The Context Of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Despite its overarching theme of future prognostication, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a dystopic novel profoundly representative of its own context, in direct contradiction of Diane Johnson’s perspective on dystopian fiction. Huxley highlights the negative outcomes resulting from significant changes in 1920-30’s American society, by transposing major advances in technology, increased amorality and consumerism into an ostensibly futuristic dystopian world.

Context of Brave New World, Huxley’s personal context, nature of dystopian fiction*explain who is Diane Johnson in footnote

Huxley’s concern over the issues surrounding contemporary technological advancements is mirrored in the dehumanisation of the reproductive process in Brave New

World. Previous advances during the 1920’s and the embracing of new inventions by middle class Americans made many conservatives and fundamentalists uncomfortable*B. The extent of the incorporation of modern technologies in 1920-30’s America is typified in the ownership of approximately 15.3 million electric irons within the 17 million homes that had access to electricity*B.

Huxley uses a lexical chain of strikingly negative visual imagery to describe the fertilising room, a component of Brave New World’s reproductive system, in “cold [...] harsh thin light glared […] hungrily seeking”. This detached and sterile tone emphasises the lack of humanist concepts in a reproductive process reliant on technology, echoing the perceived issues of technological advancement in Huxley’s context. Furthermore, Huxley alludes to the bible, in particular Deuteronomy 4:25 “take ye wives and beget sons and daughters”, whilst discussing the technological process of incubating the male gametes, “Rams wrapped in thermogene beget no lambs”. This emphasises the technological corruption of the natural process of reproduction conveyed by the bible, which reflects Huxley’s concerns of contemporary technological advances. Huxley uses implied indirect discourse whilst the Director explains the process of reproduction, in “Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.” This directly addresses the reader, asserting societal principles of mass-production and the efficiency of the

assembly line, which effectively removes all human aspects from the reproductive process. This dehumanisation of the reproductive process in Brave New World particularly transposes and critiques issues surrounding Henry Ford’s technological advancement in manufacturing methods, typified by large-scale mechanised mass production*A. Huxley presents Brave New World as a seemingly futuristic dystopia, however technological advancement in 1920-30’s America is mirrored and highlighted, rendering the text highly representative of its own context and a contradiction of the perspective presented.
Huxley reflects and emphasises in Brave New World the increased amorality of his context, notably the decline of religion and family structures and the increase of sexual freedoms.

Family decline in the 1920’s was part of a wider array of cultural anxieties about the decline of Victorianism and the emergence of modernism, particularly during periods of rapid social and economic change.*D Furthermore, throughout the twentieth century church-going reduced; Sunday school enrolment decreased notably in the 1930’s*F and religious articles fell by eleven percent between 1905 and 1920 *E. The decline of two interlinking corporations concerned with the enforcement of society’s morals and values meant an increase in amorality in the early twentieth century. *H Throughout Brave New World, John the Savage acts as a mouthpiece for Huxley in denouncing the profligate nature of Brave New World’s civilised society, a reflection of the amorality within 1920-30’s America, shown in “I ate civilisation. It poisoned me; I was defiled.” Metaphor is used to discuss the negative effects of an unprincipled society on the individual, emphasising this paralleled issue. Huxley also alludes to Shakespeare’s Hamlet in “He [John the Savage] spent the hours on his knees praying, now to that Heaven from which the guilty Claudius had begged forgiveness.” After experiencing civilised society, John the Savage compares himself to Claudius, whose depraved character is representative of lust, greed, corruption

and excess*I. These incontinent vices within Brave New World mirror the emerging amorality of Huxley’s society. Moreover, the invention of the first latex condom in 1920 meant reproductive self-determination and the differentiation between sexual indulgence and the activity of reproduction, which challenged the traditional Christian morality.*C Huxley uses irony to convey the promiscuity within Brave New World, in “‘He has other girls, doesn’t he? […] Of course he does. Trust Henry Foster to be the perfect gentleman” Henry Foster’s sexual indiscrimination inverses traditional concepts of a gentleman and espouses the increased sexual freedoms and promiscuity, which Huxley translates to amorality, in 1920-30’s America. In the same vein, Huxley alludes to the Malthusian league, which advocated the practice of contraception and had in 1921 established the first permanent birth-control clinic*J, in “she wore a […] belt, bulging with the regulation supply of contraceptives. […] ‘And what a perfectly sweet Malthusian belt!’” The increased sexual freedom of Huxley’s context characterised by new birth control options is mirrored in Brave New World by the availability of sexual satisfaction as a commodity through the institutionalised use of contraception*K.

Huxley accentuates the difficulties of 1920-30’s American consumerism and transposes them in Brave New World’s civilised society. In 1920-30’s America, the growing economic and political importance of consumerism was clear*O. Economic indices point to the 1920’s as being the period when a consumption society emerged. Emphasis on spending and material possessions, the consumption ethic, undermined the traditional value system*Q. Huxley parodies the common proverb ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ in an inverse mantra that promotes consumerism, in “the more stitches the less riches” which emphasises the problematically consumerist nature of both the civilised society in Brave New World and Huxley’s context. Similarly, Huxley utilises the name of Henry Ford, the originator of the assembly line and the Model T automobile and a figurehead of early twentieth century American consumerism*R, to describe Brave New World’s religion, Fordism, and its deity, Ford. This is exemplified in Huxley’s appropriation of a notable quote from novel Pippa Passes by Robert Browning, ‘God’s in his heaven all’s right with the world” in “Ford’s in his flivver […] All’s well with the world.” Huxley’s replacement of God with a symbol of American consumerism in 1920-30’s as the governing ideology of society highlights the economic and political reliance of both worlds on mass consumption. This is exacerbated by the use of flivver, a colloquial American term for an inexpensive car, which exposes the nature of consumption of dispensable items]