Monday, April 13, 2015

In 1984 are there any relationships between the prostitute, Julia, and Winston's dream about his mother and sister?

To start off, they are all women, and women, for the first
part of the novel are only a source of guilt, angst, frustration and unhappiness for
Winston.  His memories of his mother and sister are tinged with extreme guilt, because
he feels like he treated his mother horribly, at the cost of his sister's welfare, and
in the end, almost feels like he abandoned them and led them to their disappearance and
possibly death.  This lay the foundation of his feelings about women for the rest of his
life; he finds them an enigma, yet still desires their love and forgiveness.  His
experience with the prostitute is much the same--he seeks her out because he is lonely
and frustrated, and wants to find answers and comfort in a woman.  However, the
experience is a let-down, and totally humiliating for him, just like his feelings for
his mother are tinged with humiliation.


Winston's feelings
for Julia are similar--at first.  Once they are involved and have a real relationship,
however, they change drastically.  In fact, once they are involved, his feelings about
women are totally changed, and he finds in Julia everything that he had been seeking for
in women, and not finding, his entire life.  But at the beginning, Winston channeled all
of the frustration, angst, humilation and hatred from his past experiences with women
(his wife included---it's important to include her in his list of women) and focused
them on Julia.  To him, she represented everything that he hated about women, that they
were uptight, cold and cruel, unloving, and guilt-inducing creatures whose only warmth
and care was for the Party and no one else.  He assumed Julia was that way, because she
played the part so well.  He refocused all of his negativity from his experiences with
women on her.


So, the connection between his mother,
sister, the prostitute and his wife is that they all made Winston miserable, feel
guilty, and yet he still craved their love and attention; Julia is the outlet for those
feelings of frustration.  It isn't until he knows Julia for real that he is able to find
that love.  I hope that helped; good luck!

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