How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Part.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Charming, charming," murmured the Director and, giving [Lenina] two or three little pats, received in exchange a rather deferential smile for himself. (1.93)
Huxley hints at the rampant promiscuity in this society even before we get to see the whole picture. As readers, we feel more and more uneasy as we go.
Quote #2
"We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes," she answered. "But now it's switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness."
The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing. (2.71-2)
Again, we get even more uncomfortable, this time with the notion of sexed-up little kids. And we haven't even gotten to "hunt-the-zipper" yet.
Quote #3
He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.
[…]
"In most cases, till they were over twenty years old."
[…]
"The results were terrible." (3.19-29)
Of course, this is commentary on our own world, or at least on Huxley's in the 1930s.
Quote #4
"Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?" enquired the Assistant Predestinator. "I hear the new one at the Alhambra is first-rate. There's a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say it's marvellous. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactual effects." (3.42)
Simulated sex helps to dehumanize the whole act. The aim is to eliminate all emotion from the act so that, as Mustapha will later explain, loyalty to the state is never in competition with loyalty to an individual. The more that sex pervades every aspect of culture, the less important it becomes, and the less emotion attached to it.
Quote #5
"Dr. Wells says that a three months' Pregnancy Substitute now will make all the difference to my health for the next three or four years."
"Well, I hope he's right," said Lenina. "But, Fanny, do you really mean to say that for the next three months you're not supposed to…"
"Oh no, dear. Only for a week or two, that's all. I shall spend the evening at the Club playing Musical Bridge." (3.77-9)
Lenina is talking about sex here. The thought of going three months without it is shocking to her.
Quote #6
"Oh, she jolly well doesn't see why there should have been," Fanny repeated, as though to an invisible listener behind Lenina's left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone, "But seriously," she said, "I really do think you ought to be careful. It's such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn't be so bad. But at your age, Lenina! No, it really won't do. And you know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn. Four months of Henry Foster, without having another man—why, he'd be furious if he knew…" (3.93)
Fanny's aversion to monogamy is partly due to her desire to follow the rules, but also partly a reflection of her conditioning. She has been programmed, essentially, to have an innate, visceral aversion to monogamy.
Quote #7
"Think of water under pressure in a pipe." They thought of it. "I pierce it once," said the Controller. "What a jet!"
He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little fountains.
[…]
Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable? (3.94-9)
Here begins the connection between mother-child love and sexual love. In the eyes of Mustapha, both are condemnable because they lead to emotions, which lead to instability. But this Freudian stuff will have much larger implications in the novel, especially when it comes to John and Linda. Stay tuned. (And admire how sneakily Huxley got us thinking in that direction right off the bat.)
Quote #8
Nodding, "He patted me on the behind this afternoon," said Lenina.
"There, you see!" Fanny was triumphant. "That shows what he stands for. The strictest conventionality." (3.103-4)
This is the kind of shocking humor that pervades the novel—Huxley has directly reversed our own "strictest conventionalities." In this case, what is essentially sexual harassment is smiled upon. Also, we've been waiting since Chapter 1 to know just where he patted her. And now we know.
Quote #9
Lenina shook her head. "Somehow," she mused, "I hadn't been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately. There are times when one doesn't. Haven't you found that too, Fanny?"
Fanny nodded her sympathy and understanding. "But one's got to make the effort," she said, sententiously, "one's got to play the game. After all, every one belongs to every one else." (3.12-13)
Despite all their conditioning, Fanny and Lenina both admit to an innate inclination towards monogamy. In this way, all the sex conditioning in the world can't make up for the instinctive need to find a mate.
Quote #10
"Lenina Crowne?" said Henry Foster, echoing the Assistant Predestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers. "Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you haven't had her."
"I can't think how it is I haven't," said the Assistant Predestinator. "I certainly will. At the first opportunity."
From his place on the opposite side of the changing-room aisle, Bernard Marx overheard what they were saying and turned pale. (3.118-20)
This is where we start to like Bernard. He seems to be the only character who shares our reaction to this shockingly promiscuous world.
Quote #11
And round her waist she wore a silver-mounted green morocco-surrogate cartridge belt, bulging (for Lenina was not a freemartin) with the regulation supply of contraceptives. (3.185)
Wow, it's like she's wearing sex on her sleeve. Oh, wait… (Actually, we meant to say something scholarly about how Orwell's "Anti-sex sash" in 1984 is probably a nod to Huxley's Malthusian belt.)
Quote #12
The lift was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms, and Lenina's entry was greeted by many friendly nods and smiles. She was a popular girl and, at one time or another, had spent a night with almost all of them. (4.1.1)
Lenina's character is defined by her sexual appeal.
Quote #13
Then aloud, and more warmly than ever, "I'd simply love to come with you for a week in July," she went on. (Anyhow, she was publicly proving her unfaithfulness to Henry. Fanny ought to be pleased, even though it was Bernard.) "That is," Lenina gave him her most deliciously significant smile, "if you still want to have me."
Bernard's pale face flushed. "What on earth for?" she wondered, astonished, but at the same time touched by this strange tribute to her power. (4.1.4-5)
Lenina and John are similar in the sexual power they hold over others.
Quote #14
They entered. The air seemed hot and somehow breathless with the scent of ambergris and sandalwood. On the domed ceiling of the hall, the colour organ had momentarily painted a tropical sunset. The Sixteen Sexophonists were playing an old favourite: "There ain't no Bottle in all the world like that dear little Bottle of mine." Four hundred couples were five-stepping round the polished floor. Lenina and Henry were soon the four hundred and first. The saxophones wailed like melodious cats under the moon, moaned in the alto and tenor registers as though the little death were upon them. Rich with a wealth of harmonics, their tremulous chorus mounted towards a climax, louder and ever louder—until at last, with a wave of his hand, the conductor let loose the final shattering note of ether-music and blew the sixteen merely human blowers clean out of existence. Thunder in A flat major. And then, in all but silence, in all but darkness, there followed a gradual deturgescence, a diminuendo sliding gradually, through quarter tones, down, down to a faintly whispered dominant chord that lingered on (while the five-four rhythms still pulsed below) charging the darkened seconds with an intense expectancy. And at last expectancy was fulfilled. There was a sudden explosive sunrise, and simultaneously, the Sixteen burst into song. (5.1.17)
Brave New World establishes a connection between music and sex, which begins here and is continued later on the orgy-porgy scene with Bernard and that unibrow woman, Morgana.
Quote #15
Five-stepping with the other four hundred round and round Westminster Abbey, Lenina and Henry were yet dancing in another world—the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday. How kind, how good-looking, how delightfully amusing every one was! "Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted…" But Lenina and Henry had what they wanted… They were inside, here and now-safely inside with the fine weather, the perennially blue sky. And when, exhausted, the Sixteen had laid by their saxophones and the Synthetic Music apparatus was producing the very latest in slow Malthusian Blues, they might have been twin embryos gently rocking together on the waves of a bottled ocean of blood-surrogate.
[…]
Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds. Bottled, they crossed the street; bottled, they took the lift up to Henry's room on the twenty-eighth floor. (5.1.19-22)
Part of the reason the Controllers make sure sex happens ALL THE TIME in the World State is that it prevents solitude. As we see here with Lenina and Foster, downtime is far less likely to lead to something dangerous—like independent thought—if the focus is on soma and sex.
Quote #16
If only he had given himself time to look around instead of scuttling for the nearest chair! He could have sat between Fifi Bradlaugh and Joanna Diesel. Instead of which he had gone and blindly planted himself next to Morgana. Morgana! Ford! Those black eyebrows of hers—that eyebrow, rather—for they met above the nose. Ford! And on his right was Clara Deterding. True, Clara's eyebrows didn't meet. But she was really too pneumatic. Whereas Fifi and Joanna were absolutely right. Plump, blonde, not too large… And it was that great lout, Tom Kawaguchi, who now took the seat between them. (5.2.8)
This is more of Huxley's great delayed-disclosure narrative technique. We wonder why Bernard cares about who he's sitting next to, but we start to get suspicious by the time we get to his description of Fifi and Joanna. When we realize the men and women are alternating for a reason, our uneasy "wait a minute…" feeling is confirmed. This is an orgy. Porgy.
Quote #17
"Orgy-porgy," the dancers caught up the liturgical refrain, "Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, kiss the girls…" And as they sang, the lights began slowly to fade—to fade and at the same time to grow warmer, richer, redder, until at last they were dancing in the crimson twilight of an Embryo Store. "Orgy-porgy…" In their blood-coloured and foetal darkness the dancers continued for a while to circulate, to beat and beat out the indefatigable rhythm. "Orgy-porgy…" Then the circle wavered, broke, fell in partial disintegration on the ring of couches which surrounded—circle enclosing circle—the table and its planetary chairs. "Orgy-porgy…" Tenderly the deep Voice crooned and cooed; in the red twilight it was as though some enormous n***o dove were hovering benevolently over the now prone or supine dancers. (5.2.31)
Here's that music/sex connection we were talking about. Red is an important color here—remember back to Chapter 1 when Foster declared that embryos, like photographic film, can only stand red light. It's no coincidence that these two scenes are related; the copulating adults are compared to little embryos inside their bottles. Why, you ask? Check out "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" for more.
Quote #18
"Adults intellectually and during working hours," he went on. "Infants where feeling and desire are concerned."
[…]
[…] "It suddenly struck me the other day," continued Bernard, "that it might be possible to be an adult all the time."
"I don't understand." Lenina's tone was firm.
"I know you don't. And that's why we went to bed together yesterday—like infants—instead of being adults and waiting." (6.1.65-9)
Or, don't go to "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" and instead just let Bernard sum it up for you here.
Quote #19
"Oh!" He gave a gasp and was silent, gaping. He had seen, for the first time in his life, the face of a girl whose cheeks were not the colour of chocolate or dogskin, whose hair was auburn and permanently waved, and whose expression (amazing novelty!) was one of benevolent interest. Lenina was smiling at him; such a nice-looking boy, she was thinking, and a really beautiful body. The blood rushed up into the young man's face; he dropped his eyes, raised them again for a moment only to find her still smiling at him, and was so much overcome that he had to turn away and pretend to be looking very hard at something on the other side of the square. (7.46)
So here's some insight into the otherwise difficult question of why someone with John's depth and principles would ever want someone as vapid (dull or flat) as Lenina. In a world where he has been forever different, she is someone who looks like him—that is, white and blue-eyed. John's immediate thought is companionship (check out his "Character Analysis" for more).
Quote #20
"For instance," she hoarsely whispered, "take the way they have one another here. Mad, I tell you, absolutely mad. Everybody belongs to every one else—don't they? don't they?" she insisted, tugging at Lenina's sleeve. Lenina nodded her averted head, let out the breath she had been holding and managed to draw another one, relatively untainted. "Well, here," the other went on, "nobody's supposed to belong to more than one person. And if you have people in the ordinary way, the others think you're wicked and anti-social. They hate and despise you. Once a lot of women came and made a scene because their men came to see me. Well, why not? And then they rushed at me… No, it was too awful. I can't tell you about it." (7.56)
Like Lenina, Linda is defined by her sexuality—the women are essentially mirror-images of each other, but they reflect the differences between their two worlds.