Fiction's Invisible Women

I have two books for you this issue, both of which you've probably already read but maybe not for a long time.

George Orwell's 1984 and Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange.

You already know how you feel about these books, regardless of when you last read them, but I don't want this discussion to focus on the usual, tired, old claims.

Instead, ask yourself this: what happened to the women?

The recaps

1984 is largely considered one of the greatest polemics of all time, perhaps even one of the greatest novels. People love to drag it out at protests and make vague but dangerous sounding claims like 'this is all awfully Orwellian!' or say that we're living in the world of 1984 (we're not - but I'll get to that).

Cultural conversation says this book is a warning about governmental overreach. You've heard it all before so I won't bore with you a rehash because we can all agree: Big Brother is bad. The Party is bad. Freedoms are being quashed.

A Clockwork Orange fits roughly in the same vein as 1984: Another warning novel about the over reach of the state and the prison system. Our protagonist, wee Alex, is sent to the clink and brainwashed. He comes out of it more willing debase himself than stand up for himself. The model citizen, it suggests, is submissive and conflict avoidant.

The Invisible Women

The manosphere is going to cancel the shit out of me for this one, but these novels would be nothing (nothing!) without the influence of women, who Burgess and Orwell reduce to props and fleshy plot points when they're not otherwise entirely absent.

You can whinge at me all you want about how these are simply a product of their time, but other than having no sympathy for 1984's Winston (the Melt) and A Clockwork Orange's Alex (the Serial Rapist), if these were simply 'products of their time' we wouldn't be so quick to drag poor George's rotten corpse out at any cry of a 'Nanny State'.

Let's break it down.

Our man Winston has got to be one of literature's biggest whingers and even bigger creeps. He's encroaching (if not surpassing) his middle 40s and Julia is barely 20 herself. He's old enough to be her Da and he absolutely covets her. Orwell sets her up as the temptress, leading poor innocent Winston astray (they were only ideas until Julia made him do it!).

Yes, it's true that he sits with his little notebook and writes mean little things about Big Brother in a corner of his flat, but it's also true that he wouldn't do any of what he does without Julia's feminine wiles.

What Winston, and everyone who sees him as a victim, fails to see is that he has a good life. Orwell's personal crusade against socialism doesn't detract from the fact that, the world of 1984, Winston has got it good.

He has a job that would make Alasdair Campbell ejaculate with excitement, he has free housing, he lives in an area that isn't being bombed (which can't be side for most of the population), all of his food is provided, and sure he's a bit sad because no one will shag him, but the state takes care of his needs and in return he lives comfortably enough.

Winston is supposed to be this dystopia's every man, but even by today's standards, he's doing better than most - and he's certainly doing better than the women of the world - and takes walks through bombed out neighbourhoods to remind himself of that.

So, other than being a temptress or a receptacle for Winston's loneliness juice, what happens to Julia?

What. Happens. To. Julia.

You don't know, because we don't know.

In all versions of dystopia when men have it bad, women have it much, much worse.

For some reason, socially, we are unable to imagine a world where, when men are suffering, women suffer just as badly - if not worse.

1984 and A Clockwork Orange both show us that men always have to be above something, or someone, else so they don't lose their sense of identity or place in the world.

The women, when not used as props and plot devices, are invisible. And so is their suffering.

Julia, by Sandra Newman, is an excellent look at what the world of 1984 is like for women. Men who are suffering are not soft or nice to the women around them. They have anger and sadness that needs to be released and in Julia we see exactly where and how that anger and sadness gets released.

While Winston's life is not perfect but his needs are met, his job is secure, he is secure, and he has a flat of his very own. Julia, by comparison, lives in a hostel (which is where unmarried women are forced to live) with a receptionist who tracks everyone's comings and goings, and like all women is told the best she can hope for is to be married to a man in the inner party and spend her days giving birth and cleaning the house.

Which percentage of women do you think that 'dream' comes true for?

Enter Alex and A Clockwork Orange.

Alex and Winston are good, coincidental, counterparts. Alex is barely 15 and already entirely irredeemable, but he has the same stable background that Winston has (perhaps its deliberate (though I suspect not) but there's something in here about the perceived oppression of men and about how if they see themselves to be oppressed, regardless of the advantages they have, they will take that out on the women in their lives).

A Clockwork Orange is full of invisible women who exist only in the story as props for Alex and his gang. The murder of one woman moves the plot a long - from free range psychopath to incarcerated psychopath - but other than that, they're barely given a look in. They certainly aren't given any character and when they are allowed to speak, it's only a few lines and they're almost always begging, upset, or heaping praise on men.

If we're led to believe that Alex lives in a sort dystopia of drugs and no opportunities, we're not asked at all to consider what this world would be like for women. It's odd, because I remember this novel being a warning about state overreach, but reading it again now in my 30s, with different cultural and social context, I can't help but feel that, if anything, Alex gets off incredibly easy.

The book is packed with rape, euphemistically called 'the old in and out', including that of two 10 year olds that Alex plies with alcohol, but while we're not at all challenged to think about the impact this has on the survivors, we are challenged to think about how Alex (who ends up being redeemed) has his life made worse by his incarceration and brainwashing.

To prove that being reformed through brainwashing works, Alex is forced to a lick a boot and be beaten up (showing that he has lost his lust for violence and therefore self defence), he's then used as the poster boy by some political extremists who want to overthrow the government, and when Alex finally reaches breaking point he...jumps out of a secondary story window and breaks some bones.

His bones heal and (magically) he's cured of the brainwashing. He turns 18. He doesn't want to commit violence any more, but instead he wants to find a girl to settle down with, to have a baby. He acknowledges himself that he won't be able to stop his son from committing the violence and crime that he commits, but that just seems to be the way of things.

For his transgressions against The Party, Winston ends up broken, but well paid, and left to die in peace and obscurity. We don't know what happens to Julia after she walks away from that bench, like many of literature's women she's left to slip back into the fabric of society. Her station unchanged and her usefulness as a plot device having run its course.

But Alex? Alex knows that his own child could, and will, follow in his father's footsteps and he accepts that as part of life. We're never told what it's like to be Alex's wife or the untold terror that his child will inflict, but Burgess implies that Alex goes on to live a good life - regardless of the terror he left in his wake.

It's the most 'boys will be boys' apologist boot licking I've seen in a long time.

Culturally and socially, we accept that these novels are warnings against the erosion of freedoms, but maybe they're warnings to all the women and trans people.

Warnings that say: if things are bad for men, they will be unimaginably worse for you.