Katharine
Winston's wife, from whom he separated about eleven years before the book opens. Tall, fair and handsome, and, in his account, the most completely orthodox mind he ever encountered. He nicknamed her the human sound-track.
To do her duty to the Party, which is the phrase she uses. She has two names for the weekly performance: "making a baby" and "our duty to the Party", and she keeps it up long after it is plain that it is not working.
The book
At a glance
- Winston's wife, remembered rather than seen
- About fifteen months together; separated roughly eleven years ago
- Tall, fair-haired, very straight, with a bold aquiline face
- Not divorced — the Party does not permit it — and, so far as Winston knows, alive
- Part One, Chapter 6; Part Two, Chapter 3
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeKatharine appears only in Winston's memory, and mostly in one chapter of Part One while he is trying to write down something else. They were together about fifteen months. The Party does not permit divorce but encourages separation where there are no children, and they parted after she agreed to stop trying to conceive. He is not sure she is not still alive, and for days at a time he forgets he was ever married.
He describes her as tall and fair-haired, very straight, with splendid movements and a bold aquiline face one might have called noble until one discovered there was as nearly as possible nothing behind it. He decided early that she had the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind he had ever encountered: not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and no imbecility she would not swallow if the Party handed it to her.
What made the marriage unbearable was not that but sex. She stiffened at his touch, and even while holding him seemed to be pushing him away with all her strength. He could have lived with her celibate, he says, but it was Katharine who insisted. They must produce a child if they could. So it happened once a week, quite regularly, and she reminded him in the mornings when the evening was due.
One memory does something more than despise her. On a community hike in Kent, three or four months after the wedding, they lost the others and came out at the edge of a chalk quarry with a sheer drop of ten or twenty metres. Winston pointed out a clump of loosestrife growing in two colours from one root and put a hand on her waist to steady her while she leaned out, and it struck him how completely alone they were. Julia, hearing the story eleven years later, asks why he did not give her a good shove. Winston says he is sorry he did not, and then says that it would have made no difference.
How the book draws them
- The human sound-trackWinston's private nickname for her. She had no thought in her head that was not a slogan, and could swallow anything the Party handed out. Julia, told the story, recognises the type immediately without needing the Newspeak word for it.
- SubmittingEmbracing her was like embracing a jointed wooden image. She lay with shut eyes, neither resisting nor co-operating, and Winston's word for it is submitting. He calls it extraordinarily embarrassing, and after a while horrible.
- The reminderShe used to remind him in the morning of what had to be done that evening and must not be forgotten. He grew to feel positive dread when the appointed day came round.
- Julia already knowsBefore Winston has finished the story, Julia describes the stiffening body and the pushing-away as though she had felt it, and supplies the phrase "our duty to the Party" herself. She says they run sex talks once a month for the over-sixteens and rub it in for years.
- The chalk quarryThe single scene the book gives her in full: the wrong turning, the sheer drop, the two-coloured loosestrife, her fretful return to look, and his hand on her waist. Nothing happens. He tells it as the thing he is sorry about.