Lenina Crowne, Brave New World, the Changing Rooms

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LENINA CROWNE The Changing Rooms "Lenina Crowne?" said Henry Foster, echoing the Assistant Predestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers. "Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you haven't had her." … "Talking about her as though she were a bit of meat." Bernard ground his teeth. "Have her here, have her there." Like mutton. Degrading her to so much mutton. “She said she'd think it over, she said she'd give me an answer this week. Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford." He would have liked to go up to them and hit them in the face–hard, again and again. "Yes, I really do advise you to try her," Henry Foster was saying. This extract from chapter 3 of Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel 'Brave New World' takes place in the Alpha changing room at the end of the workday. Within it, we see the character Bernard overhear Henry talking with the Assistant Predestinator about Lenina. While discussing Lenina admiringly, Henry tells the Assistant that he should “have her” some time. The conversation disgusts Bernard. Henry Foster first declares within the extract the name "Lenina Crowne", but poses the name as a question, suggesting that she is of little real importance or rather that she is merely one of many to him. His first actual description of Crowne follows this in the form of a simple sentence, also serving to reduce the woman to a mere two words: "wonderfully pneumatic". Here, one can question Huxley's word choice through the feminist lens; the adjective "pneumatic" immediately constructs for readers the violent sexual imagery of the so-named drill. However, one could take from the word that Lenina is filled with air. This in particular seems damning to the female public within the "brave new world". The artificial child-bearing described prior to this extract

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