Feminism In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

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Feminism is a range of political and social movements that share a common goal; to establish and achieve equality between both men and women in our world. Throughout the years, many feminist movements have been created to fight for women’s right to work, earn wages and receive education. Some success has been seen by these movements when approximately one hundred years ago, women attained their right to vote. These campaigns have only started to unfold, and to this day, females are still being criticised based on their gender. The feminist approach examines the whole concept of being female as well as the role of women in a piece of literature. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the so-called utopian society that characters live in, women …show more content…

Lenina and Linda, the only two significant female characters in the novel, are very homogenous to each other. They are both highly alike, and are portrayed indirectly as weaker, and shallow, for being a mere reflection of their conditioning. They both are abnormally sexually active, both recite their hypnopaedic phrases to reassure themselves, and they both take soma to ‘wash’ away their troubles. Huxley carries on by removing women’s reproductive abilities. In the beginning of the novel, the author declares that babies were now produced in laboratories, where in fact, most of the population were only clones. “Murder kills only the individual and, after all, what is an individual? With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of microscope, the test-tubes, the incubators. We can make a new one with the greatest ease -- as many as we like.”(p.126). In this passage, Huxley is explaining how in this new world that they live in, technological advancements has permitted them to create babies without the use of women. The author uses this to suggest that females are essentially useless in this society, to such an extent that the world doesn’t even need them for reproduction anymore. To limit women’s right even further, Huxley continues to mention about a pregnancy substitute. “I’ve been feeling rather out of sorts lately, Fanny explained. Dr. Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy Substitute.