Historical background
Huxley drew on the contemporary scientific theory and debates in the 1930s. When he wrote Brave New World new understandings of genetic variation and evolution were coinciding with the development of medical technologies.
The author was also influenced by Darwin's theory of the development of species and its implications that humans struggle to survive in a competitive environment by adapting different traits over generations. The novel takes these conclusions to a new level: what if human beings could control the adaptation of different traits among human beings to suit them for particular environments? This question drives the system of genetic manipulation in the story.
Population control through medicine was promoted in Britain by the Malthusian League, who based their beliefs on Malthus's theory that without some form of birth control, human populations would inevitably decline into poverty and conflict. Women in Brave New World wear a Malthusian belt as a form of contraception. Instead of pregnancy, human beings are produced through mass production. Population growth is controlled by the government.
In the years that followed the publication of the novel, a new movement called eugenics would seek to achieve similar controls over human variability and encourage widespread sameness on the basis of race. Those who supported this movement, including the Nazi Party in Germany, used forced sterilisation, not to produce a new species, but to eradicate existing groups. Huxley's novel serves as a warning to readers about the danger of scientific developments applied to human behaviour.
Literary context
Brave New World is a dystopian novel in the tradition of science fiction which pushes the bounds of what is currently possible. It renders a future society in which current ideas about evolutionary biology, genetics, population control, psychological conditioning and human purpose are taken to logical extremes so that they abandon ethics, morality, and emotion.
One major theme of science fiction stories is the clash between technology and nature. They examine the ethical limitations of the quest for knowledge, as in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Similar concerns about the role of humans in creation and the power of technology to outrun human control haunt Brave New World. Both texts depict visions of possible outcomes from technology gone awry, offering a warning to readers about the unchecked use of new developments and ideas.
After the publication of Brave New World, dystopian science fiction novels increased in popularity. George Orwell's 1984 demonstrates the dangerous potential of totalitarian governments, drawing on forms of mind control that are similar to those used first in Huxley's novel. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, censorship is taken even further. Instead of locking books away, in Fahrenheit 451 they are publicly burnt.
However, both 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 present societies dependent on labour enforced by violence, whereas the characters in Brave New World are coerced into cooperation by genetic engineering, drugging and brainwashing. Like the science fiction works that came before it and those that followed (like Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), Brave New World throws current beliefs about human existence into question.
A 7-minute BBC interview with Huxley about Brave New World
