Woman’s Subjectivity
to Man’s Existence in George Orwell’s 1984
(Nineteen Eighty-Four)
Abstract
This essay will examine
a novel, a fiction novel about politics life’s future from the writer George
Orwell. The novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four,
obviously tells us about politics feature in Orwell’s mind by creating the
fiction of it. However, in this essay, subjectivity and existence criticism
theory will be used to analyze and examine the work which, I believe, has
subjectivity issues especially related to the existentialism. In the novel the
readers, whether conscious or not, have been forced to agree that men will
always need women in their lives. This novel also shows that woman can change
the man’s thought with her faith or with her power. The power that I mean is
subjectivity. Subjectivity obviously influences people’s existences. For some
people, subjectivity is easy to get and always inside them. However, for other
people this subjectivity is difficult to get and even lost from their thought.
Therefore, some people need other’s help to get their existences.
Key words:
subjectivity, existence, existentialism
Introduction and
Analysis
This novel tells that
1984 (setting of the story) was a terrible year for the residents of one city
in the UK. This happened because of the unusual system of government that
controlled on every citizen very strictly. On the other hand, the government
seemed to limit the power of thought of all citizens by controlling them
strictly and giving very hard punishment on anyone who rebelled. The main
character in this novel is Winston. Winston is a thirty-six-year old man which
was working for the government. At the beginning of the story, it was told that
Winston was an ordinary man who could not rebel in the system administration.
However, he was not known as a person who loved the government. He always
looked moody and always thought about what was happening in his life and his
country. This could be seen when Winston told about what he experienced that if
he had written a true diary, it would have harmed him. In other words, Winston
had no existence. In the middle of the story, the character of Winston turned
into a bold man and began to change his life. I assume that Winston started to
feel his existence that he was born and grown up. In addition, in the end of
the story the character of Winston greatly changed because he did not feel his
existence anymore. He could no longer think what he always thought about in the
beginning of the story. In my opinion, the change of Winston’s character was
connected to the role of female characters in the novel. One of the female
characters in this novel is Julia. Julia is very influential figure in the
birth of existence of Winston’s character. Therefore, I wrote this essay to
examine how the existence of a person, especially a man can be constructed by a
female subjectivity.
1984 (Nineteen
Eighty-Four) is not only the work of novel
genre made by George Orwell in his life. He wrote the novel in 1947-1948 and
the novel was published in 1949. According to the data gathered by the free
encyclopedia site:
As literary political fiction and dystopian
science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content,
plot, and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, Telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5,
and memory hole,
have entered everyday use since its publication in 1949. (Wikipedia)
As the site mentioned above, 1984
(Nineteen Eighty-Four) is a dystopian science-fiction work which has the
real fiction, doesn’t occur in the real life, and only happens in the writer’s
mind or thought. Therefore many uncommon words are found in this novel. It can
be said that it’s only the writer’s imagination and dream about damage future
related to his real life in his era.
1984 (Nineteen
Eighty-Four) is called as a dystopian work
because it describes the undesirable future. However if that is true, regarding
to my research it will much help me because: I can analyze whether subjectivity
can still exist or not in the frightening imagined life and how the people in
undesirable life can keep their subjectivity which is usually taken by their arbiter.
In addition I can examine how other subjectivity can influence other existence
based on this novel.
Knowing that the novel is a pure-fiction novel, I realize that the
writer wanted to explore what would happen next if his thought were true.
Furthermore, I realize that the characters in the novel are only fake
characters and absolutely it did not happen. However what Orwell wrote in this
novel shows us his high imagination. I do believe that what he wrote also is at
least one of his experiences. Therefore, the issue of existentialism within subjectivity
occurred in that time.
To discuss what I mentioned above, I have to look for the theory
regarding my statement and I focus on existentialism, subjectivity, and power.
The first thing I would like to introduce is existentialism theory especially
from Jean Sartre in Philosophical
Library. 444-451.
What
they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that
subjectivity must be the starting point.
From
that sentence I think that the author wants to say that existence in human life
is more than everything. Therefore, the theory says that existence goes before
essense or the essense can not stand without existence. In addition, the the existence or the real existence can be
created by subjectivity. Subjectivity is the most important thing in the
human’s life because without subjectivity, human does not have power to do. Thus
happens because when someone has a power to do something (subjectivity) in
his/her life, she/ he also can be recognized as the subject that many people
know. However, many people do not realize that they have power. Therefore,
their bodies are exists but they are actually not exist. This happens to the
main character in the novel, Winston, who does not have existence in the
beginning of the novel. Although he exists, he does not know what to do because
he only lives following government’s command. This appears from the text:
He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had
descended upon him. To begin with he did not know with any certainty that this
was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his
age was thirty nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but
it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two.
For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this
diary? For the future, for the unborn. (Goerge Orwell1984 : 1949)
Those sentences describe us about Winston. Winston seems desperate and
lost his existence. Although he has body, he does not have any sense to show
that he is alive. Moving to next theory, I would like to introduce subjectivity
theory especially from Donald E. Hall. This theory will make us understand what
subjectivity is and also make clear what I will write in this paper.
Donald E. Hall described what subjectivity is by citing a work from
Regenia Gagnier:
The term “subjectivity,” as Regenia Gagnier has argued in her incisive
investigation of Victorian self-representation, can mean in critical parlance
today many things simultaneously:
First, the subject is a subject to itself, an “I,” however difficult or
even impossible it may be for others to understand this “I” from its own
viewpoint, within its own experience. Simultaneously, the subject is a subject
to, and of, others; in fact, it is often an “Other” to others, which also
affects its sense of its own subjectivity. . . . Third, the subject is also a
subject of knowledge, most familiarly perhaps of the discourse of social
institutions that circumscribe its terms of being. Fourth, the subject is a
body that is separate (except in the case of pregnant women) from other human
bodies; and the body, and therefore the subject, is closely dependent upon its
physical environment. (Gagnier 1991: 8)
(Hall, 2004)
The understanding that I can take from Gagnier’s explanation about
subjectivity above is that: the first, a subject is not only for the subject
him/herself but also for others and it means that when a person has a subjectivity,
the subjectivity can be for other selves; the second, the subject can be an
“Other”, I interpret this as a person who becomes strange, unknown, something
that is other and this subject is also something which others can learn from,
perhaps by analyzing or studying it; and the last, a subject is a body who has
its own mind and a subject does not need any mediator to the body if it wants
to be complete.
However, from this understanding, what becomes my concern from the
previous theory is that a person subjectivity can be subjectivity others or one
subjectivity can be a two-existence. That statement increasingly convinces me
that someone can influence the existence of others or one's belief in him/her
self can influence the belief other people against themselves. If I noticed the
daily life, most people will argue that a person who can influence the lives is
male. This occurs because of the assumption or understanding which believe that
men are stronger and smarter than women. However, in this novel, that is not
very visible nor even reversed it. The belief or understanding of female
characters (subjectivity) in her self will affect the existence of male figure.
This thought is proved by the text:
‘You’re
hurt?’ he said.
‘It’s
nothing. My arm. It’ll be alright in a second.’
She
spoke as though her heart were fluttering. She had certainly turned very pale.
‘You
haven’t broken anything.’
‘No,
I’m alright. It hurt for a moment, that’s all.’
She held out her free
hand to him, and he helped her up. She had regained some of her colour and
appeared very much better. (Goerge Orwell1984 : 1949)
This conversation happens when Julia pretends crashing Winston because
she only wants to give letter to Winston. This situation shows us how woman can
be brave and have subjectivity. The subjectivity that I mean is the faith of
her/his owns condition or the awareness of what going to do next in her/his
life. In this novel, Julia believes in her thought and it is what I mean by
subjectivity.
The influence from Julia is Winston’s change, which appears in the text:
Finally he decided
that the safest place was the canteen. If he could get her at a table by her
self, somewhere in the middle of the room, not too near the telescreens, and
with a sufficient buzz of conversation all round – if these condition endured
for, say, thirty seconds, it might be possible to exchange a few words. (Goerge
Orwell1984 : 1949)
After receiveng
Julia’s letter, writen ‘I Love You’, Winston starts to wake up. He even thinks
about what he has to do next. In addition, he always makes a plan to get a way
to meet Julia. He finally knows the certainty which has never comes into him.
In addition, Julia faith runs to change Winston thought. This is the text
related to it:
‘It’s this bloody
thing that does it,’ she said, ripping off the scarlet sash of the Junior
Anti-Sex League and flinging it onto a bough. Then, as though touching her
waist had reminded her of something, she felt in the pocket of her overalls and
produced a small slab of chocolate. She broke it in half and gave one of the
pieces to Winston. Even before he had taken it he knew by the smell that it was
very unusual chocolate. It was dark and shiny, and was wrapped in silver paper.
Chocolate normally was dull-brown crumbly stuff that tasted, as nearly as one
could describe it, like the smoke of a rubbish fire. But at some time or
another he had tasted chocolate like the piece she had given him. The first
whiff of its scent had stirred up some memory which he could not pin down, but
which was powerful and troubling. (Goerge Orwell1984 : 1949)
Those
sentences describe Julia’s habbitual action. On the other page of the novel, I
also found:
Julia, in any case,
seldom had an evening completely free. She spent an astonishing amount of time
in attending lectures and demonstrations distributing literature for the Junior
Anti-Sex League, preparing banners for Hate Week, making collections for the
savings campaign, and such-like activities. It paid, she said; it was
camouflage. If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones. (Goerge Orwell1984 : 1949)
This faith and
certainty make Winston believes in his own thought and return or maybe bear the
existence in his life. Therefore, Winston was sure to marry Julia. Whereas, at
that moment, no one can choose what they want and what they believe. However,
Winston is not afraid to rebel the government’s police. This occurs in the
text:
He wished that he
were a married walking through the streets with her just as they were doing
now, but openly and without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and
ends for the household. (Goerge Orwell1984 : 1949)
The text in the novel above shows us how Winston acts differently from
the first page because Winston can be a dreamer and free. He absolutely gets his
existence without using his subjectivity but with using woman’s subjectivity.
However, in the end of the novel, Winston loses his existence because his
existence and Julia’s existence. Although Winston loses his existence, he at
least has ever felt his once.
After analyzing the novel and the theory above, I finally agree with
Toril Moi, who stands for the idea or theory about that. Therefore, the next
theory is only about the dominance and power of woman and man.
For Millet, the
essence of politics is power, and the task of feminist crtitics and theorists
is to expose the way in which male dominance over females (which constitutes
her simple and versatile definition of ‘patriarchy’) (Toril Moi: 1989)
When I read that
sentence, I think many concepts that relate to our life because our life can be
separated from the dominance and the person having power. In my opinion, the
dominance happens because of the silence, which happens to Winston. In
addition, the power comes to Julia, who is powerfull enough because he gets
subjectivity in her heart and mind. Sometimes, we think that men always
dominate women without thinking that women usually keep silent and let men do
whatever they want. However women absolutely can dominate the men with their
actions.
Conclusion
Upon finishing and
examining this essay, I have proved myself that woman’s subjectivity can influence
man’s existence by acting and throwing the silence. In addition, woman can
change man’s life with her faith and certainty.
References
Hall, D. E.
(2004). Subjectivity. New York: Routledge.
Moi,
Toril. Feminist, Female, Feminine. Essays
in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism (1989): 117-132.
Blackerell.
Orwell,
George. (1990). 1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four).
England: Penguin Books.
Sartre, Jean P. Existentialism. Philosophical Library. 444-451
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