could have stood it if it hadn't been for one thing,' he said. He
told her about the frigid little ceremony that Katharine had forced him to
go through on the same night every week. 'She hated it, but nothing would
make her stop doing it. She used to call it -- but you'll never guess.'
'Our duty to the Party,' said Julia promptly.
'How did you know that?'
'I've been at school too, dear. Sex talks once a month for the over-
sixteens. And in the Youth Movement. They rub it into you for years. I dare
say it works in a lot of cases. But of course you can never tell; people
are such hypocrites.'
She began to enlarge upon the subject. With Julia, everything came
back to her own sexuality. As soon as this was touched upon in any way she
was capable of great acuteness. Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner
meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex
instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control
and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more
important was that sexual privation induced hysteria,