In George Orwell’s novel 1984, Julia
chooses Winston Smith to be her next lover for a number of reasons, including the
following:
- When she first saw him, she
immediately sensed that he was opposed to the Party and was thus a potential lover,
since she also opposes the Party. Thus she says to
Winston:
“I’m good at spotting people who don’t belong. As
soon as I saw you I knew you were against them.” (p. 122, Signet
edition)
- She
considers sexual relations a means of revolting against control by the
Party. - She hates the kind of so-called purity and
goodness dictated by the Party. - She actually enjoys
sexual relations. Raw physical desire is something the Party can’t entirely
control. - She takes pleasure in outwitting the Party, even
though her opposition to it is not especially principled or
intellectual. - She recognizes that if the Party can
control or suppress sexual instincts, those emotional energies can instead by made
useful to the Party for its own political purposes. - She
recognizes that sex threatens the Party in other ways, since it robs of the Party of
energies it might be able to use in its own interests. Sexual activity makes the people
who engage in it briefly apathetic toward the Party. - She
uses her sexual attractiveness to help encourage Winston in his own hidden revolt
against the Party. With Julia to desire, he has something to live for. Thus her affair
with him helps strengthen him and (slightly) weaken the
Party. - She seems to enjoy taking the initiative in
planning the details of their trysts. Having the affair with Winston helps increase her
own sense of power and independence.
Thus Julia
chooses Winston for a variety of reasons, although she might just as easily have chosen
anyone else whom she strongly suspected of disloyalty to the
Party.
For evidence to support the points just listed, see
Book II, Chapters 1-3 of the novel.
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