Julia is a fictional character in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Her last name is never given in the novel but she is called Dixon in the 1954 BBC TV production.[1]
Julia was born in 1958 in Oceania, the super-state combining North America, South America, Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (renamed Airstrip One). Her knowledge of events before the revolution is inaccurate as her grandfather, the only close source to her with that knowledge, disappeared when she was eight. Julia integrated herself into the daily life of Oceania early, becoming an especially zealous propagandist for the Junior Anti-Sex League, the Two Minutes Hate, and Community Centres. However, this behaviour served as cover for Julia to become a sexually promiscuous rebel. She had her first affair with a Party member at the age of sixteen.
Julia first appears in Nineteen Eighty-Four at the age of 26, an enthusiastic participant in the Two Minutes Hate directed against Emmanuel Goldstein, a Party co-founder who claims the Revolution was betrayed. Winston Smith, a fellow worker in the Ministry of Truth, is both aroused by Julia's beauty and disgusted by her fervor, and fantasizes about raping and murdering her. Winston also fears that Julia is a member of the Thought Police prepared to denounce him.
Months later, Winston bumps into Julia on her way from the Fiction Department and receives a small paper from her. After ensuring his privacy in his cubicle at work (no easy feat due to the omnipresent two-way telescreens), he unfolds the note and reads what Julia wrote: "I love you." Winston makes arrangements with Julia to meet in the crowd at Victory Square; over the next several months, they arrange to meet and engage in sexual acts in a variety of places outside London.
Winston finds in Julia a fellow thoughtcriminal (as well as a sex criminal); they decide to live life to the fullest while dodging the Party whenever possible.
This is mortally dangerous, for sexual love between Party members is strictly forbidden: even within marriage, sex is to be viewed as something disgusting, a duty performed only to beget children for the service of the Party. Julia believes the Party tries to bottle up the sex drive and transform it into hysteria and leader-worship: very desirable qualities in the ultimate totalitarian state that is Oceania.
The lovers know fully well that they will soon be detected and arrested, and Julia observes that "everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you." Winston argues that "confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you — that would be the real betrayal." Julia believes this is "the one thing they can't do...they can't get inside you". The lovers are able to derive some comfort from this, believing that their love will remain intact even when they are arrested and tortured: "If the object was not to stay alive but to stay human," Winston reflects, "what difference [would] it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings."
When Inner Party member O'Brien drops a hint that he is a member of the mysterious anti-Party Brotherhood, Winston and Julia come to meet him. When O'Brien tests their willingness to do whatever the Brotherhood asks, Julia shouts "No!" when he asks whether she and Winston are prepared to separate and never see each other again. Winston agrees with a heavy heart. Days later, when Winston and Julia are staying in the room above Mr. Charrington's shop and have read parts of Goldstein's book, they are arrested by the Thought Police.
O'Brien is really a faithful Party member, a torturer who brainwashes those who have gone astray (in order to "make them perfect" before they are executed). He claims that Winston had been under surveillance for seven years. The reader never knows if the Thought Police had previously detected Julia's thoughtcriminal tendencies as well. If not, it was her love for Winston that doomed her.
While interrogating Winston, O'Brien claims that Julia caved in immediately to the Party's pressure: "She betrayed you, Winston. Immediately — unreservedly. I have seldom seen anyone come over to us so promptly. You would hardly recognize her if you saw her. All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her dirty-mindedness — everything has been burned out of her. It was a perfect conversion, a textbook case." Winston (and the reader) obviously cannot know if O'Brien is telling the truth.
During months of torture and brainwashing, Winston surrenders intellectually, but strives to keep his innermost heart inviolate: He knows he will eventually be killed, but secretly he intends to continue hating Big Brother (the embodiment of the Party) — and loving Julia. One tiny victory he reserves for his moment of death: The Party could not change his feelings and make him betray Julia in his heart.
However, Winston's resolve to continue loving Julia is burned away when he finally enters Room 101. Winston has a particular horror of rats. Knowing this, O'Brien threatens to let rats devour Winston's face, and in utter desperation he finally begs his torturers that they do this to Julia instead.
Julia is seen one last time in the novel, when she meets Winston after they have both been processed by the Party and restored to orthodox thought. They agree nothing — not even sex — matters any more, because what they felt for each other is gone. Julia explains to Winston that "sometimes...they threaten you with something — something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, 'Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' ... And after that, you don't feel the same towards the other person any longer". It seems, then, that her experience exactly mirrors Winston's own: she was taken to Room 101 and betrayed him there (it is not revealed what she was threatened with; she did not share Winston's particular horror of rats). It is also suggested that she was given a lobotomy ("...and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her forehead and temple..."). This would have resulted in her personality change as they would have had to remove the prefrontal cortex, the brain region implicated in planning complex cognitive behaviours, personality expression, moderating correct social behaviour and considered to be in charge of the orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals. Yet Winston notes that whatever caused the scar "was not the change". Perhaps the passage is just noting that Julia took longer to betray Winston than Winston did to Julia, as shown by the scar on her face — possibly showing that Julia had greater feelings of love for Winston, or that Winston was weaker in character.
Shortly before O'Brien sends Winston to Room 101, Winston suddenly feels as if Julia were inside himself; he somehow knows that "somewhere or other she was still alive and needed his help". If this is meant to be real mental contact, this could suggest that Winston perceived the moment when Julia was threatened with her own worst nightmare in Room 101. If so, O'Brien was lying when he claimed (much earlier) that Julia had instantly surrendered to the will of the Party: Julia would actually have held out almost as long as Winston himself. Both lovers could have been told, separately, of their supposed betrayal by the other in order to break their spirits.
As the novel closes, Winston discovers that his love for Julia has been replaced by love for Big Brother — the only form of love that is approved in Oceania. Tragically, Julia was ultimately wrong: "they" could indeed "get inside you" and alter even "your" feelings.
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