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As Winston tries to self-administer a little journaling therapy to get over his poison prostitute, he reflects on the overall philosophy of sex in Big Brother’s world.
So, our Winston is a very sexually frustrated guy, bemoaning his deprived state, to paraphrase, ‘Why did it always have to be like this? Why can’t I have a woman of my own instead of these wretched scuffles with disgusting whores every few years? But a real love affair is impossible.’
Fortunately for you, old boy, you are in a novel, and your love life is going to pick up before long. Ah, I rather envy you.
Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside of it. All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and - though the principle was never clearly stated - permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party. Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema.... The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And so far as the women were concerned, the Party’s efforts were largely successful.In these reflections, we learn that Winston was married. Funny thing, I have read this novel at least three times before this, and I was still taken by surprise by this fact. It shows you how easily things will just fly over me or whisk around me. However, this marriage was a very insignificant relationship in his life, lasting for only a little over a year some ten years ago, and was as joyless and loveless an affair as the Party could wish. Katharine, this wife, was entirely a creature of the Party with no soul and wit of her own:
She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none, that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her. “The human sound track” he nicknamed her in his own mind.They separated after they proved to be unable to have children for Big Brother. This was not a tragedy in Winston’s life, for she was as warm and imaginative in bed as she was in conversation and companionship.
So, our Winston is a very sexually frustrated guy, bemoaning his deprived state, to paraphrase, ‘Why did it always have to be like this? Why can’t I have a woman of my own instead of these wretched scuffles with disgusting whores every few years? But a real love affair is impossible.’
Fortunately for you, old boy, you are in a novel, and your love life is going to pick up before long. Ah, I rather envy you.
