Brave New World Topic Tracking: Sexuality

Chapter 1

Sexuality 1: The novel begins with a lengthy description of the test-tube process of reproduction. Reproduction is purely scientific, and sex is therefore a purely recreational activity in the World State.

Chapter 2

Sexuality 2: Males and females do not have sex for reproductive purposes, and embryos are created through a complicated scientific fertilization process. Children are brought up in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Therefore, there is no more mother-father relationship, and the very concept of such is considered pornographic.

Chapter 3

Sexuality 3: Sexual activity is such an everyday event that people start their sexual activity with erotic play as children.

Sexuality 4: Mustapha Mond describes the institutions of motherhood and monogamy with revulsion, as they are pornographic and horrible aspects of a past that no longer exists.

Sexuality 5: Lenina and Fanny's casual locker-room conversation establishes that promiscuity is seen as an asset. Fanny chastizes Lenina because her relationship with Henry is bordering on monogamous. In the World State, people are satisfied because they are taught that every one belongs to every one else. This conversation reveals much of the World State sexual code of morality.

Sexuality 6: Henry Foster and the Assistant Predestinator possess the typical and sleep-taught World State sexual morality. They participate in recreational and casual sex and believe that people are to be shared and do not belong to just one other person. Henry recommends that the Assistant Predestinator have sex with Lenina.

Chapter 4, Part 1

Sexuality 7: Before meeting Henry, with whom she has spent a lot of time, Lenina has been with many men, including George Edzel and Benito Hoover. She is very popular with the men because she is charming and attractive. She approaches Bernard in public to show the other people that she is a good citizen of the World State. She willingly shares herself sexually with others and ensures others know she is not monogamous with Henry Foster.

Chapter 5, Part 1

Sexuality 8: Lenina and Henry have casual sex after their date. They are not monogamous. Lenina remembers to take her contraception, which she carries with her in her Malthusian belt at all times.

Chapter 5, Part 2

Sexuality 9: The orgy-porgy is a government-sponsored, and, in fact, government-mandatory, sex ceremony. The twelve participants get downright ecstatic, take soma, summon Ford, and then enjoy each other.

Chapter 6, Part 1

Sexuality 10: Bernard cannot adapt to the casual sex mentality, though he was taught it in sleep-teaching and in practice just like everybody else. He tells Lenina that he wants passion, but she just does not understand.

Chapter 7

Sexuality 11: Linda practices the World State sexual code of morality, that is, casual and recreational sex, even when in the Savage Reservation, which values monogamy. She is therefore an outsider.

Chapter 9

Sexuality 12: The Savage (John) is awed by Lenina's beauty. Unlike the males of the World State, who see attractiveness as a precursor to sex, John thinks that he must prove himself worthy to earn her love. Having grown up with the sexual morality of the Reservation, he does not understand the sexual morality of the World State.

Chapter 11

Sexuality 13: Lenina takes the Savage (John) on a date to a feely, a sensory interactive movie, and, in accordance with what usually happens on dates in the time of the World State, she expects them to have sex. She is bewildered when he does not seem to want to have sex, and thinks that he does not want her. He wants her very much. Jon adheres to the sexual code of the Reservation, and of Shakespeare, where he must prove his worth to her and must not jeopardize a lady's purity.

Chapter 13

Sexuality 14: In this violent confrontation, John finally realizes what Bernard realized about Lenina: that like all women in the World State, she practices recreational sex without emotion. She sees sex as an exchange, while he sees it as his declaration of everlasting love for her. He realizes the depth of the difference between the way they think about sex. Lenina does not come to any such deep revelations. She still does not have the ability to see outside her conditioning, or the sexual context of the World State, and finds John violent and strange.

Chapter 18

Sexuality 15: The violent frenzy of the Savage whipping himself, the Savage whipping Lenina, and the roar of the helicopters, does not get murderous and riotous, but instead the scene turns into an orgy-porgy lasting until after midnight. The people simply do not understand violent and murderous feelings; they only understand the orgy-porgy as a way of expressing deep and intense feelings.