1984 Love

787 Words4 Pages
Love is malleable; a concept often perceived as the epitome of happiness, yet sometimes regarded as a consensual agreement. Notably, love can be deluded in the hands of a venal heart, bringing monolithic anguish into a relationship. Occasionally, the disillusioned meaning of love can arise from a culpable outside force - like a corrupt totalitarian government. In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, citizens are stoic because they are forced to renounce their identity to the government. With identities lost, George Orwell demonstrates how characters—Mrs. Parson, Katharine, Winston, and Julia—attempt interpreting the foreign idea of love. By elucidating the roles females and males are obligated to in a dystopian society, Orwell conveys how…show more content…
Parson, Orwell highlights her tentative behavior towards her children to elude the helplessness women feel when staunch with repetitive, mundane responsibilities. According to the essay “Women in 1984,” Orwell specifically designated “women [as] providing the domestic background” (Hester 257). Orwell thought women were meant to stay at home and take care of children. In order to stress the expected liability of women, Orwell intentionally categorized females as housewives, and he continued to further his view in Nineteen Eighty-Four. For instance, as Winston recedes from Mrs. Parson’s loft, he catches “the look of helpless fright on the woman’s grayish face” (Orwell 24; pt.1, ch.2). Winston notices the flash of terror Mrs. Parson exhibits each time her children cross her path, but she never exhorts any sign of urgent distress because she knows all citizens dread children. Although the Party expects her to look after her own children, she fears them. However, she still constantly watches over her children because it was all she knows. To clarify Orwell’s point, the relationship between parent and child contains no love, only duty. He extends how women were meant to care for their children. Mrs. Parson, who Orwell depicts as a dependent character, symbolizes the ideal persona the Party intends for a motherly women. By exposing Mrs. Parson’s confined banal homely duties, Orwell emphasizes the strain it puts on women to feel weak and…show more content…
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston remarks how Katharine defined their sexual intercourse as “our duty to the Party” (Orwell 67; 1. 6). Katharine—who wants to appease the Party, who wants to feel useful, and who does not love Winston—adamantly submits to him in order produce a child. Despite the Party admonishing sex, they consider marriage as an opportunity towards conceiving babies who will eventually grow up to service them (Orwell 65; 1. 6). Orwell notes how Katharine and Winston's relationship was centered around giving birth to a new generation. However, Katharine was unable to provide a spouse (Orwell 67; 1. 6), therefore making her feel useless. As pointed out by Rita Felski, when a women unsuccessfully fulfills her duty, she will experience “shame . . . [and] self-consciousness” (39). Orwell uses Katharine to illustrate how women only had “roles: as housekeeper, child-bearer, child-rearer, [and] sexual partner” (Harrison 121), but since Katharine was incapable of bearing a baby, she had already failed as a women. By addressing Katharine’s loyalty towards the Party, Orwell shows how women purposefully impose themselves into relationships to maintain their expected roles in
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