Family In Brave New World

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In Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, family is no longer a normal part of society. The destruction of family occurred between the years of ford and 632 after ford, the time the novel takes place. Family is obsolete in Brave New World as children are no longer born from mothers, but instead decanted in thousands of specialized bottles on an assembly type system. There is no need for sex to create children, so sex has less of an emotional connection, which helps negate the need for humans create a family to raise any children. Since there is no concept of family in the novel, all the terms and ideas associated with family are viewed as historical information to the characters within the novel, which Huxley then uses to satirize the …show more content…

This combines with the fact that each time two people go out and then proceed to have sex they use various resources including perfumes, cologne, clothing, and contraceptives. The characters in the novel understand the need of having multiple sexual partners, but even in their society where everyone belongs to everyone, some still find pleasure in only seeing one other person. When Lenina only sees Henry for four months, Fanny is completely distraught and warns Lenina, “’It’s such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man... you know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn’” (41). Huxley uses this to emphasize the fact that multiple sexual partners is needed for a fully happy and stable society, as the extra consumption and emotional release has very positive impacts on society. This idea of multiple sexual partners is good in the sense that it releases emotional tension and consumes products for the society, but it relies on the very important situation that children are decanted artificially. Nevertheless, Huxley understood that his idea of a dystopian society relied heavily on some technological capabilities not yet available, but his concepts of family and sex still hold true to some extent when viewed through the novels

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