- Julia’s initial importance to the book is to showcase the elements of the party’s following Winston most despises. She is introduced to us in the text as a zealot, a hardline representative of The Party’s policy. Straightaway therefore, she represents something that Winston doesn’t understand, a blind fervor and adherence to a system that is patently hypocritical to him.
- Julia, also represents everything Winston is not. Attractive, energetic, part of the party’s inner circle. She serves as the perfect counterpoint to Winston, who is a weak-willed, passive character. Despite all of his misgivings he does not have the strength in his convictions to commit to any active rebellion. Julia in one word then, is freedom, freedom from Winston’s self, his weaknesses and limitations.
- As he begins to interact with her, Julia becomes an element of chaos and unpredictability in Winston’s otherwise stagnant life. Functioning as a catalyst for most of the turning points of the novel. She is the first to make contact, turning their shared looks and intrigue into actions with her note (p.100), and it she who initiates the first physical contact between them.
- Winston exclaims during their first meeting that he wants everyone to be corrupt to their bones (p.115), to acknowledge the hypocrisy that is central to their system and those who work to uphold it. Julia’s importance is thus as the overt representation of this corruption. Someone who has no moral conflict about her role in the party. She lies with ease and assumes the character of the chaste, devout party worker in public “attending lectures and demonstrations, distributing literature for the junior Anti-Sex League, preparing banners for Hate Week” (p. 119). In private she is desire personified always seeking new thrills new excitement anything to fly in the face of this carefully built image.
- This ironically positions Julia as a symbol of purity in the book, whilst overtly deceitful she doesn’t experience any of the inner struggles that characterize Winston’s character does (“life as she saw it was quite simple”, p. 120).
- Julia is also much younger than Winston, which perhaps explains the simplicity of her rebellion. In the text she provides the prime example of what a complete creature of this society looks like as an adult. She has none of the lingering remnants of life before the Party took over. For her the system she lives in is a monolith, completely natural and most likely indefinite. The control she does take is secretive, her whole life has been monitored.
- Julia also serves her function as Winston’s avatar for all of his long repressed hope and feelings of love. It is her infectious youthfulness and passion, that causes Winston to throw caution to the wind, though he knows that such an affair cannot last in their toxic environment. Thus. she acts as Winston’s liberator.
- Unfortunately, whilst she liberates Winston – perhaps her most important role in the book is as the agent for his eventual downfall. As the author reveals that it is that very love, which causes Winston to be broken in Room 101. By betraying her, Winston accepts the Party’s complete hold over himself (“Do it to Julia, not me!” p. 286).
Julia’s Role in Oceana
- Julia works in the Fiction department in a mechanical job, overseeing the maintenance and repair of the Ministry of Truth’s novel writing machines
- She is a member of the Junior Anti-Sex league, carrying the banner in processions
- She has been a troop leader in the Spies.
- She has been a branch secretary in the Youth League prior to joining the Anti-Sex league, surrounding the courts shouting death threats at traitors.
- The department she works in is responsible for publishing pornography for the proletariat youth
- She has carried out several affair with Party members even causing the suicide of one, who did so to escape arrest.
- She is considered a standout during the prescribed Two hours of hate, often shouting the loudest and drawing attention from others as being particularly angry.
- She betrays Winston in Room 101, under torture. This allows her to be released and go back to civilian life.
