The resulting seduction scene is a farce, with neither Lenina nor John knowing what the other is really thinking or feeling. Lenina's plan is straightforward — a direct invitation, undressing, a few lines of a love song, and sex will most certainly follow. But John's view of romance takes a more complex form. Both the traditions of Malpais and the poetry of Shakespeare demand a period of trials, an enforced labor, that will earn the lover the right to marry his beloved.
But trials, labor, and marriage have no meaning in the dystopia. In continuing her sexual approach, Lenina unknowingly steps outside the boundaries that John's education have set down for a worthy women. In John's eyes, if Lenina is not a prize to be won through suffering, then she must be a whore — a "strumpet" to be scorned.
John's early experience has taught him to associate sex with violence, and his conditioning suddenly takes over as his romantic vision of Lenina disappears. As he shakes her violently, slaps and threatens to kill her, he mutters Shakespeare's most passionate verses about unfaithful women, the "drums and music" of the fierce poetry goading him on in his fury. Again, Huxley underlines the relationship of music with the disappearance of inhibition and the expression of strong emotion. John's outburst here looks forward to his later violent passions after leaving London — especially the "atonement" that ends in his death.
