1984 Sexism Analysis

In the 1930s and 40s, Adolf Hitler used the Jewish people as a scapegoat on which to blame Germany’s problems. This fear of what the Jewish people had apparently created granted the German people free reign to discriminate and detest. This hatred allowed the Nazi Regime to subsist and thrive. The same is true for The Party in 1984. The Party takes away the opportunity to expand one’s mind and freely use one’s body to one’s own pleasure, essentially taking away the humanity from human beings. In George Orwell’s 1984, The Party uses racism, sexism, and anti-semitism as a way to control the masses and quell rebellion.

To harbor the bigotry that invokes the people of Oceania, the Party sponsors Hate Week, seven days filled to the brim with

anti-Eurasian (or Eastasian, depending on who it is they are fighting) and anti-Goldstein sentiment. Upon the reveal of poster that displays a “monstrous figure of a Eurasian soldier...striding forward with expressionless Mongolian face and enormous boots, a submachine gun pointed from his hip” (Orwell, pg. 149), the proles, who are “normally apathetic about the war” (pg. 149), become patriotic and rowdy, even though bombs keep falling and the standard of living drops further by the day. To the regular person, this might be confusing. However, consider this: the proles are fed, employed, and sheltered; therefore, they do not pay attention to the war, the bombs, or the state of the world. That is to say, they lose their political consciousness in favor of stress-free world. It is acknowledged that their proletarian lives before the Revolution were worse than what they have now (or so they’ve been told), so they do not revolt, and stay compliant, a point illustrated by Winston on page 70 when he writes in his journal, “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” They allow themselves to join in on the racist activities advocated by the Party as a reminder of their great country. Additionally, if the regular Oceanian citizen were even authorized to interact with non-Oceanians, he might overturn his prejudices. The Party itself even acknowledges this, as demonstrated in this excerpt from Goldstein's book:
“He would discover that they [foreigners] are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies… the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides that...the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs” (pg. 248).
Without this ideology, the world might become a more loving place and ignorance could be eradicated through education and interaction. However; ignorance fuels fear and from fear springs hatred, which sustains a dictatorship.

When the reader first meets Winston, it is established that he
“disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy” (pg. 10).
Unfortunately, Winston’s sexism is not unique to him; it is prevalent throughout Oceanian society.

For example: even though her youngest child was dying and everyone in the family was hungry, Winston’s mother “was quite ready to give him [Winston] more than his share. She took it for granted that he, ‘the boy’ should have the biggest portion; but however much she gave he invariably demanded more” (pg. 162). Winston’s mother’s mind was so entrenched in systematic sexism that she willingly risked her own child’s health and safety because of the male entitlement of her son. Not only does systematic sexism ruin lives, it is also a tool of The Party to manipulate their subjects. To illustrate, on page 131,

Winston
“learned with astonishment that all of the workers in Pornosec, except the head of the department, were girls. The theory was that men, whose sex instincts were less controllable than those of women, were in greater danger of being corrupted by the filth they handled. ‘They don’t even like having married women there...Girls are always supposed to be so pure’”
This approach ignores the fact that sex is a natural part of most everyone’s lives, and most people enjoy sex and see it as a good thing. To deny someone the right to their own sexuality through repression and societal pressures (like Winston’s wife calling sex “our duty to the Party” or “making a baby”, married couples not being allowed to show any attraction towards each other, etc.) allows them to focus their energy that they could have used having sex on other endeavours. Notably, Julia words it perfectly on page 133:
“‘When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time...If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?’”
If one busies herself with love affairs and family bonds, she creates private loyalties to other people and forgets about Party ties. She sees her loved ones as more important than the Party, which is detrimental to Party efforts. In order to successfully supervise a dictatorship, the dictated need to be fully devoted to the dictators. By disallowing attraction of any kind, the Party takes away a part of what makes human beings human: love. In order to run a functioning dictatorship, the Party disallows people the right to do as they please with their bodies, using women especially as their scapegoat.

Considering the fact that 1984 rests on hypothetical what-if-Hitler-won-the-war basis, the world of Oceania is rife with anti-semitism. For example, on page 8, Winston writes in his journal about a film he saw recently: in which:
“there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright ...and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him...there was a lot of applause from the party seats”
The people of Oceania have dehumanized Jewish people so much and to such a degree that it is funny when a horrible tragedy is induced upon them.

Thus, anti-semitism is a way to link the Oceanian people together, especially during the Two-Minutes Hate, where Emmanuel Goldstein, a Jewish man, is ridiculed and harassed through the telescreens: “The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out ‘Swine! Swine! Swine!’ and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein’s nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably” (pg. 14). As well as being a derogatory term used against Jewish people for years, the use of the word “swine” barbarizes Goldstein, and by extension Jewish people, further by comparing him to an uncivilized animal (ironic, considering how in Orwell’s novella Animal Farm, pigs are the most civilized creatures on Animal Farm). In fact, Goldstein is often referred to in animalistic terms, like on page 12: “It was a lean Jewish face...a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable...It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheep-like quality.” The connection to sheep invokes the feeling of docility and a tendency to “go with the crowd”. In sum: Goldstein’s arguments are invalidated, tired, and ultimately, hogwash. The Party uses this anti-semitic nullification of Goldstein’s arguments and dehumanization of the Jewish people to unite the masses, and allows them to feed into the

hatred on which the dictatorship runs.

From his own post-war anxiety and apprehension over the terrifying, ever-present rise of totalitarianism in places like the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, George Orwell created one of the great classics of modern literature: 1984. 1984 uses the sustained, looming threat of The Party to exhibit how totalitarian regimes essentially dehumanize humans. The Party in 1984 does this through many ways, but most prominently through the mediums of racism, sexism, and anti-semitism. These forms of prejudice imbrute the people of the horrifying world of Oceania; they lose their political consciousness, regular human empathy, and even their sexuality. They live in a world where secrecy, constant self-monitoring, and perpetual cruelty is the norm. All of this horridness culminates in an easily-controllable, simple-minded society; an easy system wherein a dictatorship can prosper. Without interaction, education, or any way to properly connect to the past, the people are able to fully dedicate themselves to the Party. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.