Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [516]

‘When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?’ — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 516

Note

Julia’s formulation reduces ideology to a libidinal economy: enthusiasm for the Party (‘sex gone sour’) is manufactured from suppressed desire. What Winston would need a chapter to argue, Julia compresses into folk aphorism — and her crudeness makes the point more cutting.