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But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound. He could hear the woman singing and the scrape of her shoes on the flagstones, and the cries of children in the street, and somewhere in the far distance a faint roar of traffic, and yet the room seemed curiously silent, thanks to the absence of a telescreen.

In Book Two, Chapter 4, Winston returns to the sentiment he expressed in Book One, Chapter 7 about the proles being the best prospect for the future of humanity (“If there is hope, it lies in the proles”). This is triggered by Winston hearing a strong-looking woman (described in the book as “monstrous” and with “brawny red forearms”) singing while she works. From this point forward, the hearty woman will appear at key moments in the novel and serve as a symbol of Winston’s hope. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Symbol: The Red-Armed Prole Woman (the first quote).

Her voice floated upward with the sweet summer air, very tuneful, charged with a sort of happy melancholy. One had the feeling that she would have been perfectly content if the June evening had been endless and the supply of clothes inexhaustible, to remain there for a thousand years, pegging out diapers and singing rubbish. It struck him as a curious fact that he had never heard a member of the Party singing alone and spontaneously.

Here, another quote about the woman Winston sees signing in Book Two, Chapter 4 provides another opportunity to discuss her impact on Winston’s thoughts about society and the prospects for rebellion. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Symbol: The Red-Armed Prole Woman (the second quote).

‘And do you know what I’m going to do next? I’m going to get hold of a real woman’s frock from somewhere and wear it instead of these bloody trousers. I’ll wear silk stockings and high-heeled shoes! In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.’

Julia speaks this quote to Winston in Book Two, Chapter 4, in the apartment above Mr. Charrington’s shop that she and Winston use for their trysts after she commits the illegal acts of putting on makeup and perfume to assert her individuality and free will. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Character: Julia (the fifth quote).

‘I don’t think it’s anything—I mean, I don’t think it was ever put to any use. That’s what I like about it. It’s a little chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter. It’s a message from a hundred years ago, if one knew how to read it.’

In this quote from Book Two, Chapter 4, Winston describes the meaning of the paperweight he purchased in Book One, Chapter 8 as a tangible connection to the last past. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Character: Winston (the sixth quote) and in in Quotes by Symbol: The Glass Paperweight & St. Clement’s Church (the fourth quote).

The inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself. There was such a depth of it, and yet it was almost as transparent as air. It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

This closing passage to Book Two, Chapter 4, ties together the children’s rhyme about the church bells of bygone London and the glass paperweight that captures Winston’s imagination. The explanation for this quote in Quotes by Symbol: The Glass Paperweight & St. Clement’s Church (the fifth quote) suggests that Orwell connects the glass paperweight to the apartment about Mr. Charrington’s shop where Winston and Julia secretly meet.

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