Pratham Patel Beneski Critical Writing: 4A 23 October 2020 Birth and the Mother Brave New World is a dystopian utopia set place the year 2540 (A.F. 632) where the norms of society have grown to disdain motherhood and conventional birth thereafter. Instead, the societies of this time artificially birth individuals through specialized “conditioning” practices from their embryotic stages. This entails no need for motherhood which is considered barbaric and results in another abhorrence to this world–family. Clearly the future society in the Brave New World sees many modern practices in a negative light. The story is opened up with a school trip to a laboratory. However, it isn’t any traditional science center, but in fact a factory to produce the net generation of people. We see how the various workers are delighted to explain how this manufacturing process takes place, cheerfully showcases quite horrific scenes. Such as the treatment of certain embryos which are subjected to alcohol as to make them lower castes or the displaying of Pavlovian experiments except with human children and not dogs. In manipulation each individual child, the society could manage stability. Moreover, mothers are no longer part of society, for there is no need for natural human reproduction with test tube babies. The Director specifically calls motherhood and natural birth as a “gross viviparous” practice. Throughout the story we see how from children to adults, everyone in this world is absolutely appalled at the word mother. This is because it they have no motherly experience and have been conditioned to this. The reasoning behind this? Family. Family ironically directly goes against the values of this society as opposed to ours. The primary being that in this society, everyone belongs to everyone else. This is seen through the “play” secessions Patel 2 the children take part in and the orgies the adults conduct, where there is no sense of a relationship. In fact, when Lenina only “has” Henry for a couple of months, Fanny is shocked and urges her to be more promiscuous. Family designates people into groups for which they care about, which takes away from community. All in all, Brave New World depicts the characterization of conventional birth and the mother has being disgusting impediments to society. Mustapha Mond recalled to the children that the world had once been full of fathers and mothers, which he explained led to misery and every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity, and also madness and suicide. This is as they were the foundation for a family which went against their brainwashing of community. With the control of the population from birth as to predetermine individuals’ roles and the abolishment of the mother, the society was able to “be happy.”
