Soapbox

I am not blogging about any of the four prompts. I did not like this book. I read it completely and quickly. I did not find it difficult or boring. But I did not like this book.
I think that Huxley is trying to say women who have sex either outside of marriage or when they are not in love are going to be treated like meat, mindless, or are “sluts” or “whores”. I do not believe this is so. I could understand if Huxley’s point is that women AND men should not be having sex with anything that moves BECAUSE of disease (STDs) but I don’t think that’s his point. He portrays every woman in this book as completely mindless, addicted to soma, and focused solely on having sex. Which makes me believe that he thinks that if America were to portray sex as morally “okay” then he thinks all men and women would only focus on sex and not intimacy. I don’t think that’s the case. I point out that he places women in a ‘mindless’ light because
1. Only men are in high position in this book.
2. The sole female main character, Lenina, is used as a sexual symbol and as a symbol of someone that has completely bought into the ideals of The New World.
3. The female that chooses to have sex with multiple partners in the “Savage World”, Linda, does not get a disease but rather social retribution. She then does not understand the negative backlash she receives.
4. The “hero” of the story, John the Savage, is male as are the other two pseudo-heroes, Helmholtz and Bernard Marx (Interesting his last name is Marx, like the man who created communism. I don’t think Bernard is meant to be a hero in the book. However, I think he is meant to be one of the few fighting the detrimental ideals of the utopian society. I think he is meant to be pitied and hated. Yet he was the beginning of questioning society and understanding that everyone was conditioned.)