BNW chapter 1

Read the beginning of the novel:
Chapter One

A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.

"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."

Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments.

"Just to give you a general idea," he would explain to them. For of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently–though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.

"To-morrow," he would add, smiling at them with a slightly menacing geniality, "you'll be settling down to serious work. You won't have time for generalities. Meanwhile …"

Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse's mouth into the notebook. The boys scribbled like mad.

Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the room. He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was hard to say. And anyhow the question didn't arise; in this year of stability, A. F. 632, it didn't occur to you to ask it.

"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D.H.C. and the more zealous students recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the beginning. "These," he waved his hand, "are the incubators." And opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. "The week's supply of ova. Kept," he explained, "at blood heat; whereas the male gametes," and here he opened another door, "they have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes." Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs.

Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilizing process; spoke first, of course, of its surgical introduction–"the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months' salary"; continued with some account of the technique for preserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to the liquor in which the detached and ripened eggs were kept; and, leading his charges to the work tables, actually showed them how this liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out drop by drop onto the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggs which it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porous receptacle; how (and he now took them to watch the operation) this receptacle was immersed in a warm bouillon containing free-swimming spermatozoa–at a minimum concentration of one hundred thousand per cubic centimetre, he insisted; and how, after ten minutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor and its contents re-examined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, it was again immersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilized ova went back to the incubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until definitely bottled; while the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons were brought out again, after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokanovsky's Process.

"Bokanovsky's Process," repeated the Director, and the students underlined the words in their little notebooks.

One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.

"Essentially," the D.H.C. concluded, "bokanovskification consists of a series of arrests of development. We check the normal growth and, paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding."

Responds by budding. The pencils were busy.

He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of test-tubes was entering a large metal box, another, rack-full was emerging. Machinery faintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go through, he told them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an egg can stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided into two; most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned to the incubators, where the buds began to develop; then, after two days, were suddenly chilled, chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the buds in their turn budded; and having budded were dosed almost to death with alcohol; consequently burgeoned again and having budded–bud out of bud out of bud–were thereafter–further arrest being generally fatal–left to develop in peace. By which time the original egg was in a fair way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos– a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins–but not in piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a time.

"Scores," the Director repeated and flung out his arms, as though he were distributing largesse. "Scores."

But one of the students was fool enough to ask where the advantage lay.

"My good boy!" The Director wheeled sharply round on him. "Can't you see? Can't you see?" He raised a hand; his expression was solemn. "Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!"

Major instruments of social stability.

Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.

"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!" The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. "You really know where you are. For the first time in history." He quoted the planetary motto. "Community, Identity, Stability." Grand words. "If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved."

Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.

"But, alas," the Director shook his head, "we can't bokanovskify indefinitely."

Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average. From the same ovary and with gametes of the same male to manufacture as many batches of identical twins as possible–that was the best (sadly a second best) that they could do. And even that was difficult.

"For in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs to reach maturity. But our business is to stabilize the population at this moment, here and now. Dribbling out twins over a quarter of a century–what would be the use of that?"

Obviously, no use at all. But Podsnap's Technique had immensely accelerated the process of ripening. They could make sure of at least a hundred and fifty mature eggs within two years. Fertilize and bokanovskify–in other words, multiply by seventy-two–and you get an average of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and fifty batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age.

"And in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield us over fifteen thousand adult individuals."

Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened to be passing at the moment. "Mr. Foster," he called. The ruddy young man approached. "Can you tell us the record for a single ovary, Mr. Foster?"

"Sixteen thousand and twelve in this Centre," Mr. Foster replied without hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had a vivacious blue eye, and took an evident pleasure in quoting figures. "Sixteen thousand and twelve; in one hundred and eighty-nine batches of identicals. But of course they've done much better," he rattled on, "in some of the tropical Centres. Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousand five hundred; and Mombasa has actually touched the seventeen thousand mark. But then they have unfair advantages. You should see the way a negro ovary responds to pituitary! It's quite astonishing, when you're used to working with European material. Still," he added, with a laugh (but the light of combat was in his eyes and the lift of his chin was challenging), "still, we mean to beat them if we can. I'm working on a wonderful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only just eighteen months old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred children already, either decanted or in embryo. And still going strong. We'll beat them yet."

"That's the spirit I like!" cried the Director, and clapped Mr. Foster on the shoulder. "Come along with us, and give these boys the benefit of your expert knowledge."

Mr. Foster smiled modestly. "With pleasure." They went.

In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity. Flaps of fresh sow's peritoneum ready cut to the proper size came shooting up in little lifts from the Organ Store in the sub-basement. Whizz and then, click! the lift-hatches hew open; the bottle-liner had only to reach out a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth-down, and before the lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach along the endless band, whizz, click! another flap of peritoneum had shot up from the depths, ready to be slipped into yet another bottle, the next of that slow interminable procession on the band. [...]

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) is the author of Brave New World (1932) typical anti-utopian novel as Orwell's 1984.

Set in the London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sllep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurism.

The book starts off with the director of hatcheries describing a hatchery to a bunch of Alpha students. He explains the fertilizing, decanting, and conditioning process of people which is, when you come down to it, pure brainwashing.
The book then introduces a man named Bernard. Bernard is an alpha, but he’s queer. He’s shorter and less handsome than the other alphas. Bernard likes a girls named Lenina. Lenina, however, is having a guy named Henry, and has been having him for several months. Fanny one of Lenina’s friends tries to encourage Lenina to move on and to try other men. Lenina goes out with Bernard and that date ends with soma and sex even though Bernard said that they shouldn’t have sex on the first night.
This society is organized for the pleasure of the people. Their God is Ford. They have sex often with different people, and their taught in infancy certain prejudices. For example, the babies are taught to be satisfied with their own caste of which there are five: alphas at the top, then betas, gammas, deltas, and epsilons at the bottom. They’re taught to hate the country but like country sports. Every teaching has a specific purpose.
Bernard gets together with eleven other people and they worship Ford. They sing hymns (for example “Orgy Porgy”) to Ford and they experience Ford. They howl and shout to his name. Bernard, however, feels nothing. He shouts because the others are shouting and he leaves with an emptiness deeper than the one he came with.
Bernard suggests to Lenina that they go for a vacation to the savage reservation. Lenina agrees to go. Before they go, Bernard needs to get permission from the Director of Hatcheries named Thomas. Thomas tells him that he once went to the savage reservation and lost a girl he liked named Linda. Then he tells Bernard that if he continues with his behavior, Thomas will send him to Iceland.
Bernard and Lenina go to the savage reservation and they witness and “human sacrifice” where one Indian is whipped in reminder of Christ. Then they meet a woman that is fat and ugly but used to belong to the civilized world. Bernard figures out that she was the Linda that Thomas lost long ago. Linda had a son named John on the reservation of whom Thomas was the father. Having a child in this society was about as much a sin as being an adulteress in the Puritan society of The Scarlet Letter. John fell in love with Lenina.
Bernard had an idea. He decided that it would be good to have an experiment to see what would happen if a savage came to the civilized world. He wanted to bring John and Linda back into civilization. He pulled a few strings and was allowed to go on with his experiment. Linda was immediately rejected by society and by Thomas for being fat, and for being a mother. Thomas, quit his job as the director of hatcheries because he was humiliated at being a father. John, on the other hand, was an instant hit. The people loved him and brought Bernard instant fame. Bernard was able to get any girl he wanted, something he was not able to before. Bernard would host parties where John would be the guest of honor. One night, though, John didn’t want to show up. He rejected society and society rejected Bernard. Society went back to its old thoughts about Bernard. They thought he was a queer again. Bernard and John had a friend named Helmholtz who taught emotional engineering by the use of rhymes. John happened to have a copy of Shakespeare which he found at the reservation which he read to Helmholtz. Helmholtz was amazed at how well Shakespeare was at emotional engineering.
Lenina fell in love with John and John loved Lenina, but he was afraid of his feeling and felt unworthy for Lenina. One night, Lenina tried to seduce him but John ran from her, then attacked her calling her a whore.
All this while, Linda had taking one long soma holiday, and it was killing her. John got a call that Linda was at the hospital and dying so he rushed there to see her. Linda didn’t recognize him. She was having a soma induced dream about Pope, a guy she had at the reservation. Linda died and John wept for her while a bunch of little kids was led to the death hospital for their death conditioning. John was devastated. After leaving the hospital he saw soma being handed out to a group of workers. John runs there and throws the soma out the windows with the help of Helmholtz. This caused a riot among the workers and Bernard went to get help from the police. The police stopped the riot and supplied the workers with their share of soma. Bernard, Helmholtz and John are taken to Mustapha Mond, the ruler of this section of the world. He explains to them the necessity of stability and the reason he keeps them from Shakespeare, the Bible, and other old works of art. Bernard and Helmholtz are sent to separate island but John is allowed to continue living as he did to continue with Bernard’s experiment. John doesn’t want to stay so he seeks out a place where he can cleanse himself and live in solitude and finds a lighthouse. As part of his cleansing, he makes a whip and whips himself repeatedly with it. A few workers happened to see him doing so and the next day, John is swarmed with reporters. The next day more reporters come but this time Lenina is among them. She tried to seduce him but John whips her. That night, John commits suicide by hanging himself in the lighthouse and is discovered by a reporter the next morning.

Virginia's death

video: Virginia at the train station

The Hours by Cunnungham

M. Cunningham, THE HOURS, 1999

Prologue

She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather. It is 1941. Another war has begun. She has left a note for Leonard, and another for Vanessa. She walks purposefully toward the river, certain of what she'll do, but even now she is almost distracted by the sight of the downs, the church, and a scattering of sheep, incandescent, tinged with a faint hint of sulphur, grazing under a darkening sky. She pauses, watching the sheep and the sky, then walks on. The voices murmur behind her; bombers drone in the sky, though she looks for the planes and can't see them. She walks past one of the farm workers (is his name John?), a robust, small-headed man wearing a potato-coloured vest, cleaning the ditch that runs through the osier bed. He looks up at her, nods, looks down again into the brown water. As she passes him on her way to the river she thinks of how successful he is, how fortunate, to be cleaning a ditch in an osier bed. She herself has failed. She is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a gifted eccentric. Patches of sky shine in puddles left over from last night's rain. Her shoes sink slightly into the soft earth. She has failed, and now the voices are back, muttering indistinctly just beyond the range of her vision, behind her, here, no, turn and they've gone somewhere else. The voices are back and the headache is approaching as surely as rain, the headache that will crush whatever is she and replace her with itself. The headache is approaching and it seems (is she or is she not conjuring them herself?) that the bombers have appeared again in the sky. She reaches the embankment, climbs over and down again to the river. There's a fisherman upriver, far away, he won't notice her, will he? She begins searching for a stone. She works quickly but methodically, as if she were following a recipe that must be obeyed scrupulously if it's to succeed at all. She selects one roughly the size and shape of a pig's skull. Even as she lifts it and forces it into one of the pockets of her coat (the fur collar tickles her neck), she can't help noticing the stone's cold chalkiness and its colour, a milky brown with spots of green. She stands close to the edge of the river, which laps against the bank, filling the small irregularities in the mud with clear water that might be a different substance altogether from the yellow-brown, dappled stuff, solid-looking as a road, that extends so steadily from bank to bank. She steps forward. She does not remove her shoes. The water is cold, but not unbearably so. She pauses, standing in cold water up to her knees. She thinks of Leonard. She thinks of his hands and his beard, the deep lines around his mouth. She thinks of Vanessa, of the children, of Vita and Ethel: So many. They have all failed, haven't they? She is suddenly, immensely sorry for them. She imagines turning around, taking the stone out of her pocket, going back to the house. She could probably return in time to destroy the notes. She could live on; she could perform that final kindness. Standing knee-deep in the moving water, she decides against it. The voices are here, the headache is coming, and if she restores herself to the care of Leonard and Vanessa they won't let her go again, will they? She decides to insist that they let her go. She wades awkwardly (the bottom is mucky) out until she is up to her waist. She glances upriver at the fisherman, who is wearing a red jacket and who does not see her. The yellow surface of the river (more yellow than brown when seen this close) murkily reflects the sky. Here, then, is the last moment of true perception, a man fishing in a red jacket and a cloudy sky reflected on opaque water. Almost involuntarily (it feels involuntary, to her) she steps or stumbles forward, and the stone pulls her in. For a moment, still, it seems like nothing; it seems like another failure; just chill water she can easily swim back out of; but then the current wraps itself around her and takes her with such sudden, muscular force it feels as if a strong man has risen from the bottom, grabbed her legs and held them to his chest. It feels personal.

More than an hour later, her husband returns from the garden. "Madame went out," the maid says, plumping a shabby pillow that releases a miniature storm of down. "She said she'd be back soon."

Leonard goes upstairs to the sitting room to listen to the news. He finds a blue envelope, addressed to him, on the table. Inside is a letter.

Dearest,

I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times.
And I shant recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and can’t concentrate.
So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I cant fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know.
You see I cant even write this properly. I cant read. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you.
You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that-- everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the
certainty of your goodness. I cant go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.

V.

A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf's concern with feminist thematics are dominant in A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN (1929).
In it she made her famous statement: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

The book originated from two expanded and revised lectures the author presented at Cambridge University's Newnham and Girton Colleges in October 1928. Woolf examined the obstacles and prejudices that have hindered women writers. She separated women as objects of representation and women as authors of representation, and argued that a change in the forms of literature was necessary because most literature had been "made by men out of their own needs for their own uses."

Virginia Stephen Woolf

Virginia Woolf was born in London, as the daughter of Julia Jackson Duckworth, a member of the Duckworth publishing family, and Sir Leslie Stephen, a literary critic, a friend of Meredith, Henry James, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and George Eliot, and the founder of the Dictionary of National Biography. Leslie Stephen's first wife had been the daughter of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. His daughter Laura from the first marriage was institutionalized because of mental retardation.
Julia Jackson Duckworth died when Virginia was in her early teens. Stella Duckworth, her half sister, took her mother's place, but died a scant two years later. Leslie Stephen suffered a slow death from stomach cancer, he died in 1904. When Virginia's brother Thoby died in 1906, she had a prolonged mental breakdown.
Following the death of her father, Woolf moved with her sister and two brothers to the house in Bloomsbury. Vanessa, a painter, agreed to marry the critic of art and literature Clive Bell. He was the only person, whom she trusted sufficiently to show her unfinished work. Virginia's economic situation improved when she inherited £2,500 from an aunt. Their house became central to activities of the Bloomsbury group.
From 1905 Woolf began to write for the Times Literary Supplement. With Vanessa and Violet Dickinson she traveled in 1906 to Greece, where she carried Homer's Odyssey in her handbag. In 1912 she married the political theorist Leonard (Sidney) Woolf (1880-1969), who had returned from serving as an administrator in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Leonard Woolf was of Jewish descent, the son of a barrister. Woolf had anti-Jewish attitudes, but she loved her husband. Leonard Woolf had studied at Cambridge and from 1923 to 1930 he was a literary editor on the Nation. During WW I he was not called for military service, most likely due to his constantly trembling hands; and most of the Bloomsburies were conscientious objectors. In 1917 he set up a small hand press at Hogarth House, and worked as its director until his death. Leonard Woolf's works include novels, non-fiction, and his five volume memoirs Sowing (1960), Growing (1961), Beginning Again (1964), Downhill All the Way (1967), and The Journey Not the Arrival Matters (1969).

THE VOYAGE OUT (1915) was Virginia Woolf's first book. In 1919 appeared NIGHT AND DAY, a realistic novel about the lifes of two friends, Katherine and Mary. JACOB'S ROOM (1922) was based upon the life and death of her brother Thoby.

With TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (1927) and THE WAVES (1931)Woolf established herself as one of the leading writers of modernism.
MRS. DALLOWAY (1925) formed a web of thoughts of several groups of people during the course of a single day. There is little action, but much movement in time from present to past and back again. The central figure, Clarissa Dalloway, married to Richard Dalloway, is a wealthy London hostess. She spends her day in London preparing for her evening party. She recalls her life before World War I, her friendship with the unconventional Sally Seton, and her relationship with Peter Walsh. At her party she never meets the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Smith, one of the first Englishmen to enlist in the war.
During the inter-war period, Woolf was a central character of the literary scene both in London and at her home in Rodmell, near Lewes, Sussex. She lived in Richmond from 1915 to 1924, in Bloomsbury from 1924 to 1939, and maintained the house in Rodmell from 1919-41. Their Hogarth Press had operated from the basement room in Tavistock Square.
The Bloomsbury group was initially based at the Gordon Square residence of Virginia and her sister Vanessa (Bell). Its other members were E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, and Leonard Woolf. The consolidation of the group's beliefs in unifying aesthetic concerns occurred under the influence of the philosopher G.E. Moore (1873-1958). By the early 1930s, the group ceased to exist in its original form.
Since 1924, the Hogarth Press had published works by Sigmund Freud. Woolf met him in 1939.
In the event of a Nazi invastion, Woolf and Leonard had made provisions to kill themselves. After the final attack of mental illness, Woolf loaded her pockets full of stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse near her Sussex home on March 28, 1941.