Gender Equality In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Aldous Huxley depicts a world in which there seems to be huge advancements in technology. In it includes new ways of teaching, and easier ways of reproduction. The “Bokanovsky Process,” as they call it, can make a total of ninety six viable fetuses from a single egg. Women no longer cook, clean, nor take care of children, but does that indicate that they are equivalent to men? Everything appears to be much more straightforward and equal, but it is nowhere near the truth. This “Utopian” society seems to still struggle with gender equality. Huxley demonstrates several instances throughout the novel in which women are portrayed as sexual objects, and even deemed as the bad ones. Brave New World begins with a class of students who are being toured around by the director of the facility. Much like that classroom and most top positions it appears that women are not as valued as men. If you manage to pay close attention, then you might notice that not one of the leaders is a women. That is what first leads the readers to come up with the assumption that men and women are not actually viewed as equals in Huxley's Brave New World.

In chapter 4 we are introduced to this new character named Helmholtz Watson. Helmholtz is the man that everyone wishes to be. He has the looks, money, and has the status of alpha male. In a society in which “everyone belongs to everyone,” it would only be logical that any women would sleep with him simply because of his looks. The novel states, “This Escalator-Squash champion, this indefatigable love (it was said that he had six hundred and forty different girl in under four years)...” (Huxley 71). They make it appear as if women are just a sexual object and are nothing more than entertainment for men. In addition, they use numbers to state how many women he has had relations with as if it were something to be proud