Sexuality and Language
in Twentieth-Century
English “Dystopia” Novels

Introduction

In the twentieth-century history of the novel, few emerging genres have had as much political and social significance as English “dystopia” novels. So-named because they portray less-than-ideal societies, they are, in part, responses to the turmoil of World Wars I and II, and reactions to the world-wide threat of communism. These works paint horrific pictures of warning, far removed from the imagined perfections of any Shangri La. In contrast to Thomas More’s Utopia of 1516, dystopia novels commonly depict an anti-utopia following in the long satirical tradition begun by Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov (1880), and continued by such works as Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1941). The real horror of these narratives may be found in their messages of oppression, socialism, and increasing technology-prophecies which seem to be coming true far faster than even their authors imagined (Huxley, Revisited 1).

The books of this genre include Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962). These novels constitute the current vanguard of the English dystopia genre. Another book that may be added to this list is Huxley’s Brave New World Revisited (1958), an important commentary on the state of dystopian affairs to that time.

In a study of dystopia novels, several themes become apparent. One of these is sexuality, the treatment and understanding of which is particularly clear today, perhaps, in the wake of Freudian influence. For Huxley, Orwell, and Burgess, then, sexuality plays centre court. In Brave New World, free sex is encouraged in a society where procreation is reserved for the laboratory. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, intercourse is Julia’s and Winston’s crowning act of rebellion. And in A Clockwork Orange, Alex reaches the pinnacle of his violent nature through murder and rape. None of these novels would be nearly as effective or socially significant without this powerful core of sexual motivation.

The unique use and invention of language is another theme or identifying mark of the dystopia novel, common to all three major works. In Brave New World, for example, vocabulary words such as “soma” and “hypnopaedia” are commonplace. In Nineteen Eighty-Four and A Clockwork Orange, the languages of “Newspeak” and “Nadsat” are predominant—one can hardly read these novels without lapsing into the use of such words as “thoughtcrime”, “doubleplus-ungood”, “veshches”, and “droogs”! None of these novels would be as successful without this inventiveness of language.

Other themes are, of course, also evident in English dystopia novels: socialism, mass production, planned obsolescence, propaganda, mental reprogramming, the power of the state, test-tube babies and eugenics, morality, the dangers of technology, and oppressive governmental control. This study, however, will focus only on sexuality and language, specifically, their inter-relation in the dystopia novels, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and A Clockwork Orange. The study will take the form of a descriptive analysis limited chiefly to the primary texts. It will attempt to prove that it is often through clever manipulation and creation of language, through the inter-relation of sexuality and language, that the authors of twentieth-century English dystopia novels are able to present sexuality in either a strongly favourable or unfavourable light, presenting the sexual act as either commonplace, immediate, and acceptable, or foreign, uncomfortable, and subversive.

Prior to discussing the inter-relationship of sexuality and language in the dystopia novels, let us first briefly focus on other dystopian fiction, then, at length, on the subjects of sexuality and language individually. Before we conclude, we will also take a passing look at the first American publication of the missing chapter of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.

Other Works of Dystopian Fiction

Before addressing the fusion of sexuality and language in three specific twentieth-century English dystopia novels, let us deal first with other dystopian fiction. It would be absurd to propose that the dystopia genre is limited to Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and A Clockwork Orange. These books may dominate the public imagination, but numerous other works are also written in this mould. However, not all writings in this genre employ a distorted sexuality and language to the extent of Huxley, Orwell, and Burgess. Fiction in this category (lacking the skillful blend of sexuality and language) will, therefore, not be dealt with beyond this chapter, and includes Eugene Zamiatin’s We (1924), Leon Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed (1937), Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1941), Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” (1961), Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1967), and perhaps Ayn Rand’s Anthem (1938) and Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945). Although these and other dystopia novels may deal with themes of oppression and totalitarianism akin to those in Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and A Clockwork Orange, their generally lesser exploitation of sexuality and language do not warrant their in-depth examination within the arbitrary limits of this study.

Before we leave this topic, however, perhaps an example from the text of Eugene Zamiatin’s We will illustrate its general lack of linguistic inventiveness on the order of Newspeak or Nadsat:

Fortunately the sun did not stop today. The sun was running. It was already sixteen o’clock. . . . I was knocking at the door, my heart was knocking. . . .

“Come in!”

I threw myself upon the floor near her chair, to embrace her limbs, to lift my head upward and look into her eyes, first into one, then into the other, and in each of them to see the reflection of myself in wonderful captivity. . . . (Howe 231)

The same linguistic style continues virtually throughout the book. Its linguistic inventiveness is limited to using numbers instead of personal names, and in the synecdochic word “unifs” (a synonym for “person”, short for the “uniforms” everyone must wear in Zamiatin’s “United State”). The word “unifs” suggests the “proles” of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Zamiatin’s We does deal with sexuality—for instance, the character of D-503, acting against the law, falls in love with I-330—but this novel does not adequately develop the mixture of manipulated language with sexuality. Perhaps a case could be made for the sexuality and language in We and other dystopian fiction, but because I am not prepared to make that case, as I have already said, it must be arbitrarily excluded from this study.

One piece of dystopian fiction which does exhibit the traits of manipulated sexuality and language is Cyril Connolly’s “Year Nine”. Although this 1938 short story hardly carries the weight of Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, or A Clockwork Orange, it is worth discussing in detail as an example of the concise wielding of sexuality and language in the dystopia genre.

A chilling slice of totalitarian oppression, “Year Nine” tells the story of 7111037 who―as a result of his crime of appreciating “degenerate art” and failing to confess―is sentenced to coprophagy—the practice of feeding on dung (Howe 233–237). In this story, Connolly makes simple reference to sexuality. First, the narrator (7111037) verbally chastises a young woman (7111038) for blowing him a kiss: “None of that stuff, 7111038, otherwise we shall never be allowed to produce a little 7111037-8. ♂ on Groupbegettingday’” (Howe 234). This suggests that sexuality—though not devoid of pleasure—is reserved primarily for the act of procreation, recalling the similar official practice in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

A second mention of sexuality is in a picture of “couples with their arms around their necks in an attitude of illicit sexual groupactivity” (Howe 234). This is described as having minimal “aesthetic merit”, a stance which further reveals attitudes toward sexuality in Connolly’s “Year Nine”.

In the telling of this tale, Connolly is particularly creative in his use of language. He creates a series of portmanteaux in reference to the everyday life of the totalitarian state: Leaderday evening, Youngleaderboys building, Commonmeal, Artshouse, Leadersequence, Leadercourtesy, Sheepthinkers, Groupbegettingday (a term for a period of procreation), fartists, Leaderface, groupactivity (a term for sex?), Ownerslave, leaderbreak, Leaderchorus, Spitshop, and Blokery (Howe 233–236). Perhaps most memorable in this list is the idea of “sheepthinking”, the dipole of Orwell’s “thoughtcrime”.

Connolly is also creative in his linguistic method of characterizing his protagonist. He does this by giving him a peculiar speech impediment—that of reversing or otherwise scrambling words: “pastermieces of titalitorian tra” for “masterpieces of totalitarian art” (Howe 233). Other examples include “Blatherhood” and “fishynazists” (nazi fascists?), and a string of names of “infamous poets or painters . . . from the old regime”: Repip, Badshaw, Deadwells, Staleworthy, Baldpole, Toilet, Red Neps, Nacnud Tnarg, Sutsugua Nhoj, and Ossacip (Howe 233–235). The narrator attempts to explain this “odious habit” by mentioning that since “an early initiation accident I have never been considered sound of mind, hence my trick of reversing words” (Howe 236).

Quite apart from his creative juxtaposition or manipulation of words is Connolly’s diverse use of vocabulary (in order of appearance): augur, celerity, bubo, pustules, excoriated, prurient, lucubrations, articulo amoris, offal, spectae, badinage, repartee, eructation, virility, peccadilloes, paroxysm, ineluctably, commiseration, serried, antinomian, orifice, coprophagy, and augury (Howe 233–237). While some of these words may be more common than others, their multiplicity—in subtle cahoots with the story’s portmanteaux and the narrator’s word reversals—speaks clearly of the concept of “badinage”—playful, teasing talk.

The matter of sexuality and language together is illustrated in a third reference to a kind of sexuality which takes a more violent form: a disgruntled co-worker to 7111037, “seizing a ruler, made a vicious jab upwards with it . . . causing acute agony to (his) public parts” (Howe 233). The context would suppose that “private parts” is meant rather than “public parts”, yet this reversal is at once a clever twist, revealing another attitude toward sexuality, and, also, an interesting combination of sexuality and language together.

As mentioned, Cyril Connolly’s “Year Nine” is an example of concise wielding of sexuality and language in the dystopian genre. It serves to introduce the three novels central to this study—Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and A Clockwork Orange. In the following discussion, each of these novels is presented in turn (chronologically), first under the topic of sexuality, then language, and ending with sexuality and language together.

Sexuality

In Huxley’s Brave New World, sexual practice is a function of the stability of the government. Since the World State operates on a system of positive reinforcement—unlike the negative oppression of Nineteen Eighty-Four—open sexuality is not condemned but encouraged. Even the very young are encouraged to enjoy their sexuality with sexual games such as “hunt the zipper” (Huxley, Brave New World 112). When one little boy in the story is “reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play” (Huxley, Brave New World 22), it is considered abnormal. That sexual freedom operates as a stabilizer of society is a basis for the World State motto of “Community, Identity, Stability” (Huxley, Brave New World 1). This is true because the New World mind views sexual activity as functionless pleasure only. Procreation takes place in the laboratory. Intercourse serves no other purpose but to provide pleasure. The reasoning of the government is that if the people are happy—which it believes is more likely if open sexuality is promoted—society will be more stable.

The lack of function in sexuality beyond the rewards of pleasure is due to the development of a new form of procreation. It takes place entirely in the laboratory as the result of “Bokanovsky’s Process”. This is a process where a fertilized human egg splits into eight to ninety-six buds, each an identical human clone. Through elaborate methods of hypnopaedia (sleep-teaching), each clone is conditioned to fit the role of a specified caste of people—Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, in descending order. In this way, knowledge and personality are controlled, and anarchy and free-thinking become impossible or highly unlikely. “Bokanovskification,” says the Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, “consists of a series of arrests of development. We check normal growth and, paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding” (Huxley, Brave New World 3). “Bokanovsky’s Process,” the Director continues, “is one of the major instruments of social stability” (Huxley, Brave New World 4). In addition to Bokanovsky’s Process, new methods of contraception ensure that human reproduction stays only in the hatchery. Citizens are encouraged to use these contraceptives extensively, and because of their effectiveness, viviparous birth becomes obsolete.

The notion of “family” is also made obsolete. When Huxley’s character Linda travels to London from the New Mexico Indian reservation and calls herself a “mother”, those who hear her are aghast (Huxley, Brave New World 115). When Linda’s son John calls the Director of the Hatchery his “father”, it is the Director’s last straw of embarrassment. The word “father”, the story says, “was not so much obscene as-with its connotation of something at one remove from the loathsomeness and moral obliquity of child-bearing-merely gross, a scatological rather than a pornographic impropriety” (Huxley, Brave New World 116).

Not only is society conditioned to think of parenthood as smutty, it is also taught to think of its own “promiscuity” as virtuous (Green ix). On one occasion, marriage is clearly presented as detestable:

“How much I love you, Lenina,” he (John) brought out almost desperately.

An emblem of the inner tide of startled elation, the blood rushed up into Lenina’s cheeks. “Do you mean it, John?”

“But I hadn’t meant to say so,” cried the Savage, clasping his hands in a kind of agony. “Not until . . . Listen, Lenina; in Malpais people get married.”

“Get what?” The irritation had begun to creep back into her voice. What was he talking about now?

“For always. They make a promise to live together for always.”

“What a horrible idea!” Lenina was genuinely shocked.

(Huxley, Brave New World 146, 147)

In place of such “horrible” ideas as marriage, sex is purely recreational. It is the norm for everyone to have sex with many different people and to even talk openly about it as if it were like playing tennis. Thus sexuality is entirely remoulded in the New World.

There is also a “fascinated distaste for sexuality” in Brave New World (Green vii). Yet it is today’s kind of sexuality that is considered distasteful—our sexuality is considered vulgar to the New World mind. Morality as we know it becomes abnormal in Brave New World, and all sexual mores are overturned. Instead of being what it is today, sex in Brave New World is made as disposably common as “sex-hormone chewing gum” (Huxley, Brave New World 47). Huxley’s world is also a place where “eugenics and dysgenics (are) practiced systematically” (Huxley, Revisited 11). Even though the western world’s attitudes are drifting towards a more liberal morality, this New World morality is far removed from the sexuality of today.

It should now be clear, as critic Martin Green concurs, that “a central sexual obsession” permeates Brave New World (Green x). To a certain extent, the same may also be said of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Where Orwell differs from Huxley is that, compared with today, changes in sexuality in the society of Airstrip One and Oceania are not as radical or pervasive as they are in Brave New World. Nevertheless, sexuality, operating as a form of rebellion against the state, is also a major theme in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In Orwell’s novel, sex is treated very negatively. In the midst of an occasion where Winston Smith records a sexual encounter in his diary, the book deals at length with sexuality:

The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside 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. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. 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 as far as the women were concerned, the Party’s efforts were largely successful. (Orwell 56)

This passage serves well in condensing and synthesizing the subject of sex in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Unlike Brave New World, where a form of sexuality is encouraged, the sex of Nineteen Eighty-Four is considered illicit, distasteful, and debaucherous.

Yet attitudes towards sex in Nineteen Eighty-Four are controlled and influenced in much the same way as they are in Brave New World. Winston Smith, while recording the same sexual encounter mentioned above, laments this overbearing influence:

Why could he not have a woman of his own instead of these filthy scuffles at intervals of years? But a real love affair was an almost unthinkable event. The women of the Party were all alike. Chastity was as deep ingrained in them as Party loyalty. By careful early conditioning, by games and cold water, by the rubbish that was dinned into them at school and in the Spies and the Youth League, by lectures, parades, songs, slogans, and martial music, the natural feeling had been driven out of them. His reason told him that there must be exceptions, but his heart did not believe it. They were all impregnable, as the Party intended that they should be. And what he wanted, more even than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it were only once in his whole life. The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime. (Orwell 58)

It is perhaps the desire to commit this act of rebellion that most motivates Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four. What is essential to Winston’s hoped-for rebellion, however, is that the act be illicit and pleasurable. It must not be like the drudgery it had been with his wife. No kind of beauty and love in the sexual act had kept Winston and his wife together in the past. It was, Winston’s wife said, not just “making a baby”, but “our duty to the Party” (Orwell 57). Since Winston’s wife was unable to produce a child, the book says, “in the end she agreed to give up trying, and soon afterwards they parted” (Orwell 57).

The seeds of Winston’s rebellion find fruition in his sexual intimacies with Julia. From the moment Julia slips Winston the note that says “I love you” (Orwell 89), Winston dreams of the illicit consummation of their joint rebellion. When at last they engage in sexual intercourse, his curiosity impels him to ask Julia a question to confirm his rebellious intentions:

“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. (Orwell 103)

It is this continuing desire to undermine the Party that spurs Winston to maintain his sexual intimacy with Julia. Although they have sex numerous times over several months, when they are finally discovered by the Thought Police in the little room above Mr. Charrington’s curio shop, at that last illicit meeting they have not had sex at all. They are naked, but they first spend their time reading Emmanuel Goldstein’s underground book entitled “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” (Orwell 150). Then, after Winston reads a chapter of this book to Julia, they both fall asleep together. Sex is no longer necessary as an act of rebellion. Certainly, the act of sex is still rebellious in Airstrip One, but to Julia and Winston, whether they actually have sex or not ceases to be important. Simply being together constitutes rebellion. Winston understands that his sexual drive is purely a private rebellion and will have little lasting effect against Big Brother. It is at this moment that he realizes that “if there was hope, it lay in the proles” (Orwell 175), and that he and Julia, as “members” of the Party, were the real “dead”, even if they could pass on “the secret doctrine that two plus two make four” (Orwell 176).

Nevertheless, in spite of appearances to the contrary, sexuality as a seemingly-futile private rebellion remains a central motivation in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In comparing Orwell’s book with Brave New World, Aldous Huxley himself has the following insights regarding sexuality as a common theme:

It is worth remarking that, in 1984, the members of the Party are compelled to conform to a sexual ethic of more than Puritan severity. In Brave New World, on the other hand, all are permitted to indulge their sexual impulses without let or hindrance. The society described in Orwell’s fable is a society permanently at war, and the aim of its rulers is first, of course, to exercise power for its own delightful sake and, second, to keep their subjects in that state of constant tension which a state of constant war demands of those who wage it. By crusading against sexuality the bosses are able to maintain the required tension in their followers and at the same time can satisfy their lust for power in a most gratifying way. The society described in Brave New World is a world-state, in which war has been eliminated and where the first aim of the rulers is at all costs to keep their subjects from making trouble. This they achieve by (among other methods) legalizing a degree of sexual freedom (made possible by the abolition of the family) that practically guarantees the Brave New Worlders against any form of destructive (or creative) emotional tension. In 1984 the lust for power is satisfied by inflicting pain; in Brave New World, by inflicting a hardly less humiliating pleasure. (Huxley, Revisited 21)

The lust for power is a compelling motivation, but the fact that Winston realizes that even the act of sex will not help to overthrow an oppressive government merely heightens the drama and horror of Orwell’s book. It is therefore fitting that Winston and Julia are caught together by the Thought Police immediately after Winston arrives at this final realization. Although sex, according to Freudians, may be thought of as the supreme motivator in human existence, here the last tower of privacy falls under siege, the futility of even this rebellion is laid to waste, and Winston’s reprogramming begins.

In A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, the character of Alex also undergoes a labourious process of reprogramming. For Alex, too, it comes as the result of a supreme sexual act. In Burgess’s novel, however, reprogramming follows rape—an act of sexual violence—rather than any beautiful, private, or loving intimation. After Alex’s reconditioning, the sexual act—along with music, art, and literature—becomes “a source now not of pleasure but of pain” (Burgess 148, 149).

Before this culmination of reprogramming, however, Alex demonstrates his need for reprogramming by living a life filled with incredible horror and brutal violence. Although he is just a teenager, he and his friends think nothing of robbing and fighting, killing and raping. At one point, Alex lures two ten-year-old girls to his room, gets them drunk, and rapes them with savage delight (Burgess 42). “If they would not go to school,” Alex says, “they must still have their education” (Burgess 43).

At another time, Alex masturbates to the sound of his favourite symphony music (Burgess 29–31). In an afterword to A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Edgar Hyman observes that “Alex has no interest in women except as objects of violence and rape,” citing the fact that “the term for the sex act in his vocabulary is characteristically mechanical, ‘the old in-out in-out” (Burgess 173). Hyman continues to comment on sexuality in A Clockwork Orange:

No part of the female body is mentioned except the size of the breasts (it would also interest a Freudian to know that the hoodlums’ drink is doped milk). Alex’s only “aesthetic” interest is his passion for symphonic music. He lies naked on his bed, surrounded by his stereo speakers, listening to Mozart or Bach while he daydreams of grinding his boot into the faces of men, or raping ripped screaming girls, and at the music’s climax he has an orgasm. (Burgess 173)

Alex also stoops to beating and raping the wife of the writer, F. Alexander. Alex describes the scene as follows:

. . . I ripped away at this and that and the other, the others going haw haw haw still, and real good horrorshow groodies they were that then exhibited their pink glazzies, O my brothers, while I untrussed and got ready for the plunge. Plunging, I could slooshy cries of agony and this writer bleeding veck that Georgie and Pete held on to nearly got loose howling bezoomny with the filthiest of slovos that I already knew and others he was making up. Then after me it was right old Dim should have his turn, which he did in a beasty snorty howly sort of a way with his Peebee Shelley maskie taking no notice, while I held on to her. Then there was a changeover, Dim and me grabbing the slobbering writer veck who was past struggling really, only just coming out with slack sort of slovos like he was in the land in a milk-plus bar, and Pete and Georgie had theirs. Then there was like quiet and we were full of like hate, so smashed what was left to be smashed-typewriter, lamp, chairs—and Dim, it was typical of old Dim, watered the fire out and was going to dung on the carpet, there being plenty of paper, but I said no. “Out out out out,” I howled. (Burgess 21, 22).

Later, Alex kills the same woman. When the youth first enters the house where the crime takes place, the woman snarls at him: “Wretched little slummy bedbug, breaking into real people’s houses” (Burgess 58). The contrast is strong between the woman—a “real” person—and Alex, who, as a “clockwork orange”, seems organic and real, yet is nothing but a piece “clockwork” machinery, bent on violence and rebellion.

It is at this point that Alex is finally apprehended by the police. This time, there is no sexual act connected with Alex’s crime. Instead, Alex is caught amid a parody of violence. This lack of sexual event at the moment of capture indicates a parallel between A Clockwork Orange and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Alex slips on milk saucers lying on the floor of the woman’s home, and she whacks him on the head with a stick (Burgess 57). Then the woman screams, “Thrash him, beat him, pull out his finger-nails, the poisonous young beetle,’ addressing her pusscats only . . .” (Burgess 58, 59). In the confusion of the attacking cats and the flailing woman, Alex strikes her on the head with a bust of Ludwig Beethoven. Here it is clear that Alex even uses music (or at least a symbol of it), like sex, for violence, and does not consider it beautiful in its own right. Then, at the height of this parody, as the woman dies at his feet, the police arrive, and haul Alex off to jail. There he begins his journey towards eventual reconditioning.

The process designed to change and reprogram Alex’s attitude is referred to as “Ludovico’s Technique”. The name of this technique is reminiscent of Bokanovsky’s Process, and suggests a parallel here between A Clockwork Orange and Brave New World. Ludovico’s Technique is a process where the subject is:

. . . impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude. (Burgess 118)

In describing the process, “the question is,” the story goes on to say, “whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within . . . Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man” (Burgess 77, 78). Elsewhere, the prison chaplain asks, “What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?” (Burgess 91). This pressing ethical question is important because Ludovico’s Technique forces its victim to become good. Yet, as the chaplain observes, “in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good” (Burgess 91).

Whether this is true or not is a question to ponder. The reprogramming technique, however, adversely affects Alex’s innate sexuality. Because he is a sex-offender, Alex’s reconditioning prevents him from contemplating the sexual act without intense discomfort. This mental pain causes him to think of something else, hopefully more benign.

A Clockwork Orange is a novel of “grotesque surrealism” (Burgess 172). The message Burgess wishes to emphasize through this surrealism is that of a contrast between gross, abhorrent violence, and the greater evil of moral puppetry. The reason Burgess paints Alex as so extremely violent is that he intends a sharp irony with the question of moral self-determination. The connection between this dilemma and sexuality is that part of Alex’s loss of self-determination is his loss of sexuality. Without his sexual instinct, Alex is most [I meant almost] completely morally handicapped, and deprived—as the Freudian view would once again purport—of the fundamental motivator of the human psyche.

It should now be established that sexuality is central to the plot and narrative development of twentieth-century English dystopia novels. An obvious abundance of sexual commonality is found in the frightening and threatening vision of the future in Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and A Clockwork Orange. As we turn our attention now to the language of these novels, we shall discover creativity, inventiveness, and a unique manifestation of the English lexicon.

Language

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, there is not the inventiveness of language found in either Nineteen Eighty-Four or A Clockwork Orange. This is primarily because Huxley did not invent a Newspeak language or Nadsat dialect by which to centre his narrative. Instead, Brave New World uses inventive names, titles, and slogans, in addition to emphasizing characteristic words such as “soma”. By no means does Huxley fall short of Orwell or Burgess linguistically, however. He is fully aware of the power of language: “Language,” he says, “has made possible man’s progress from animality to civilization” (Huxley, Revisited 85), and adds that “words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything” (Huxley, Brave New World 54).

Fine examples of inventive names, titles, and slogans abound in Brave New World. Martin Green, in his introduction to Huxley, notes Centrifugal Bumblepuppy (a mechanical game) and Bokanovsky Group (genetic clones), “names,” he says, which “combine a wild exaggeration with a paradoxical plausibility in just the right proportions” (Green vii).

There are also a good number of memorable slogans promoted by the World State of the New World. These include: “Every one belongs to every one else” (Huxley, Brave New World 29, 32, 35, 57, 93, 157); “Ford’s in his flivver, all’s well with the world” (32); “Ending is better than mending” (37, 38, 40); “Everybody’s happy now” (58, 70); and-in reference to the harmless stimulant called soma—”A gramme is better than a damn” (43).

The word “soma” is also interesting. In the New World, “whenever anyone felt depressed or below par,” Huxley writes, “he would swallow a tablet or two of a chemical compound called soma” (Huxley Revisited 55). The author goes on to explain the origin of this word:

The original soma, from which I took the name of this hypothetical drug, was an unknown plant (possibly Asclepias acida) used by the ancient Aryan invaders of India in one of the most solemn of their religious rites. (Huxley, Revisited 55)

The World Controller, Mustapha Mond, also defines soma: “Christianity without tears that’s what soma is” (Huxley, Brave New World 183). All in all—by my calculations--soma is mentioned some 67 times in Brave New World, and 20 times in Brave New World Revisited, and is obviously significant to the story.

Another word used commonly in the narrative is “hypnopaedia” (sleep-teaching). This word occurs 19 times in Brave New World. Not only is it the title of the tenth chapter of Brave New World Revisited, it is also mentioned 16 times in this sequel.

In Brave New World, Huxley also comments on books and libraries. Books are virtually forbidden—calling to mind Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. As a “campaign against the past,” there was a wide-spread “suppression of all books published before A.F. 150” (Huxley, Brave New World 39). In keeping with the World State’s program of mass production and mass consumption, society is taught to believe that “you can’t consume much if you sit still and read books” (Huxley, Brave New World 37). “There were those strange rumours,” the story also says, “of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the Controller’s study. Bibles, poetry—Ford knew what” (Huxley, Brave New World 25).

Yet, in spite of this suppression of books and literature, the populace in general exhibits a healthy vocabulary. Furthermore, the school library “contains only books of reference,” according to the Head Mistress. “If our young people need distraction,” she says, “they can get it at the feelies. We don’t encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements” (Huxley, Brave New World 125).

Although language is not as keenly observed in Brave New World as it is in other major dystopia novels, Huxley’s work is not devoid of linguistic charm. What borders on humour in Huxley is not found in Orwell or Burgess, yet it is also true that what is found in the language of Orwell and Burgess is not found in Huxley.

In the pages of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, language is dominated by Newspeak, which is:

. . . the official language of Oceania (that) had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism . . . The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. (Orwell 241)

In Newspeak, the Appendix reports, “the A vocabulary consisted of the words needed for the business of everyday life” (Orwell 242), and “the B vocabulary consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes” (Orwell 244). The C vocabulary, finally, “was supplementary to the others and consisted entirely of scientific and technical terms” (Orwell 249).

Winston Smith encountered Newspeak every workday in his job at the Ministry of Truth. Examples of Newspeak occurred in the internal messages of his Ministry: “miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify” (Orwell 34), and “reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling” (Orwell 39). The latter message Winston might have translated into the following:

The reporting of Big Brother’s Order for the Day in The Times of December 3rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to non-existent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing. (Orwell 39)

Newspeak is thus a highly condensed yet simple language based on English. Every official document and newspaper article had to be written in Newspeak, and every official government building or occupation had a Newspeak title. Every Party member was required to know Newspeak, and was encouraged to use it as much as was possible.

Literature, however, was unheard of. Julia worked in the Fiction Department of the Ministry of Truth, yet she knew that “books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces” (Orwell 107). In this regard, books are tolerated in Nineteen Eighty-Four much as they are in Brave New World.

Language is also a predominant feature of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Stanley Edgar Hyman states that, “coming to literature by way of music, Burgess has a superb ear, and he shows an interest in the texture of language rare among current novelists,” and adds that Burgess “is obsessed by words” (Burgess 175). “Grahzny bratchny’,” Hyman asserts, “sounds infinitely better than ‘dirty bastard’” (Burgess 175). It is, therefore, no wonder that Hyman concludes that “perhaps the most fascinating thing about the book is its language” (Burgess 173).

The language that is the central feature of A Clockwork Orange is called nadsat (teenage). During Alex’s reconditioning, Dr. Branom defines this dialect as “odd bits of old rhyming slang . . . A bit of gypsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav” (Burgess 109). The language is, naturally, endemic to the teenagers who use it, and not always comprehensible to outsiders or older generations. Alex describes an incident of misunderstanding:

“Very good,” I said. “Real horrorshow. Written well thou hast, O sir.” And then he looked at me very narrow and said:

“What?” It was like he had not slooshied me before.

“Oh, that,” I said, “is what we call nadsat talk. All the teens use that, sir.” (Burgess 154)

It is interesting to observe that after Alex is reconditioned, his use of the nadsat language is one trait that changes radically. Because nadsat is the language of youth and rebellion, it is important that this flaw in Alex’s character be controlled. To a degree, it is controllable, but not completely. In telling his life story to F. Alexander, young, reprogrammed Alex says the following:

“There was a foolish and boyish prank, my so-called friends persuading or rather forcing me to break into the house of an old ptitsa—lady, I mean. There was no real harm meant. Unfortunately the lady strained her good old heart in trying to throw me out, though I was quite ready to go of my own accord, and then she died. I was accused of being the cause of her death. So I was sent to prison . . .” (Burgess 148)

Notice that Alex corrects his one slip into nadsat, and that not even his “friends” are called “droogs” anymore. In spite of this dramatic change—which, incidentally, does not hold long—most of A Clockwork Orange seems wholly incomprehensible, to the point of being difficult to read: “you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches” (Burgess, 3, 174). Yet this apparently inaccessible verbiage becomes clear when the reader knows that peet means to drink, vellocet, synthemesc, and drencrom all mean drugs, and veshches mean things. Stanley Hyman explains some of the features of nadsat in detail:

. . . the reader, even if he knows no Russian (upon which much of nadsat is based), discovers that some of the meaning is clear from context: “to tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in his blood.” Other words are intelligible after a second context: when Alex kicks a fallen enemy on the “gulliver” it might be any part of the body, but when a glass of beer is served with a gulliver, “gulliver” is “head.” (Life is easier, of course, for those who know the Russian word golova.)

     Burgess has not used Russian words mechanically, but with great ingenuity, as the transformation into “gulliver,” with its Swiftian associations, suggests. Others are brilliantly anglicized: khorosho (good or well) as “horrorshow”; iudi (people) as “lewdies”; militsia (militia or police) as “millicents”; odinock (lonesome) as “oddy knocky”.

     Burgess uses some Russian words in an American slang extension, such as nadsat itself, the termination of the Russian numbers eleven to nineteen, which he breaks off independently on the analogy of our “teen.” Thus kopat (to dig with a shovel) is used as “dig” in the sense of enjoy or understand; koshka (cat) and ptitsa (bird) become the hip “cat” and “chick”; neezhny (lower) turns into “neezhnies” (underpants); pooshka (cannon) becomes the term for a pistol; rozha (grimace) turns into “rozz,” one of the words for policeman; samyi (the most) becomes “sammy” (generous); soomka (bag) is the slang for “ugly woman”; vareet (to cook up) is also used in the slang sense, for something preparing or transpiring.

     The “gypsy talk” . . . includes Alex’s phrase “O my brothers,” and “crark” (to yowl?), “cutter” (money), “filly” (to fool with), and such. The rhyming slang includes “luscious glory” for “hair” (rhyming with “upper story”?) and “pretty polly” for “money” (rhyming with “lolly” of current slang). Others are inevitable associations, such as “cancer” for “cigarette” and “charlie” for “chaplain.” Others are produced simply by schoolboy transformations: “appy polly loggy” (apology), “baddiwad” (bad), “eggiweg” (egg), “skolliwoll” (school), and so forth. Others are amputations: “guff” (guffaw), “pee and em” (pop and mom), “sarky” (sarcastic), “sinny” (cinema). Some appear to be portmanteau words: “chumble” (chatter-mumble), “mounch” (mouth-munch), “shive” (shiv-shave), “skirking” (striking-scratching). (Burgess 174, 175)

Whether it be found in serendipitous names like Obstacle Golf from Brave New World, in the condensed language of Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four, or in the strange and infectious Nadsat banter of A Clockwork Orange, it should now be evident that the language of dystopia novels is inventive and intriguing. Since we have addressed both the sexuality and the language by themselves, we will now examine sexuality and language as they occur together in twentieth-century English dystopia novels.

Sexuality and Language

Sexuality and language together are most obvious in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. But, in passing, let us briefly look at sexuality and language in Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In Huxley’s text, the most outstanding illustration of sexuality and language in combination is found in the previously mentioned World State slogan and hypnopaedic proverb that “every one belongs to every one else” (Huxley, Brave New World 29). This phrase appears in this form or in variation several times in the novel-most notably on pages 29, 32, 35, 57, 93, and 157. Intentional class distinction withstanding, everyone is created equal, and—sexually, at least—everyone does belong to everyone else. Free sex is promoted, and if people seem “pneumatic” in the sexual act, it is no wonder considering the free reign of their sexual contact. In this one catchy government slogan lies the essence of the entire sexuality of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

In Orwell’s prophetic tale, sexuality and language exhibit little if any direct correlation to one another, unlike the sexuality and language in Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange. But Nineteen Eighty-Four has often been most respected for its intellectual cohesiveness rather than for its other features. Newspeak, and such memorable concepts as “thought crime”, might indeed be more salient to the general public than the novel’s coherence, but the language of Newspeak carries its main purpose only insofar as it demonstrates the extent of the government’s domination—even the English language is not safe from oppression! Likewise, neither is sexuality free from the tentacles of bureaucratic entanglement. In few places in modern literature is this more apparent than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Consider, finally, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. The most striking union of sexuality and language is found in the sexual and sexually-related terms of the nadsat language. These terms include “groody” for breast: “there was this devotchka sort of cowering, a young pretty bit of sharp with real horrorshow groodies on her . . .” (Burgess 19); “Then he caught sight of an advert in the gazetta, which was on the table—a lovely smecking young ptitsa with groodies hanging out to advertise, my brothers, the Glories of the Jugoslav Beaches” (Burgess 35).

Other sexual terms from nadsat are “in-out in-out” for copulation, “lubbilubbing” for making love, “nagoy” for naked, “pan-handle” for erection, “pol” for sex, “sod” for fornication, and “yarbles” for testicles. Sexually-related terms include “baboochka” for old woman, “cheena” for woman, “dama” for lady, “devotchka” for girl, “luscious glory” for hair, “merzky” for filthy, “moodge” for man, “neezhnies” for underpants, “nochy” for night, “noga” for foot or leg, “platties” for clothes, “plott” for body, “ptitsa” for “chick”, “rook” or “rooker” for hand or arm, “rot” for mouth, “sharp” for female, “sharries” for buttocks, and “spat” or “spatchka” for sleep (Burgess 181–187).

By using terminology such as this for sexual as well as other terms, Anthony Burgess accomplishes two goals. First, he creates a sense of distance, implying that the entire world he creates is foreign, that love is uncomfortable, perhaps even subversive. Yet once the reader becomes familiar with the language, he also becomes familiar with the sexuality embodied in the terminology. This is the second goal the author accomplishes through the use of the nadsat language. In this gradual change that takes place as the reader gets used to the language, the sexual act and the violence connected with it becomes commonplace, immediate, and accessible. What is at first presented in an unfamiliar, unfavourable light, slowly, surreptitiously, becomes exceedingly familiar and favourable. The reader of A Clockwork Orange may not personally approve the gross sexuality Alex graphically demonstrates, but he will sense a growing ability to identify to some degree with Alex’s sexuality, and at least recognize that to Alex and other nadsat anarchists, sex and violence are indeed commonplace, immediate, and acceptable.

In A Clockwork Orange, Alex lives where “there was no trust anywhere in the world” (Burgess 85). Neither is there any trust in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In Huxley’s Brave New World, there is apparent trust, but it is, in reality, only an insidious mask that hides the lack of moral self-determination that is common to the other two dystopia novels. It is this jarring lack of trust—and the intellectual horror that accompanies it—that is created as a major theme by the inter-relation of sexuality and language in each of these dystopia novels.

The Missing Chapter of A Clockwork Orange

This is perhaps the most convenient place to mention a recent event in American Burgess scholarship-that is, the publication in the March 26th 1987 issue of Rolling Stone of the twenty-first chapter missing from the American edition of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange.

Originally printed in England with a full twenty-one chapters, the American editions of A Clockwork Orange have included only the first twenty. In an introduction to the missing chapter entitled “A Clockwork Orange Resucked”, Anthony Burgess informs us that “the book (he) wrote is divided into three sections of seven chapters each,” making “a total of twenty-one chapters,” and that this is important because “the number twenty-one is the symbol of human maturity” (Burgess, Missing Chapter 74). In spite of the significance of this number of chapters, Burgess states, “they were not important to (his) New York publisher”, thus creating “a profound difference between A Clockwork Orange as Great Britain knows it and the somewhat slimmer volume that bears the same name in the United States of America” (Burgess, Missing Chapter 76). The publisher’s reason for truncating the book, Burgess explains, was that the American audience was “tough” and could face the negative ending of the twentieth chapter—they did not need the “bland” optimism of the concluding chapter.

At any rate, the American publication of this final chapter is important for two reasons—what the chapter says, and what Burgess says in terms of sexuality and language about its belated American publication.

First, the content of the final chapter is conveniently summarized by Burgess in his Rolling Stone introduction:

What happens in that twenty-first chapter? . . . Briefly, my thuggish young protagonist grows up. He grows bored with violence and recognizes that human energy is better expended on creation than destruction. Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive. Its dynamism has to find an outlet in smashing telephone kiosks, derailing trains, stealing cars and smashing them and, of course, in the much more satisfactory activity of destroying human beings. There comes a time, however, when violence is seen as juvenile and boring. It is the repartee of the stupid and ignorant. My young hoodlum comes to the revelation of the need to get something done in life: to marry, to beget children, to keep the orange or the world turning in the rookers of Bog, or hands of God, and perhaps even create something—music, say. After all, Mozart and Mendelssohn were composing deathless music in their teens, or nadsats, and all my hero was doing was razrezzing and giving the old in-out. It is with a kind of shame that this growing youth looks back on his devastating past. He wants a different kind of future. (Burgess, Missing Chapter 76)

Burgess goes on to explain how the ending suggested by this “new” chapter contrasts with the ending of the original American edition:

There is no hint of . . . (a) change of intention in the twentieth chapter. The boy is conditioned, then deconditioned, and he foresees with glee a resumption of the operation of free and violent will. “I was cured all right,” he says, and so the American book ends. . .  . The twenty-first chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy best sellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. The American . . . Orange is a fable; the British or international one is a novel. (Burgess, Missing Chapter 76)

The American publication of this chapter is also important for what light it sheds on the subject of sexuality and language in dystopian fiction. With perhaps unnecessary humility, Burgess begins by lamenting that “the curtain of an invented lingo gets in the way” of the presentation of the “moral lesson . . . of the fundamental importance of moral choice” (Burgess, Missing Chapter 76). But he concludes with the significant observation that A Clockwork Orange is “a linguistic adventure”, and that “nadsat, a Russified version of English, was meant to muffle the raw response we expect from pornography” (Burgess, Missing Chapter 76). It is clear from this statement that Burgess has revealed his authorial intent to meld the remarkable forces of sexuality and language. The result, as we can see in the first twenty chapters—and now the final chapter—of A Clockwork Orange, is a disturbing dystopian ultimatum brought together in large part by the deft control of its sexual and linguistic content.

Conclusion

The common themes of sexuality and language are clearly evident in the twentieth-century English dystopia novels of Huxley, Orwell, and Burgess. Additional research may beg to be done, however. For example, how do these three novels compare with other dystopia novels, and under what further criteria may fiction in this genre be judged and compared? Also, if more extensive research and analysis were to be carried out among primary and secondary sources, what critical opinions would emerge specifically regarding the sexuality and language of all dystopian fiction? These and other matters are ripe for study.

Now, however, the question remains to see if the prophecies of sexual and linguistic horror and subordination turn into reality or not. Whether the future brings us a Brave New World, a Nineteen Eighty-Four, or a Clockwork Orange, or some other form of governmental atrocity, no one can predict.

We may have one future more in store for us than another. Aldous Huxley suggests, “assuming for the moment that the Great Powers can somehow refrain from destroying us . . . that it now looks as though the odds were more in favor of something like Brave New World than of something like 1984” (Huxley, Revisited 2).

Perhaps, though, the future will bring about all three of these night-marish visions—an amalgamation of dystopias. Is this the ominous future that awaits mankind? “There are many roads to (dystopia);” Huxley has decided, “but perhaps the straightest and the broadest of them is the road we are traveling today” (Huxley, Revisited 7).

Fortunately, in deference [I meant in contrast] to all predictions, there is a ray of hope. “That we are being propelled in the direction of (dystopia),” Huxley concludes, “is obvious. But no less obvious is the fact that we can, if we so desire, refuse to co-operate with the blind forces that are propelling us” (Huxley, Revisited 19). What Huxley says, as it applies to any form of impending threat or oppression, is an inspiring truism. The vagaries of time and the judgement of God will surely settle the score.

Works Cited

• Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. New York: Ballantine, 1962.

• ---. “A Clockwork Orange: The Missing Chapter.” Rolling Stone 496: 74–80.

• Green, Martin. “Introduction.” 1965. Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited. New York: Harper Colophon, 1965.

• Howe, Irving, ed. Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’: Texts, Sources, Criticism. 2nd ed. San Diego: Harcourt, 1982.

• Huxley, Aldous. “Brave New World.” 1932. Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited. New York: Harper Colophon, 1965.

• ---. “Brave New World Revisited.” 1958. Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited. New York: Harper Colophon, 1965.

• Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949.