The Lives of Women in a Dystopian Society

A look at 'Julia', by Sandra Newman

I think it’s fair to say that women usually draw the short end of the straw in fictional dystopian societies. The most obvious example is the iconic The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, but feminist dystopian literature abounds. Some of the best examples are laid out in an article by The Curious Reader: 10 Feminist Dystopian Novels That Are Not ‘The Handmaids Tale’.

But, it’s important to remember that dystopian societies aren’t limited to fiction. Countries ravaged by war where women are routinely subjected to sexual violence can be considered dystopian. And then there’s North Korea, which is clearly a dystopian, totalitarian society. Human Rights Watch came out with a report in 2023 on Discrimination and Violence against Women and Girls in the country, and it’s a bleak picture.

Perhaps the most famous novel about totalitarian societies is 1984 by George Orwell. I recently reread it. I think it’s been kind of lonely sitting on the bookshelves without being opened for a couple of decades, and we can’t have that. I’m an avid rereader, which is the point of owning lots and lots of books, to me.

While the book is a blatant warning against totalitarianism, I wanted to see if any parts of it are a mirror to any current events. Spoiler: they are and there are plenty of pertinent warnings we would do well to heed.

I also wanted to compare it to Julia, by Sandra Newman, which I’d just finished, even though it came out in 2023. Julia retells the story of 1984 from the point of view of Winston Smith’s lover. Written with the permission and approval of the Orwell estate, it’s totalitarianism from the female point of view, which Newman ably proves is quite different from the male gaze.

Take this passage from 1984, in which Winston muses on the unattainability of women.

"But a real love affair was an almost unthinkable event. The women of the Party were all alike. Chastity was as deeply ingrained in them as Party loyalty. By careful early conditioning, by games and cold water, by the rubbish that was dinned into them at school and in the Spies and the Youth League, by lectures, parades, songs, slogans, and martial music, the natural feeling had been driven out of them. His reason told him that there must be exceptions, but his heart did not believe it. They were all impregnable, as the Party intended that they should be. And what he wanted more even than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it were only once in his whole life. The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion.”

That would read as a bit of incel drivel these days and it should be noted that Julia is the one who initiates the love affair in both books.

In fact, the retelling of the story is absolutely faithful to the original, with large swathes of word-for-word dialog. But, when you’re retelling a story from another character’s point of view, the possibilities are endless for invention.

Orwell went into great detail about the mechanics of his world; how and why it came about, and how power is maintained. The focus in Julia isn’t on why and how the world exists, but how to survive it. It isn’t full of the philosophical musings that underpin 1984, but goes into detail about the lives of women.

What’s it like to live in a woman’s hostel? What happens if you get pregnant? What does your society expect from you? What kind of jobs do you do? How can you possibly find any joy in a world where the Party controls everything and never stops spying on you? Newman slots this information neatly between the lines of the original story.

While the answers to the questions are bleak, it should be noted that the women of this world find moments of happiness. They find ways to adapt. They’re resourceful. They’re survivors. Not all of them, of course, but the ones we care about.

Then Newman goes above and beyond to expand the end of the tale. We like stories where the survivors get a reward for, well, surviving. The castaways get rescued. The downtrodden turn the tables. The underdog wins. Big Brother is exposed. The Wall comes down. The fascists are beaten.

Julia finds her reward in the end, and we’re happy for her. It seems good, like everything is going to be okay after all. But, this is still a dystopian world, and there’s a catch. We don’t know how her story is really going to end, after the words on the page stop, and we don’t know how the catch is going to play out.

The only thing we know for certain is that, no matter what, Julia is going to survive. Just like women have survived a myriad of abuses and horrors for millennia. We can survive anything.

“After all, she couldn’t stop what the Brotherhood would do, or make her do… She didn’t have the freedom to think of what was right. She must do what was safe. It was as Ampleforth had said: one had no choice, one must only live through it as if one had… One was carried forward, and tried to be kind whenever one could. One survived, and then was sorry.”