In this chapter, Huxley introduces the dystopian combination of religion and sex, featuring a date in a cathedral/cabaret juxtaposed with a spiritual ritual that ends in an orgy.
Henry and Lenina's dinner and dancing evening emphasizes the artificiality of their world. The night is clear and starry, but they are unaware of the stars at all because of the overpowering electric sky-signs that light up London. In this point, Huxley's response to his own era — artificial light already dominating the city night — strongly influences his ideas about the futuristic world.
Inside Westminster Abbey Cabaret — the new use for the historical, venerable site where English kings and queens were once crowned — the domed ceiling offers another sky altogether: a tropical sunset. Perception is also modified by the soma served at dinner so that everyone and everything seems delightful. Even the music is synthetic — a proudly advertised feature of the cabaret. Emotions, music, scenery — all the elements of romance come already engineered by the state.
The evening ends, as conventionally it should, with recreational, non-productive sex. Huxley closes the chapter before describing Henry and Lenina's love-making, but leaves the reader to infer that it will be just as artificial and manipulated as the rest of the evening.
Bernard's "orgy-porgy" Solidarity Service — the biweekly pseudo-religious meeting — parallels in many ways Lenina's date with Henry. Music and soma play important parts in the evening, enhancing mood and eliminating any inhibitions. On their date, Lenina and Henry's soma serves as a kind of after-dinner brandy, while it becomes, in the Solidarity Service, a surrogate for the bread and wine of the Christian Eucharist. In the service, soma and sex represent union with a Greater Being and with each other.
