Aldous Huxley’s Early Novels: An Unfolding Dialogue About Pain

The article examines four early novels by Aldous Huxley – Crome Yellow, Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves and Point Counter Point – in connection to each other and to Huxley’s essays, in terms of an overarching theme of a cycle of pain, and thereby connects the novels to Brave New World. In the course of the analysis, the methodological problems of approaching the novels as ‘‘novels of ideas” are discussed, focusing on the problem of reducing characters to type, which makes it more difficult for readers to notice the way Huxley constructs individual characters and the arguments he wishes to explore with them. Finally, implications of the existence of this overarching theme for reading strategies are discussed.