NOVELS OF THE MIDDLE

P HA S E
 CHAPTER – 3

NOVELS OF THE MIDDLE PHASE

The present chapter studies the three novels of Huxley that belong to the

middle phase of his literary career as a novelist. These novels are Brave New

World (1932), Eyeless in Gaza (1936) and After Many a Summer (1939).

Brave New World became an instant success and established Huxley's

reputation as a novelist to reckon with. In this phase, Huxley's novels display

his maturing skills and his growing consciousness. Now he began to deal with

the contemporary issues with the mind of a reformer. His faith in God grows

deeper and he, like Shakespeare, preaches that 'men must endure their going

hence, even as their coming hither'.

Huxley's first novel of this phase, Brave New World (1932), is set in

London of A. D. 2540 (632 A. F. in the book). It anticipates developments in

reproductive technology and sleep-learning that amalgamate to change society.

The future society includes the ideals that form the basis of futurology. This

book was answered by Huxley himself with a reassessment in an essay, Brave

New World Revisited (1958) and with his last novel Island (1962).

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of

the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th Century.1 In 2003, Robert

McCrum, in The Observer, listed it number 53 in the top 100 greatest novels of

all time2, and the novel was listed at number 87 on the BBC's survey The Big

Read.3

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 The title of the novel 'Brave New World' derives from Miranda's speech

in W. Shakespeare's Last Play 'The Tempest' Act V, Scene I

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are

there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O

brave new world,

That has such people in't. (203-206).

The line itself is ironic; Miranda spent most of her life on an isolated

island, and the only people she saw were her father and his servants, an

enslaved savage and spirit, named Ariel. When she sees others for the first

time, she is simply overwhelmed with excitement and utters the memorable

lines in amazement and wonder. However, she actually sees not refined or

civilized men, but rather drunken sailors staggering off the wreckage of their

ship. Huxley employs the same irony when the 'savage' John refers to what he

sees as a 'brave new world'.

Huxley penned this novel is 1931 during his stay in Italy. By then, he

had already established himself as an engaging writer and a social satirist. He

contributed to the magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue and had published a

collection of poetry (The Burning Wheel, 1916) and four satirical novels taken

up in the previous chapter. Brave New World was Huxley's fifth novel and first

dystopian work. It was inspired by the utopian novels of H. G. Wells, including

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A Modern Utopia (1905) and Men Like Gods (1923). H. G. Well's hopeful

vision of the future's possibilities inspired Huxley to write a parody of the

novel which came out as Brave New World.

In a letter to Arthur Goldsmith, an American acquaintance, he wrote that

he had "been having a little fun pulling the leg of H. G. Wells", but then he "got

caught up in the excitement of my own ideas".4 Quite contrary to the most

popular optimistic utopian novels of the period, Huxley sought to prevent a

horrible vision of the future. He referred to Brave New World as a "negative

utopia", somewhat influenced by Wells' own The Sleeper Awakes (dealing

with topic and the works of D. H. Lawrence.

George Orwell believed that Brave New World must be partly derived

from the novel 'We' by Yevgeny Zamyatin.5 Huxley visited the newly opened

and technologically advanced Brunner and Mond plant, part of Imperial

Chemical Industries or ICI, Billingham, UK and gives a fine and detailed

account of the processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print of

Brave New World states that Huxley was inspired to write this great novel by

this Billingham visit.

Though the novel is set in future, it deals with contemporary issues of

the early 20th Century. The Industrial Revolution had changed the world. Mass

production had made cars, telephones and radios relatively cheap and widely

available throughout the developed world. The political, cultural, economic and

sociological upheavals of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World

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War were resonating throughout the world as a whole and the individual lives

of the majority of people. Accordingly many characters of the novel are named

after widely recognized, influential and in many cases contemporary people,

for example, Polly Trotsky (Leon Trotsky), Benito Hoover (Benito Mussolini;

Herbert Hoover), Lenina Crowne (Vladimir Lenin; John Crowne), Fanny

Crowne (Fanny Brawne; John Crowne), Mustapha Mond (Mustapha Kemal

Atatürk; Alfred Mond and Ludwig Mond, at whose factory Huxley worked for

a time, which helped to inspire the novel), Helmholtz Watson (Hermann von

Helmholtz; John B. Watson), Henry Foster (Henry Ford), Bernard Marx

(George Bernard Shaw; Karl Mark), Morgana Rothschild (The Rothschild

banking family), Joanna Diesel (Rudolf Diesel), Fifi Bradlaugh (Charles

Bradlaugh), Sarojini Engels (Sarojini Naidu; Friedrich Engels), Clara

Deterding (Henri Deterding), Tom Kawaguchi (Elai Kawaguchi) And Herbert

Bakunin (Herbert George Wells; Mikhail Bakunin).

The setting and characters have been taken from Huxley's science fiction

to express widely held opinions, particularly the fear of losing individual

identity in the fast-moving world of the future. An early trip to the US gave the

novel much of its character. Huxley was considerably outraged by the youth

culture, commercial cheeriness, sexual promiscuity and the inward-looking

nature of the Americans, he had also found a book of Henry Ford on the boat to

the US. There was a fear of Americanization in Europe. Thus, seeing America

first hand, and from reading the ideas and plans of one of its foremost citizens,

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Huxley was inspired to write Brave New World with America in mind. The

'feelies' are his response to the 'talkie' motion pictures, and the sex-hormone

chewing gum is a parody of the ubiquitous chewing gum, which was something

of a symbol of America at that time.

G.K. Chesterton, in an article in the May 4, 1935 issue of the Illustrated

London News, said that Huxley was revolting against the "Age of Utopias".6

Much of the discussion on man's future before 1914 was based on the thesis

that humanity would solve all economic and social issues. In the decade

following the war the discourse shifted to an examination of the causes of the

catastrophe. The works of H. G. Wells and G. B. Shaw on the promises of

socialism and a World State were then viewed as the ideas of naive optimists.

The Age of Utopias was followed by the American Age, which lasted as long

as the Boom. Men like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social

riddle and made capitalism the common good. But it was not native to us; it

went with a buoyant, not to say blatant optimism, which is not our negative

optimism. Much more than Victorian righteousness or even Victorian self-

righteousness, that optimism has driven people into pessimism. For the slump

brought even more disillusionment than the war. A new bitterness, and a new

bewilderment, ran through all social life, and was reflected in all literature and

art. It was contemptuous of both Old Capitalism and Old Socialism.

Brave New World is more a revolt against Utopia than against Victoria.7

For this work, Huxley, naturally, received almost a universal criticism from his

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contemporaries, though his work was later praised for its novelty of thought.

Even the few sympathetic critics tempered their praise with disparaging

remarks.

The novel opens in London in 632 (AD 2540 in the Georgian calendar).

The vast majority of the population is unified under the World State, an

eternally peaceful, stable global society in which goods and resources are

plentiful (because the population is permanently limited to no more than two

billion people) and everyone is happy. Natural reproduction has been abolished

and children are created, 'decanted' and raised in Hatcheries and conditioning

centres where they are divided into five castes (which are further divided into

'plus' and 'minus' members) and designed to fulfil predetermined positions

within the social and economic strata of the World State. Foetuses chosen to

become members of the highest caste, 'Alpha', are allowed to develop naturally

while maturing to term in "decanting bottles", while foetuses chosen to become

members of the lower castes (Beta', 'Gamma', Delta', 'Epsilon') are subjected to

in situ chemical interference to cause arrested development in intelligence or

physical growth. Each 'Alpha' or 'Beta' is the product of one unique fertilized

egg developing into one unique fetus. Members of lower castes are not unique

but are instead created using the Bokanovsky process which enables a single

egg to spawn upto 96 children and one ovary to produce thousands of children.

To further increase the birth-rate of Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, Podsnap's

Technique causes all the eggs in the ovary to mature simultaneously, allowing

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the hatchery to get full use of the ovary in two years' time. People of these

castes make up the majority of human society, and the production of such

specialized children bolsters the efficiency and harmony of society, since these

people are deliberately limited in their cognitive and physical abilities, as well

as the scope of their ambitions and the complexity of their desires, thus,

rendering them easier to control. All children are educated via the hypnopaedic

process, which provides each child with caste-appropriate subconscious

messages to mould the child's lifelong self-image and social outlook to that

chosen by the leaders and their predetermined plans for producing future adult

generations.

To maintain the World State's Command Economy for the indefinite

future, all citizens are conditioned from birth to value consumption with such

platitudes as "ending is better than mending", "more stitches less riches" i.e.,

buy a new item instead of fixing the old one, because constant consumption,

and near-universal employment to meet society's material demands, is the

bedrock of economic and social stability for the World State. Beyond providing

social engagement and distraction in the material realm of work or play, the

need for transcendence, solitude and spiritual communion is addressed with the

ubiquitous availability and universally endorsed consumption of the drug soma.

Soma is an illusion to a ritualistic drink of the same name consumed by ancient

Indo-Aryans. In the book, soma is a hallucinogen that takes users on enjoyable,

hangover-free "holidays". It was developed by the World State to provide these

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inner directed personal experiences within a socially managed context of state-

run 'religious' organizations; social clubs. The hypnopaedically inculcated

affinity for the state-produced drug, as a self-medicating comfort mechanism in

the fare of stress or discomfort, thereby eliminates the need for religion or other

personal allegiances outside or beyond the World State.

Recreational sex forms an integral part of the society. According to the

World State, sex is a social activity rather than a means of reproduction (Sex is

encouraged from early childhood). The few women who can reproduce are

conditioned to use birth control, even wearing a "Malthusian belt" (which

resembles a cartridge belt and holds "the regulation supply of contraceptives")

as a popular fashion accessory. The maxim "everyone belongs to everyone

else" is repeated often, and the idea of a "family" is considered pornographic;

sexual competition and emotional, romantic relationships are rendered obsolete

as they are no longer heeded. Marriage, natural birth, parenthood and

pregnancy are considered too obscene to be mentioned in casual conversation.

Thus, society has developed a new idea of reproductive comprehension.

According to the World State, spending time alone is a sheer waste of

time and money, and desire to be an individual is terrifying. Conditioning trains

people to consume and never to enjoy being alone, so by spending an afternoon

not playing 'obstacle Golf' or not in bed with a friend, one is forfeiting

acceptance.

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 In this World State, people typically pass away at the age of 60 having

maintained good health and youthfulness throughout their lives.8 None fears

death; anyone pondering over it is reassured by the knowledge that everyone is

happy, and that society passes on. Since no one has family, they have no bonds

to lose and mourn.

In this World State, the conditioning system eliminates the need for

professional competitiveness; people are brought up to do their jobs and cannot

desire another. There is no competition within castes; each caste member gets

the same food, housing and some rationing as every other member of that caste.

There is no desire to change one's caste, largely because a person's sleep –

conditioning reinforces each individual's place in the caste system. In order to

grow closer to the members of the same class, citizens participate in mock

religious services called Solidarity services, in which twelve people consume

large quantities of soma and sing hymns. The ritual progresses through group

hypnosis and climaxes in an orgy.

In geographical areas, which are non-conducive to easy living and

consumption, the groups of 'savages' are left to their own devices and

resources. They resemble the reservations of land established for the Native

American people during the colonisation of North America. These 'savages' are

obliged to strange customs, including self-mutilation and religion, a mere curio

in the outside world.

(96)
 In its opening chapters, the novel describes life in the World State as

wonderful and introduces Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx. Lenina, a

hatchery worker, is socially accepted and comfortable with her position in

society, while Bernard, a psychologist, is an outcaste. Although an 'Alpha Plus',

he is shorter in stature than the average of his caste – a quality shared by the

lower castes, which makes him suffer from an inferiority complex. His work

with sleep-teaching has brought him the realization that others' deep beliefs are

merely phrases repeated to children when they are asleep. Nevertheless, he

thinks that such programmes need to be organized as they meet the emotional

need of the society. He tries to look different by stating that he dislikes soma as

he'd "rather be himself". His differences set the rumours afloat that he was

accidently administered alcohol while incubated, a method used to keep

Epsilons short.

Bernard's only friend, Helmholtz Watson, an Alpha Plus, is a lecturer at

the college of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing). The friendship

is based on their similar experiences as misfits, but unlike Bernard, Watson's

sense of loneliness stems from being too gifted, too intelligent, too handsome,

and physically too strong. Helmholtz is attracted to Bernard as a confidant : he

can share his ideas with Bernard about his desire to write poetry.

Bernard is on holiday at a Savage Reservation with Lenina. It consists of

a community named Malpais. Lenina, from far, imagines it to be exciting. But,

in reality, she finds old, toothless natives who mend their clothes rather than

throw them away, and the situation is made worse on discovery that she has left

her soma tablets at the hotel resort.

(97)
 Bernard and Lenina, in typical tourist fashion, watch the quaint native

ceremony. The villagers whose culture resembles that of the Indian groups of

the area, descendants of the Anasazi, including the Puebloan peoples of

Acoma, Laguna, and Zuni and the Ramah Navajo, begin by singing, but the

ritual quickly turns into a passion play where a village boy is whipped to

unconsciousness. Soon after, they meet Linda, a woman who has been dwelling

in Malpais since she came on a trip and got separated from her group which

included a man to whom she refers as 'Tomakin' but who is revealed to be

Bernard's boss, the Director of Hatcheries and conditioning, Thomas she

became pregnant despite sticking to her 'Malthusian Drill' and there were no

facilities for an abortion. She was so ashamed of her pregnancy that she

decided not to return to her old life, but to stay with the 'savages'. Linda gave

birth to a son, John (later as John, the savage) who is now 18.

The life of both Linda and John has been pretty hard. They have been

treated as 'outsiders' for 18 long years. The native men treated Linda as a sex

object and the women regularly beat and ostracized her due to her promiscuity.

John was also mistreated and excommunicated due to his mother's immorality

and the colour of his skin. Linda's lovers make John angry and he even attacked

one in a rage when he was a child. John was happy to have been taught by his

mother to read, though he had only two books : a scientific manual from his

mother's job, which he called a 'beastly, beastly book', and a collection of

Shakespeare's works (which have been banned in the World State for being

Subversive). Shakespeare lends John articulation to his feelings and thoughts

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and he especially interested in Othello, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. John has

been denied the religious rituals of the village, although he has watched them

and even has had some religious experiences on his own in the desert.

Being old and tired, Linda wants to return to her familiar world in

London, as she badly misses her life in the city and taking soma. John wants to

see the 'Brave New World' his mother has told him so much about. Bernard

wants to take them back to stop Thomas from his plan to reassign Bernard to

Iceland as punishment for his asocial beliefs. Bernard arranges permission for

Linda and John to leave the Reservation.

John seems to have developed feelings for Lenina because when

Bernard is away seeking permission to move the savages, he ruffles through

her clothes in the suitcase, smelling them. He then sees her 'sleeping' and stares

at her, thinking all he has to do to see her completely is undo one zip. He later

tells himself off for being like this towards Lenina, and feels shy in her

presence.

When Bernard returns to London, he confronts Thomas, the Director of

the Hatchery and conditioning centre who, in front of an audience of higher-

caste centre workers, denounces, Bernard for his asocial behaviour. Bernard,

thinking for the first time in his life he has the upper hand, defends himself by

presenting the Director with his long-lost lover and unknown son, Linda and

John. John falls to his knees and calls Thomas his father which causes an

uproar of laughter. The humiliated Director resigns in shame.

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 Thus, Bernard is spared from reassignment and makes John the toast of

London. Pursued by the highest members of society that he is able to bed any

woman he fancies, Bernard revels in attention he once scorned. The victory,

however, is short-lived. Linda, decrepit, toothless and friendless, goes on a

permanent soma holiday while John, appalled by what he perceives to be an

empty society, refuses to attend Bernard's parties. Society drops Bernard as

swiftly as it had taken him. Bernard turns to the person he had believed to be

his one true friend, only to see Helmholtz falls into a quick, easy camaraderie

with John. Bernard is left an outcaste yet again as he watches the only two

men, with whom he ever connected find more of interest in each other than

they ever did in him.

John and Helmholtz's island of peace is brief. Lenina tries to seduce

John, but John pushes her away, calling her out on her sexually wanton ways.

While Lenina is in bathroom, humiliated and putting her clothes on, John

receives a telephone call from the hospital telling him that his mother is very

ill. He rushes over to see her and sits at her bedside, trying to get her out of her

soma holiday so that he can talk to her. He is heart broken when his mother

succumbs to soma and dies. He is very angry at the young boys that enter the

ward to be conditioned about death and annoy John to the point where he starts

using violence to send them away. John's grief bewilders the hospital workers.

John throws the soma rations of the hospital out of the window. The fight and

right brings the police who put the riot to end by filling the room with soma.

Bernard and Helmholtz arrive to help John, but only Helmholtz helps him

while Bernard stands to one side.

(100)
 After the riot, Bernard, Helmholtz and John are brought before

Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller for Western Europe. Bernard

and Helmholtz are told that they will be exiled to islands to their choice. Mond

explains that this exile is not so much a threat to force free thinkers to reform

and rejoin society as it is a chance for them to act as they please because they

will not be able to influence the population. He also divulges that he, too, once

risked banishment to an island because of some scientific experiments that

were deemed controversial by the state, giving insight into his sympathetic

tone. Helmholtz chooses the Falkland island, believing that their terrible

weather will inspire his writing, but Bernard simply does not want to leave

London; he struggles with Mond and is thrown out of the office. After Bernard

and Helmholtz have left, Mond and John engage in a philosophical argument

on the morals behind the existing society and then John is told the 'experiment'

will continue and he will not be sent to an island. John meets with Bernard and

Helmholtz once again before their departures from London and Bernard

apologises to John for his opportunistic behaviour having come to terms with

his imminent exile and having restored his friendship with Helmholtz.

In the concluding chapter, John isolates himself from society in a

lighthouse outside London where he finds his hermit life interrupted from

mourning his mother by the more bitter memories of civilisation. To atone,

John brutally whips himself in the open, a ritual the Indians in his own village

had denied him. His self-flagellation, caught on film and shown publicly,

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destroys him hermit life. Hundreds of gawking sightseers, intrigued by John's

violent behaviour, fly out to watch the savage in person. Even Lenina comes to

watch, crying a tear John does not see. The sight of the woman whom he both

adores and blames is too much for him; John attacks and whips her. The sight

of genuine, unbridled emotion drives the crowd wild with excitement, and-

handling it as they are conditioned to they turn on each-other, in a frenzy of

beating and chanting that devolves into a mass orgy of soma and sex. In the

morning, John, hopeless, alone, terrified by his drug use in which he

participated that countered his beliefs, makes one last attempt to escape

civilization and atone. When thousands of gawking sight seers arrive that

morning, frenzied at the prospect of seeing the savage perform again, they find

John dead from a suicidal hanging.

Thus, Brave New World is a 'negative utopia' wherein Huxley discusses

contemporary issues and presents a fictional picture of future society where sex

will be a social activity and marriage and pregnancy will be treated as obscene.

Soma drug will be used as a drink to cure all the maladies.

The novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) is primarily the story of Anthony

Beavis and his circle of friends and acquaintances from childhood to mid-

adulthood, mainly in the first decade of the 20th century. The Story is no-

sequential, with the events shuffled, so that each chapter picks up the strand at

a different point in the characters' lives.

(102)
 Anthony loses his mother in his boyhood and is brought up by a

comically pedantic father who takes delight in etymology which is fascinating

to him but a tedious bore to all around him. Anthony is a sensitive and

thoughtful youth who comes across a kindred spirit, at his public school, gentle

Brian Foxworthy. They form a friendship that ultimately ends in Brian's suicide

over a love rivalry, an event that becomes a touchstone for many of the themes

in Anthony's development.

In the meantime, Beavis enjoys other sensual relationship in his youth

with a rather 'borderline' woman and then afterwards, as this woman declines

into poverty and addiction, her daughter. Then, searching for meaning in his

anaemic and detached existence, Anthony joins Mark Staithes, a bully from his

early years at Balustrode school, an a pointless escapade in South America – an

aesthetic violence for violence's sake adventure that leaves Mark without a leg.

On his return to England, Beavis models himself on a pacifist and finds

comfort in a philosophy, that is good, whole and though not intellectually

sophisticated as his erstwhile beliefs, benefits people in a direct way. The

interest in pacifism coincides with Huxley's humanistic tone in the middle

years of his works.

In Eyeless in Gaza, Huxley points out the triviality and futility of

sensuality, though it's very attractive. Sensuality puts man in a state of dilemma

and in a kind of mesh from which it seems almost impossible to come out. The

protagonist of the novel, Anthony Beavis is a relativist, ethically and

psychologically. He has sexual relationship with Helen and Mary Amberley,

though he is aware of the triviality of his sensuality.

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 There are two incidents that lead Anthony to a psychological crisis,

when a dog falls from an aeroplane on the terrace where he is making love with

Helen and their naked bodies are covered with the splattered blood of the

animal. Helen refuses to meet Anthony again and marries a German

revolutionary and when he seduces Joan, his friend Brian's fiancée. He

becomes a psychosomatic patient, and life appears to him to be grim and

meaningless. And it is under the guidance of Dr. Miller that he learns to restore

his balance by integrating his faculties through yogic control over them.

Anthony Beavis also represents the conflict between the world of

intellect and that of the spirit. He is torn by the conflicting pulls of the two

worlds. Though he realises that knowledge is a prison and there is something

that is supreme beyond this discursive reasoning, he prefers to dwell in that

prison. The dualism between intellect and spirit is a constant source of

disturbance to his reflective mind. He says :

B-being a scholar or an artist – It's l-like pursuing your

p-personal salvation. But there's also the K-kingdom of

G-god, W-waiting to be realized.9

It is this detached philosophical approach to life that makes him a

relativist. He avoids all kinds of emotional entanglements and remains a

sensualist. But there comes a crisis in his life and he begins to experience his

dissatisfaction with abstract ideas. Ultimately, he gets over his difficulties on

the spiritual plane. With the resolution of dualities and contradictions, he

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begins to perceive all-pervasive unity. And at the end of the novel, he emerges

as a regenerated man who has risen above the physical plane of living to the

transcendental.

Another character in the novel, Brian Fox, is caught between ideal and

physical forms of love. He believes in idealistic and intellectualized form of

love. He is afraid of the physical manifestations of love and passion and seeks

an emotional attachment, but his intellectuality obstructs his path. He is a man

of intellectual ambitions and believes in self-reliance. He determines to rest on

his oars by sweating in a newspaper office in Manchester and also in working

on a thesis during his short leisure. His finance, on the other hand, is

instinctive, impulsive and natural and longs for kisses and caresses in lieu of

abstractions. Though he admires her naturalness and spontaneity, his puritanic

temperament does not permit him to indulge in physical pleasures. He

universalizes love and looks at it as divine. He writes to Anthony to find out

about Joan's feelings. Joan complains to Anthony that Brian is too idealistic.

She thinks that Brian torments his own self with his high-flown idealism

and hurts her. She feels wretched and distressed at Brian's attempt at idealizing

love and making her almost feel guilty of her natural appetite. She longs for

fulfilment in love. Anthony, finding Joan so deeply passionate, is unable to

resist the temptation and betraying the confidence of his friend, seduces her.

Joan's seduction by Anthony creates a moral perplexity in Brain. In the

(105)
beginning, he blames Anthony for his action, but realizing the autonomous

existence of the events, he exonerates Anthony and ends his own life in a mood

of utter despair.

Huxley, in Eyeless in Gaza, projects the 'free woman' of the 20th century

who submits to physical passion and ends up with abortion and hypodermic

syringe. Mary Amberley represents the worst kind of sexual depravities. She

says : "One's always doing the things one doesn't want – stupidly, out of sheer

perversity. One chooses the worst just because it is the worst. Hyperion to a

Satyr and therefore the Satyr'... Doing what one doesn't want', she repeated, as

though to herself. 'Always doing what one does not want'.10

Helen Amberley, Mary Amberley's daughter, is reading on abortion

from the Encyclopaedia : "If a woman ... administers to herself any poison or

other noxious thing, or unlawfully uses any instrument, or other means to

procure her own miscarriage, she is guilty of ..."11. Helen finds that her mother

was engaged in "filling a hypodermic syringe from a little glass ampoule"12.

Mary tells Helen, "it's all Gerry fault," ... everything's his fault".13

A strange fact of 20th century love-affairs comes to the surface when

Helen discovers that Gerry happens to be the lover of herself and her mother.

This affair confounds all our moral values. Huxley writes :

As though her mother had suddenly become a stranger

whom it was not to be touching so intimately. Helen

withdrew her encircling arm. 'You cared for him?' She

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whispered incredulously. 'In that way?' Answering

quite a different question, parrying a reproach that had

never been made, 'I could not help it,' Mrs. Amberley

replied. 'It was like this.' She made a little movement

with the hand that held the hypodermic syringe. 'You

mean', said Helen, speaking very slowly, and as though

overcoming an almost invincible reluctance, 'you mean

he was' ... 'he was your lover?'

The strangeness of the tone aroused Mrs. Amberley,

for the first time since their conversation had begun, to

something like a consciousness of her daughter's real,

personal existence. Turning, she looked at Helen with

an expression of astonishment. 'You didn't know?'

Confronted by the extraordinary pallor, those

uncontrollably trembling lips, the older woman was

seized with a sudden compunction. 'But, darling, I'm

sorry. I didn't imagine ... You're still so young; you

don't understand. You can't ... But where are you

going? Come back! Helen!'

The door slammed. Mrs. Amberley made a move to

follow her daughter, then thought better of it, and,

instead, resumed the interrupted task of filling her

hypodermic syringe.14

(107)
 Anthony Beavis is not only a sensualist, he is a scholar also who grows

weary of his sensuality and turns a mystic and his transformation owes a great

deal to his deep reading habit. He is a sagacious fellow devoted to books. His

room at Oxford clearly hints at this fact :

Books, The table in Anthony's room was covered with

them. The five folio volumes of Bayle, in the English

edition of 1738. Rickaby's translation of the Summa

Contra Gentiles. De Gourmont's Problems du Style.

The way of perfection. Dostoevsky's Notes from

Underground. These volumes of Byron's letters. The

works of St. John of the Cross in Spanish. The plays of

Wycherley. Lee's History of Sacerdotal celibacy. ...

Life was so short, and books so countlessly many. He

pored voluptuously over the table, opening at random

now one volume, now another".15

In his fascination for mysticism, Beavis represents his creator, Huxley's

own love of mysticism. Beavis has been attracted towards mysticism ever since

he was an undergraduate student but he could not pursue it due to his internal

conflict-his spirit was resting under the bondage of intellect. He was an avid

reader and his knowledge was both broad and deep. However, he was able to

understand that his dualism was a result of his intellectual and cold-detachment

to life.

(108)
 Huxley is of the view that we perceive things not as they are but as we

are. So Anthony sees the world broken as he himself is broken within. The

Vedantic philosophy offers him new light when he is passing through a crisis

of development. He perceives that there is a power in the constitution of every

man beyond the intellect which gives direct insight into the ultimate reality. He

believes that the individual is one with the cosmos, and when the novel

concludes, he perceives the unity of life. He does not feel any position, on the

other hand, he finds that the knowledge of opposition is false. The world of

material objects no longer confronts him, as his own soul has become the soul

of all beings. The opposition of not – self has disappeared in the expansion of

self. He perceives the unity of life. It is a state of mind where all multiplicities

and diversities are fused into harmony. He holds his firm faith in the ultimate

unity, which is all pervasive and all inclusive.

In Eyeless in Gaza, apart from the conflict between intellect and spirit,

sensuality and mysticism, Huxley discusses man's condition in old age when he

does not feel anything very strongly and leads his serene life towards the grave.

He says :

One of the great advantages of being old, provided that

one's economic position is reasonably secure and one's

health not too bad, is that one can afford to be serene.

The grave is near, one has made a habit of not feeling

anything very strongly; it's easy, therefore, to take the

God's-eye view of thing"16.

(109)
 Huxley, being a man of intellect, ponders over abstraction like happiness

and intelligence and tries to trace their source. In his opinion, happiness

consists in an act of intellect rather than that of the will. He writes :

Happiness being the peculiar good of an intelligent

nature, must attach to the intelligent nature on the side

of something that is peculiar to it. But appetite is not

peculiar to intelligent nature, but is found in all things,

though diversely in diverse beings. The will, as being

an appetite, is not a peculiar appurtenance of an

intelligent nature, except so far as it is dependent on

the intelligence; but intelligence in itself is peculiar to

an intelligent nature. Happiness, therefore, consists in

an act of the intellect substantially and principally

rather than an act of the will ..."17

Huxley is deeply influenced by the Hindu view of life and mysticism

and believes that Om represents God and is all – pervasive. The soul is

different from the body. God is timeless and omnipresent. He writes :

I am not my body, I am not my sensation, I an not even

my mind; I am that I am. I om that I om. The sacred

word OM represents Him. God is not limited by time.

For the One is not absent from anything, and yet is

separated from all things ...18

(110)
 Huxley, through his own love – affairs, has realised the emptiness and

futility of physical love. He expresses this feeling through the love – scene

between Hugh and Helen :

His mouth, for the third time; and those hurrying

moths along the skin ... But, oh, how quickly he drew

away!

'Helen!' he repeated.

They looked at one another; end now that he had had

the time to think Hugh found himself all of a sudden

horribly embarrassed. His hands dropped furtively

from her body. He didn't know what to say to her – or,

rather, knew, but couldn't bring himself to say it. His

heart was beating with a painful violence. 'I love you, I

want you,' he was crying, he was positively shouting,

from behind his embarrassed silence. But no word was

uttered. He smiled at her rather foolishly, and dropped

his eyes – the eyes, he now reflected, that must look

hideous, like a fish's eyes, through the thick lenses of

his spectacles".19

The novel is important as it offers Huxley's concept of civilisation which

at first consists in food and literature – one satisfying the belly, the other the

brain. Civilisation brings happiness to all and sundry. He writes :

(111)
 "Civilisation means food and literature all round.

Beefsteaks and fiction magazines for all. First – class

proteins for the body, fourth – class love-stories for all

spirit. And this in a safe urban world, where there are

no risks, no physical fatigues ... Everything is man –

made and punctual and convenient. But people can

have too much of convenience; they want excitement,

they want risks and surprises ...".20

However, he expresses his concern about the growing materialism

which is bad for civilisation :

As material civilisation rises, the intensity and

importance of sexuality also rises. Must rise,

inevitably.21

In this way, the novel mainly points out the futility and triviality of

sensuality which leads man to frustration and despair. It also shows the conflict

between the intellect and the spirit and presents the immorality of twentieth

century 'free woman'. It discusses that Hindu view of life is an ideal view of

life and that OM represents God. He also suggests that the west must follow the

Hindu view of life in order to lead a healthy and happy life.

Huxley's next novel After Many a Summer (1939) deals with the story

of a Hollywood millionaire who fears his imminent death. It was published in

the U.S. as After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. It was written soon after

(112)
Huxley left England and settled in California. It is Huxley's observation of

American culture, particularly what he saw as its narcissism, superficiality and

obsession with youth. This satirical work also raises philosophical and social

issues, some of which would later take the forefront in Huxley's final novel

'Island'. The title of the novel derives from Tennyson's poem Tithonus, about a

figure in Greek mythology to whom Aurora blessed with eternal life but not

eternal youth. The book was awarded the 1939 James Tait Black Memorial

Prize for fiction.

The novel revolves round a few characters brought together by a

Hollywood millionaire, Jo Stoyte. Each character represents a different attitude

towards life. Stoyte, in his sixties and conscious of his mortality, finds himself

in deep contemplation of life. Enlightenment alludes him, though, as he is ruled

by his fears and cravings. Stoyte hires Dr. Obispo and his assistant Peter to

research the secrets to long life in carp, crocodiles and parrots. Jeremy Pordage,

an English archivist and literature expert is brought into archive a rare

collection of books. Pordage's presence highlights Stoyte's shallow attitude

towards the precious work of art that he affords himself. Other characters

include Virginia, Stoyte's young mistress; and Mr. Propter, a professor who

lives on a neighbouring estate. Mr. Propter believes :

... Every individual is called on to display not only unsleeping good will

but also unsleeping intelligence. And this is not all. For, if individuality is not

absolute, if personalities are illusory figments of a self-will disastrously blind

(113)
to the reality of a more-than-personal consciousness, of which it is the

limitation and denial, then all of every human being's efforts must be directed,

in the last resort, to the actualization of that more than – personal

consciousness. So that even intelligence is not sufficient as an adjunct to good

will; there must also be the recollection which seeks to transform and transcend

intelligence.22

This is, in essence Huxley's own position. Though other characters

achieve conventional success, even happiness, only Mr. Propter does so

without upsetting anyone or creating evil. Dr. Obispo places great faith in

science and medicine as saviours of mankind. He sees all as stepping stones to

science, the greater good, and thus only derives happiness at others' expense.

According to Propter's philosophy, he is trapped in ego-based 'human'

behaviour that prevents him from reaching enlightenment. Obispo seduces

Virginia in an egotistical way. She is unable to resist him despite her loyalty to

Stoyte. When she is found out by Stoyte, he wants to kill Obispo but accidently

kills Peter instead. Obispo covers up the act for money and continued research

support. This takes him, along with Virginia and Stoyte, to Europe, where they

find an immortal human, the fifth Earl of Gonister, still alive at zoo, who now

resembles an ape. Stoyte cannot grasp that transcendence or goodness should

be one's ultimate goal, rather than prevention of death, and expresses his wish

to undergo treatment so that he too may live forever.

(114)
 The central theme of the novel, 'After Many a Summer', is the struggle

between the forces leading to bondage and those which are striving for

liberation. Jo Stoyte, the central figure, is an embodiment of all deadly sins. He

has stocked his castles with innumerable treasures and he has all the pleasures

which life can offer him. But he is caught in the dilemma of life and death and

his heart is gripped by the fear of death. Through his attempt to get longevity

through the experiments of Dr. Obispo and Jeremy Pordage, he only

strengthens the forces of bondage and perpetuates evil in the world.

Propter laughs at the experiments cynically. He points out that eternal

life is to be found not in prolonging one's life in the mundane world – which

would not only lead to a permanent possibility of sensation but in experiencing

a timeless goal. What is the use of this prolonged life? What purpose will it

serve? It is intrinsically night-marish. Rejecting this world of time, Propter

announces that all acts at the human levels are perpetually threatened by evil.

He asserts that good exists in a timeless world and each individual should

direct his potentialities in realizing that state of consciousness instead of

wasting his time in transitory pursuits. Propter believes that time and desires

are the raw material of evil. He says :

'As for time',... but the medium in which evil

propagates itself, the element in which evil lives and

outside of which it dies? Indeed, it's more than the

element of evil, more than merely its medium. If you

(115)
 carry your analysis far enough, you'll find that time is

evil. One of the aspects of its essential substance.23

Thus, Propter believes that Dr. Obispo's programme to increase the span

of life is directed towards the perpetuation of evil in the world. He insists that

human beings should direct their energies towards the realization of good,

which can be experienced in a timeless world of eternity.

In the novel, Huxley propagates the idea that good exists only at the

spiritual level. Propter, in the novel, speaks about the transcendence of the

empirical ego. Man should always concentrate his energies to experience good

at the spiritual plane in this timeless and eternal world. Propter says :

No human society can become conspicuously better than it is now,

unless it contains a fair proportion of individuals who know that their humanity

isn't the last word and who consciously attempts to transcend it. That's why one

should be profoundly pessimistic about the things most people are optimistic

about-such as applied science, and social reform, and human nature as it is in

the average man or woman. And that's also why one should be profoundly

optimistic about the thing they're so pessimistic about that they don't even

know it exists – I mean, the possibility of transforming and transcending

human nature. Not by evolutionary growth ... here and now, if you like – by the

use of properly directed intelligence and goodwill.24

In the novel, Propter has been portrayed as a spiritual character who

regards man as "a nothingness surrounded by God, indigent of God, capable of

(116)
God and filled with God if man so desires"25. He is of the view that evil is

whatever strengthens our ego – sense; good, whatever helps to annihilate it. He

advocates that we should transcend our empirical ego and try to seek unity with

God. On the empirical level of existence, we are obsessed with time, our

personalities and their projections which we call policies, ideals and religion :

"we worry and crave ourselves out of the very possibility of transcending

personality and knowing, intellectually at first and then by direct experience,

the true nature of the world"26. He opines that we should abandon our

preoccupation with mundane activities and must make room for the timeless

consciousness. In other words, it means, we must annihilate our ego. The ego,

according to Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, is man's

obsessive consciousness of existence of being a separate self – from his true

self, the atman. The ego sense results when we falsely identify the atman, with

the mind – body, that which merely reflects consciousness. Propter believes in

the three essential qualities for the annihilation of ego : goodwill, the

persevering effort for liberation with an ethical life as its corollary; intelligence,

the unfailing discrimination between the ego and its products and that which is

beyond the ego; recollectedness, the focussing of the mind upon the goal of

life.

Thus, Huxley finds the remedy for the world's suffering from idolatry,

stupidity and cruelty in the philosophy of self-transcendence. His search for

values culminates in the ideal of non-attachment and the realization of absolute

(117)
reality or Divine Ground. He discovers that selfhood, time and space, are the

main obstacles to the realization of spiritual unity. "Sorrow is the unregenerate

individual's life in time, the life of craving and aversion, pleasure and pain,

organic growth and decay.27 "By self – transcendence, we become port of

eternity and part of divinity. Eternity and infinity are the elements of the divine

reality; eternity and infinity being limitless, can possibly impose the human

limitations under which at present most of mankind suffers.28

In, After Many a Summer, Huxley says that idealism cannot bring

redemption to mankind. He points out that it is only through the mystical

insight that values and meanings can be introduced in this degenerate world. It

is the spiritual vision which can bring about the necessary change in the

individual psyche. He writes :

I mean the religious psychologist; the one who knows

by direct experience that men are capable of liberation

and enlightenment. He's the only philosopher of

history whose hypothesis has been experimentally

verified; therefore, the only one who can make a

generalization that covers the fact.29

In the novel, Huxley also expresses his disapproval of all idealistic

schemes due to a combination of factors. These schemes are mainly the

projection of our inflated egotism. He observes that all ideals are at bottom the

source of superstition, fanaticism, and madness. The idealistic programmes of

(118)
nationalism, militarism, and industrialization are the products of ego. The

ideals of patriotism, social justice, virtues of loyalty, temperance, courage and

prudence, though they are good in themselves, hardly liberate the individual

from a sense of ego. The spirit of self – sacrifice, which is considered to be the

highest quality by idealists, is simply nothing but a wallowing in egotism.

Huxley does not only insist on cultivation of virtues but says that it must be the

cultivation of right kind of virtues. He believes in that ideal which liberates

man from his ego, time and desire. He holds that the ideal of non-attachment

can be practised only by devoted individuals who are entrusted with the

responsibility of transforming human nature by the firm use of intelligence and

good will.

Huxley believes that mystical experience defies expression and that no

adequate report of its contents can be expressed in words. Though he accepts

the Indian mystical philosophy, he continues to doubt the possibility of

transmitting its truths to others. He says :

The only vocabulary at our disposal is a vocabulary

primarily intended for thinking strictly human thought

about strictly human concerns. But the things we want

to talk about are non – human realities and non –

human ways of thinking. Hence the radical inadequacy

of all statements ... about God or spirit or eternity.30

(119)
 Being considerably influenced by the Hindu 'Advaitvada', Huxley

believes that the ultimate goal of all human existence is to acquire the state of

unison with God – such a state consists in realizing the unity behind all

apparent diversities. He believes in oneness amidst the changing panorama of

life. This is a typical Vedantic way of conceiving human existence.

The novel portrays Jo Stoyte as a personification of one of the seven

deadly sins of life. He cherishes an instinct of acquisitiveness and intends to

acquire everything that can be obtained on the earth. He does not have any

education but what comes in his way from China to Peru he has collected

without showing the slightest discrimination, and in the course of these

collections, he has purchased the Hauberk Papers, the name of which he is

unable to pronounce. Frowningly, he speaks of his acquisitiveness :

'I'm head of an oil company here', he said. 'Got two

thousand filling – stations in California alone. And not

one man in any of those filling – stations that isn't a

college graduate! He brayed again, triumphantly. 'Go

and talk foreign languages to them.' He was silent for a

moment, then, pursuing, an unexplicit association of

ideals, 'My agent in London', he went on, 'the man who

picks up things for me there – he gave me your name.

Told me you were the right man for those – what do

you call them? You know, those papers I bought this

summer. Roebuck? Hobuck?'31

(120)
 Huxley makes a jest of Stoyte's craving for the prolongation of earthly

life as he is, forever, haunted by the fear of death. He tries to propagate that

such prolongation would only obstruct our path to the transcendence of the ego.

He believes that the spiritual activity begins with a dissatisfaction of the

transient values of the world, and a desire for the permanence. The person who

can discriminate between the eternal and ephemeral, views the world in its true

perspective. The self is able to know itself and eradicates the wrong belief of its

limitation. He establishes unity with all. The Upanishads say :

The Whole is all That,

The Whole is born out of the Whole,

When the Whole is absorbed into the Whole.

The Whole remains alone. (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. 5.1)32

Apart from Stoyte, Dr. Obispo, Jeremy Pordage and Pete believe that the

temporal existence is the only reality. They are wrong in their attempt to

perpetuate human existence, rather they should concentrate their energies on

the transformation of man.

Huxley has firm faith in the efficacy of the grace of God as a means of

emancipation of the individual from the bondage, but it should not be mistaken

as an advocacy of theism. He is entirely an absolutist and his conception of

God is also an absolutist and not a theistic. In After Many a Summer, Virginia

Maunciple has been shown to be praying to God for the redemption of man's

sin. She says :

(121)
 "Holy – Mary – Mother – of – God – pray for

us – sinners – now and in the – hour – of

our – death – Amen"33.

Thus, the novel upholds that long life is no solution to the problems of

human life. Rather, main must aim to lead a good spiritual life and should not

be afraid of death. The novel also shows that Huxley has firm faith in the

efficacy of divine grace.

The above discussions show a distinct advancement in the literary career

of Huxley who in this phase displays a certain maturity in his skill as a novelist

presents a picture of future society when sex will be a social activity and

marriage and pregnancy will be treated as obscene. The world will be ruled by

certain commands of the World State. He also portrays a picture of the 'free

woman' of the twentieth century who has crossed all the limitations of decency.

However he is able to visualise that man's real happiness lies not in prolonging

his life but in leading a spiritual life. In the following chapter the remaining

four novels of the last phase will be taken up for a close study.

(122)
 REFERENCES

1. "100 Best Novels" Random House, (1999) Retrieved 2007-06-23.

2. "100 Greatest Novels of All Time". Guardian 2003, Retrieved 2012-10-

10.

3. "BBC – The Big Read" BBC April 2003, Retrieved 26 Oct. 2012.

4. Aldous Huxley, Letters of Aldous Huxley, ed. by Grover Smith (New

York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 348.

5. George Orwell: Review, Tribune, 4 Jan. 1946.

6. G. K. Chesterton, Review in the Illustrated London News, 4 May 1935.

7. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Harper Perennial Modern Classics;

Reprint edn. 17 Oct. 2006, P.S. Edition.

8. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932 (London : Harper Collins, First

Perennial Modern Classics edn.), p. 113.

9. Aldous Huxley, Eyeless & Gaza (1936) London, Chatto & Windus, p.

125.

10. Ibid., p. 443.

11. Ibid., p. 445.

12. Ibid., p. 446.

13. Ibid., p. 448.

14. Ibid., pp. 448-449.

15. Ibid., p. 115.

16. Ibid., p. 85.

(123)
17. Ibid., p. 116.

18. Ibid., p. 134.

19. Ibid., pp. 272-273.

20. Ibid., pp. 280-281.

21. Ibid., p. 281.

22. Ibid., p. 82.

23. Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer (1939) London, Chatto &

Windus, p. 106.

24. Ibid., p. 245.

25. Ibid., p. 99.

26. Ibid., p. 121.

27. Aldous Huxley, Themes and Variations (1950) London, Chatto &

Windus, p. 79.

28. Milton Birnhaum, Aldous Huxley's Conception of the Nature of Reality,

Personalist, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Summer 1966), p. 310.

29. Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer, op. cit. p. 285.

30. Ibid., p. 157.

31. Ibid., p. 27.

32. Bridhadarnayaka Upanishad 5.1.

33. Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer, op. cit. p. 275.



(124)