О дивный новый мир / Brave New World

“Though you probably don’t know what those are,” said Mustapha Mond.

They shook their heads.

Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness.

“But everyone belongs to everyone else,” he concluded, citing the hypnopaedic proverb.

The students nodded, agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept as self-evident and utterly indisputable.

“But after all,” Lenina was protesting, “it’s only about four months now since I’ve been having Henry.

”

“Only four months! And there’s been nobody else except Henry all that time. Has there?”

Lenina blushed scarlet. “No, there hasn’t been anyone else,” she answered. “And I jolly well don’t see why there should have been.”

“Oh, she jolly well doesn’t see why there should have been,” Fanny repeated. Then, with a sudden change of tone, “But seriously,” she said, “I really do think you ought to be careful. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn’t be so bad.

But at your age, Lenina! And you know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn. Four months of Henry Foster, without having another man—why, he’d be furious if he knew…”

Mother, monogamy, romance. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly.

And feeling strongly, how could they be stable?

“Of course there’s no need to give him up. Have somebody else from time to time, that’s all. He has other girls, doesn’t he?”

Lenina admitted it.

“Of course he does.

Trust Henry Foster to be the perfect gentleman. And then there’s the Director to think of. You know what a stickler…”

Nodding, “He patted me on the behind this afternoon,” said Lenina.

“There, you see!” Fanny was triumphant. “That shows what he stands for. The strictest conventionality.”

“Stability,” said the Controller. “No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability.