Evaluate Huxley’s attitude to the English Women
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Answer:
The Women of Brave New World: Aldous Huxley and the Gendered Agenda of Eugenics
Between the World Wars, the concept of eugenics was continuously debated. It started
with the ideas surrounding Social Darwinism. Eugenics followers used Social Darwinism along
with their own beliefs to create different definitions for those they deemed “unfit” for society.
Joanne Woiak states that, “as recent international comparative scholarship has illustrated, eugenics
took on many different forms depending on what theories of heredity, “unfit” groups, and social
reforms were emphasized in specific contexts. Even within any one country, several variants of
eugenics usually co-existed or even competed” (Woiak 110). This has created a long history
surrounding the eugenics movement, with it becoming increasing discussed around the second
world war as Hitler released Mein Kampf in 1924. The discussion of eugenics thus became
popular, as it began to become associated with fear. The ideas began circulating into novels with
the world’s fate increasingly unknown with a second world war brewing. One of these such novels
was Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley. Huxley grew up with his father firmly believing
in the ideology of Social Darwinism and his brother leading one of the pro-eugenics movements
in his home country of Britain. These ideas were then established into his novel, as the circle he
was a part of was “drawn to eugenics” and believed in its ability to improve the human race (Woiak
110). Through his novel, we can see how eugenics can be discussed within a dystopian novel and
a new form of the concept that began to look at gender and how it could be improved.
Brave New World, written by Huxley in 1931, is a futuristic dystopian novel where
humans are bred through test tubes. Humans are genetically modified to keep those with valued
characteristics at the top of society, while those below are manipulated into thinking they are
doing their service for the overall running of the Fordian state.
Explanation: