Feminism in George Orwell’s 1984

Orwell identifies lust, love, friendship, sex/orgasms and family to be what makes us human and therefore what the Party must destroy. Orwell displays a lot of liberalism here: he sees no hierarchy between lust and love (Winston’s encounter with a sex worker and with Julia are favourably compared to sex with his wife. His later love for Julia is not presented as superior to her earlier lust for him).

Nor does Orwell see any preferred types of family. But in 2013 nuclear families are given the highest status and young and single parent families the lowest. Most governments try to control family life and sex, from the Nazis to Republicans and our own government’s tax allowance for married but not non married couples. The Party tried to split up couples so people would be loyal only to the government and not spouses while our present government tries to push people into marriage and keep them from divorcing so that the government’s conservative moral values will be preserved against our will and against the best interests of families.

Orwell thinks that laws stop the government from oppressing us or at least limit the oppression. We tend to think that with no law there can be no crime. But Orwell thinks that without any laws anything can be a crime. Any sex that the government does not approve of is a sex crime in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Similarly sex outwith marriage is criminalised in Dubai, cheating is criminalised in Iran and sex work is criminalised in most American states and criminalised for purchasers but not service providers in Sweden.

Orwell appears to have understood that rape is violence and not sex long before feminists brought this to public attention. Orwell presents Winston as fantasising about raping and murdering Julia because he hates her and because she is celibate. He doesn’t victim blame Julia for being slutty or wearing revealing clothes. In the contrary it is her celibacy and political ideas which make him want to rape her. She wears the same uniform he does. This was long before the SlutWalks so it’s very impressive that Orwell was so reasonable and understanding.

Julia is also a very ‘slutty’ character for the era in which Orwell wrote. She pursues Winston, has had many lovers since she was 16, only wants casual relationships and works fast, succeeding in sleeping with Winston almost immediately after they’re alone. But Orwell never suggests she is dirty or worth less because she enjoys sex. Instead Winston seems to admire her more because she is confident enough to do what she wants instead of submitting to the sexual repression of the government. Orwell never suggests that ‘sluts’ deserve to be raped or can’t be raped – an attitude which clearly survives to this day.

Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia are clearly the same state under the same government. This is hinted at numerous times (Julia’s comments that the government itself is firing the rockets and doubts about whether the war is real). Doubts about the realness of Goldstein and the Brotherhood were proved right which seems to suggest that other doubts might be right too. The three states share the same ideology, social system and level of technology. They are three parts of a world government which continuously fakes a war to control its subjects.

The world government swaps round the fake alliances to weed out and identify citizens who can’t do doublethink. Orwell could have been hinting that ideologies or groups which seem very different from each other can oppress the citizen in the same way. Personally it is my belief that a Christian or Muslim theocracy and a radical feminist government would all oppress women and deny freedom of speech and sexual expression in similar ways. Obviously this wasn’t what Orwell was writing about and I’ve no idea if he’d agree with me but the principle is the same.