A2   Fashion & leisure (including soma and sex life)

by Lisa & Sylvia

Soma

Soma is a sedative and euphoric drug which controls the masses in the Brave New World. It creates an artificial feeling of happiness. In the Brave New World doubts, fears, sorrows, mourning and every other unpleasant feeling is “solved” with soma. Slogans which are used very often, are: “One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments” and “A gramme is better than a damn”.

People make a “soma holiday”, when they feel glum. They take soma, fall asleep and dive into another world, where everything is perfect. Afterwards they come back very rested and have forgotten all their problems. “Pain is a delusion and evil is unreality when you take a couple of soma. If you need protection ,“there is always soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end , two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon…”. If there weren’t any soma, the people in the Brave New World would suffer. Everybody is absolutely dependent on it and nobody in the Brave New World is able to solve problems, difficult situations, conflicts or unpleasant feelings on his/her own.

Soma is probably the perfect pleasure drug. It has no bad side – effects like headache or nausea and doesn’t cause a feeling of shame or of being ant-social. The only disadvantage is, that soma makes you lose some years of your lifetime. In the Brave New World soma belongs to the ordinary life and is available everywhere. For example, there are “ice cream soma bars” where you can buy a “ half-gramme raspberry sundae” and other sorts which contain soma and in addition to that, soma is served with coffee. Everybody in the Brave New World always takes  a bottle of  soma with himself and swallows it whenever it is necessary. But soma is not accessible for everyone. Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons for example, get a soma ration. They get four half-gramme tablets after their work. On Saturday they get six.

Sex life

The people in the Brave New World only know rapid sexual contacts, which only serve for the satisfaction of the sexual drive; strong emotions are taboo. “…when the individual feels the community reels…”.

A non-emotional and a short-drawn relationship is healthy and normal. People in the Brave New World are conditioned to practice promiscuity. They can’t imagine to spend their whole life with just one person. For them, the promise to live together forever is a horrible idea.

Lenina for example has spent a night with almost every of her mail workmates, “I am surprised you haven’t had her…I certainly will… At the first opportunity…” and is very surprised and irritated when Bernhard Marx spends time with her without wanting sex with her. “Walking and talking – that seemed a very odd way of spending an afternoon…”

Every woman in the Brave New World is conditioned after the “Malthusian drill”.

From the age of twelve to the age of seventeen they get an intensive hypnopedia three times a week  to learn how to practise contraceptive precautions. To prevent a pregnancy they wear the “Malthusian belt”. This refers to Thomas Robert Malthus (1766 –1834), who recommended to restrict the growth of population

Comparing the clothes of Brave New World with clothing in the late 20´s and early 30´s

This is one of Lenina’s outfits (p.44/45) which is a really good example of the style of clothes in Brave New World.  

“Her jacket was made of bottle-green acetate cloth with green viscose fur at the cuffs and collar.“ 

“Green corduroy shorts and white viscose-woollen stockings turned down below the knee.“

“A green-and-white jockey cap shaded Lenina’s eyes; her shoes were bright green and highly polished.“

“And round her waist she wore a silver-mounted green morocco-surrogate cartridge belt, bulging (for Lenina was not a freemartin) with the regulation supply of contraceptives.“

I guess it's interesting that this outfit has some elements of boys´ clothing of the 20´s and 30´s. In a text from the internet, there’s said that short pants were a typical kind of clothing for young boys, worn with knee length socks. Lenina wears corduroy shorts and stockings with knee length, too. But there are also elements taken from girls´ clothing: in the late 20´s, girls often wore soft tams on their head, so the jockey cap seems to replace it. The colours of Lenina’s clothes are unusual for the time Huxley lived in, because usually “girls’ dresses were of gay fabrics with flowered, striped and spotted motif“, Lenina’s clothes are just coloured in different shades of green. Furthermore, Lenina wears corduroy, which wasn’t normally worn by women or girls.

Another outfit is described on page 130: It’s said that Lenina is “... dressed in a pair of pink one-piece zippyjamas...“. I can’t imagine that women in the 20´s and 30´s would have worn pyjamas like this one.