adulterous love affair than 1984, was famously censored for decades after it was published privately in Italy in 1928 and not published in its complete form in the United Kingdom until 1960.

Anything to rot, to weaken, to undermine!

It’s interesting that Orwell should choose these thoughts for Winston, the thought criminal. They are such an apt description of the intentions of the “Party” today.

Julia and Winston start to meet regularly, eventually renting a room above an antique shop. They know that it is only a matter of time before they are caught, but they crave the intimacy and moments of domestic comfort in their little hideaway. As they get to know each other better, Winston realizes that Julia’s understanding of the Party is superficial. He calls her a rebel “from the waist down.”

With Julia, everything came back to her own sexuality. As soon as this was touched upon in any way she was capable of great acuteness. Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was:

‘When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?’

That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy.

Not extreme and inhuman sexual restraint, the forces that control us and take us ever closer to global government actually encourage promiscuity, casual hookups similar to the meeting of Julia and Winston in the woods who don’t even know each other’s names before they consummate their attraction. The “Party” wants a global sexual revolution. That accomplishes the goals of depopulation, moral disarmament and, most of all, the centralization of power. Sexual license creates chaos, distraction — and, ironically, fewer children.

‘I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.’

Winston’s words are similar to statements made by the producers of porn today. Since the 1960s, sexual license has been promoted as an act of virtuous rebellion. Is the Junior Anti-Sex League a caricature of the ideal of Christian purity, equating restraint with ploys for centralized power? In any event, Orwell’s predictive powers are conspicuously weak when it comes to the future of propagandized love, a fact rarely mentioned by the many freedom fighters who quote his work.

George Orwell was a socialist who fought with Marxists in the Spanish Civil War. He reportedly became disenchanted with the extremes of Communism. And yet Communism is in all forms inherently totalitarian because it deifies man and recognizes no check on the lust for power, something which he did not see.

Orwell has never been thrown down the Memory Hole. His books are widely promoted.

One reason — though not, I believe, the main reason — why 1984 is still celebrated may be that Orwell portrays romantic love so differently from how it was previously portrayed in English literature. In Dickens, Austen, and Shakespeare, love between man and woman is conceived as a meeting of souls that climaxes in marriage.

There is more to say about the relationship of Julia and Winston.

But first we need to explore another area in which Orwell’s book seems not the plea for human freedom it is portrayed as.

[To be continued ….]

— Comments —

Grace writes:

I’m really enjoying your series on 1984! I’ve read the book a couple times and there were several elements of it which I could not reconcile; the book seems to be at odds with itself. There are strands of truth within it, but I couldn’t help but feel that it was just another filthy book promoted as “great literature.” I’m looking forward to the next installments.

Laura writes:

Thank you!

Tony S. writes:

I was assigned to read the book 1984 in the year 1984 when I was in 8th grade.

My understanding of the way Orwell’s novel is taught is not that it is a description of life in a Communist dictatorship but rather of life in a fascist dictatorship – the term “fascist” being an ambiguous term encompassing anyone who holds standards related to behavior, dress, speech, etc. The teaching/indoctrination point to be made is that a rigid sense of unity (as opposed to diversity) and sense of togetherness (as opposed to radical individualism) is stifling to human flourishing. Seen in this way, and including the sexual license that you aptly point out, the book is a call to overthrow traditional European ways of behaving and living.

Given the fact that 1984 was published after the defeat of nations who held out against liberal democracy in WWI, the book was probably icing on the cake in the deconstruction of what used to be known in Europe as Christendom. Anyway that’s my two cents as to why Orwell’s novel is so beloved by the pushers of chaos and destruction.

Laura writes:

… the book is a call to overthrow traditional European ways of behaving and living.

Wow, that is definitely not how American right-wingers view this book!

Dianne writes:

My first impression, as I was reading the excerpt, was that Orwell was opposing the perfectionism that can permeate any idealism, whether left or right, religious or secular. There’s a need to accept ourselves and others in our brokenness at times, and this is consistent with the Gospel, I think However, true brokenness leads to repentance, not acceptance of sin. But I guess I’m meaning more of that facist type of perfectionism as was found in Hitler’s thinking.

I’ve never read the book, although a few months back I did purchase it and also, Brave New World, thinking that they might both be unavailable someday. Right after that my husband became ill and I’ve never gotten to them.

From your standpoint, they might remain on Amazon, unhindered. Learning Orwell’s background and looking at what he might have been doing there in writing that book is still eye opening, as your different takes on a lot of things are (including. E. Michael Jones).

Laura writes:

Thanks for writing — and reading!

You make some good points and I hope to address your first point in a future post on Winston.

VM writes:

I am enjoying your series on 1984 very much. Coincidentally, I had re-read the book this summer. I will confess that though I was shocked by the very sections of the book that sparked your comments, I (unlike you) had not articulated my own reasons for not liking them.

You truly nailed Mr. Orwell. And I agree that you’re on to something when you wonder why (if the book is such a powerful refutation of leftism) the left has not tried to suppress its popularity or universal approbation.

I never met Lawrence Auster (though I did correspond with him a couple times). I read his View From the Right postings avidly in years past. And for what it’s worth, I just know that he would’ve loved reading your observations on 1984 tremendously.

Thank you for your excellent work.

Laura writes:

Thank you very much.

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