The body/subjugation/sex and desire quotes

Question 1

Exploitation/subjugation of female body

Answer 1

• powerlessness of individual
• ‘Kissing is forbidden… One detaches oneself. One describes.’
• ‘Which one is it worse for, her or me?’
• ‘Fake it, I scream at myself… Move your flesh around, breathe audibly.’
• Aunts
• rituals e.g. ceremony
• ‘Close your eyes and think of England. But this is not England. I wish he would hurry up.’
• ‘Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for’
• ‘It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act’
• ‘Junior Anti-Sex league’
• ‘revolutionary from the waist down’

Question 2

Violent rituals and enforced participation

Answer 2

• Testifying
• Partesicution
• 2 Minutes Hate
• ‘He would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax’ (hated her bc of beauty/ check book)

Question 3

Physical violence as means of control

Answer 3

• threat of violence/fear to maintain control
• ‘Moira lay on her bed, an example’ ‘Her feet did not look like feet at all’
• bodies on the wall
• ‘like birds with their wings clipped, like flightless birds, wrecked angels’
• ‘I want to tear, gouge, rend’
• ‘clump of blond hair’ ‘giggled’
• ‘The Party is not interested in the overt act, the thought is all we care about’

Question 4

Erasure of individuality via the state

Answer 4

• ‘doubled’ ‘flannelette sheets, like children’s’
• attempts to retain (r/ships), sex/love as a means of retaining identity/rebellion
• ‘To him I’m no longer a useable body. To him I’m not just a boat with no cargo, a chalice with no wine in it, an oven - to be crude - minus the bun. To him I’m not merely empty’
• ‘I love you’ ‘I betrayed you’ ‘you don’t feel the same towards the other person any longer’
• ‘It could be Nick. I know whatever he’s done I can’t touch him’
• bodies as a source of power however limited
• ‘I enjoy the power: the power of a dog bone passive but there’
• ‘We still had our bodies. That was our fantasy’
• Julia’s seductions
• ‘a blow struck against the Party’
• slept with ‘hundreds’ of Inner Party members
• ‘our duty to the Party’

Question 5

Value/commodification of body

Answer 5

• ‘Each month I watch for blood fearfully, for when it comes it means failure’

Question 6

Women with roles in regime

Answer 6

• Serena Joy
• Aunts