1984 - Planet eBook

others like her there might be in the younger generationpeople who had grown up in the world of the Revolution,knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as somethingunalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authoritybut simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog.They did not discuss the possibility of getting married.It was too remote to be worth thinking about. No imaginablecommittee would ever sanction such a marriage evenif Katharine, Winston’s wife, could somehow have been gotrid of. It was hopeless even as a daydream.‘What was she like, your wife?’ said Julia.‘She was—do you know the Newspeak word GOOD-THINKFUL? Meaning naturally orthodox, incapable ofthinking a bad thought?’‘No, I didn’t know the word, but I know the kind of person,right enough.’He began telling her the story of his married life, but curiouslyenough she appeared to know the essential parts ofit already. She described to him, almost as though she hadseen or felt it, the stiffening of Katharine’s body as soonas he touched her, the way in which she still seemed to bepushing him from her with all her strength, even when herarms were clasped tightly round him. With Julia he felt nodifficulty in talking about such things: Katharine, in anycase, had long ceased to be a painful memory and becamemerely a distasteful one.‘I could have stood it if it hadn’t been for one thing,’ hesaid. He told her about the frigid little ceremony that Katharinehad forced him to go through on the same night every