Contents Page
Introduction……………………………………………………………………….. 3
Chapter 1: The Island of Doctor Moreau………………………………………………. 16
Chapter 2: The War of the Worlds……………………………………………………..... 29
Chapter 3: The Time Machine……………………………………………………………. 39
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….... 52
Works Cited……………………………………………………………………….. 55 Introduction
Throughout history, mankind has continued to act on their belief that they are a superior species that must master and control the natural world. From the beginning of human existence, our species made tools to hunt and manipulate nature into becoming shelters for protection.
While this dominance of nature was largely founded on the species’ need for survival, as society has progressed mankind is no longer faced with the dangers of living in the wilderness, but this compulsion to control nature has remained. Simon Estok describes this fear of and need to control natures as “an adaptive strategy that is now perhaps as useful for our survival as other long obsolete adaptations: the appendix, the tailbone, wisdom teeth, and so on” (“Tracking
Ecophobia” 31). Further to the opposing of nature being an obsolete thought process, it has led to the destructive habits that have largely contributed to today’s ecological crisis. The Anthropocene
– the period in which mankind became a global force of environmental destruction – began with the invention of steam engine, where mankind exploited the land and increased their dominance over it through science and technology. This invention lead to the industrial revolution where mankind continued to separate itself from the natural world and celebrate their ability to manipulate nature for their own advancement.
Alongside a history of controlling the natural world is a literary cannon that largely provides hegemonic reinforcement of mankind’s superiority and mastery of nature. Ancient religious scholars in Britain argued that the earth was created for the human species, because
“the biblical imperative about human relations with nature gives man (a man, actually: Adam) divine authority to control everything that lives” (Estok, Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading
Ecophobia 5). Many of the most famous plays and novels written since have featured human protagonists overcoming the harsh threats of the natural world; leaving behind a literary cannon where writers are “first imagining agency and intent in nature and then quashing that imagined agency and intent” (6). However, the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the
Species (1865) offered a new perspective of the natural world. The theory of natural selection de- centered mankind by demonstrating that human history was only a fraction of natural history, as well as highlighting that mankind had a strong connection to his surrounding ecosystem. While the publication was influential on Darwin’s Victorian contemporaries, readers interpreted the theory of natural selection in multiple ways that supported the anthropocentric attitudes that had been reinforced for centuries. Consequently, the Victorian literary cannon witnessed “a set of discourses struggling, and sometimes competing, to define nature and our relations to it” (Gold
216).
Amongst the Victorian writers who struggled to equate Darwin’s de-centering of mankind with their rigid anthropocentric perspective was H.G. Wells. Wells had a long and prolific career writing novels, articles, social commentary and textbooks that were inspired by both Darwinism and his own political opinions. This thesis will focus on his early novels The Time Machine
(1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and The War of the Worlds (1897), which were three commercial successes that launched his career and helped establish the genre of science fiction.
Wells’ novels were praised for their originality by his contemporaries, because they reflected
Victorian attitudes towards Darwinism and explored public anxieties relating to the future evolution of mankind. Prior to writing these novels, Wells had studied biology under the evolutionist Huxley, taken a further interest in social Darwinist arguments and developed his critique of society as a journalist. This combination placed him in a unique position for constructing terrifying dystopias that predicted how the social issues of the Victorian era could lead to the extinction of mankind. Wells based all these novels on the belief that mankind had the power to change the path of their future evolution. Like a great deal of fiction throughout the centuries, it made the assumption that humans have superior cognitive faculties that make them separate from and masters of the natural world. His adaption of Darwinism to form the basis of his stories about the fictional futures of mankind recognised this interconnectivity of mankind and nature. However, by using elements of social Darwinism to make arguments for social reform, he manipulated this potentially environmentalist message so that it served a more anthropocentric viewpoint, where nature’s position is dictated by mankind rather than the other way around.
This thesis will consider the early writings of Wells from the perspective of ecocriticism, in order to identify negative, Victorian attitudes towards the environment that have contributed to today’s ecological crisis. Ecocriticism is a strand of literary criticism that can be summarised as
“the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” (Goltfelty xviii).
Mirroring environmentalists, ecocritics primarily believe that the current ecological crisis needs to be addressed through increased awareness about mankind’s treatment of the natural world.
The many literary critics who have contributed to this field of criticism have mapped a history of destructive habits of thought regarding the environment that have resulted in nature’s exploitation. These thought processes have been founded on the continued belief that “people were meant to exercise dominion over nature, or that nature is a passive receptacle of the fertilizing human mind, or that limitless growth is the essence of human social destiny”
(Newman 2). The Island of Doctor Moreau, The War of the World and The Time Machine all reflect these destructive habits of thought, by reinforcing an anthropocentric perspective that mankind is the center of the universe and must control nature. By suggesting mankind’s superiority over and separation from nature, Victorian readers were encouraged to feel detached from nature and lose any sense of responsibility regarding the damage they were inflicting upon it.
Through the lens of ecocriticism, this thesis will assert that Wells manipulated the writings of Darwin to support his anthropocentric notion of a quasi-socialist utopia where mankind was separate from and dominant over nature. Further, it will argue that Wells’ dystopias negatively show a loss of the nature/culture and human/non-human divide, in order to frighten the reader into social reform. By showing worlds where mankind was no longer the most dominant life force on the earth or no longer separate from the animals, Wells could invoke the reader’s fear that mankind might not permanently have the dominant role that Victorians presumed was a birthright dictated by God. While this preached a message of interconnectivity with nature, it fuelled the notion that mankind was in opposition with nature and must defend their separation and mastery over it. Through both his anthropocentric message and his method of increasing fear of the environment to reinforce it, Wells’ contributed to what Glen A. Love describes in Practical Criticism (2003) as the residual fear of nineteenth-century abuses of evolutionary theory that have contributed to today’s negative treatment of the environment.
Darwinism in the Victorian Era
Wells was a topical writer whose works reflected and responded to the public anxieties about Darwinism and the political conflict of the Victorian era. At the time that Wells wrote The
Island of Doctor Moreau, The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, there was heavy criticism by public figures about the immorality and damaging effects of capitalism. The late nineteenth century had witnessed the negative repercussions of vast expansion and capitalist ambition, which had led to a problematic population increase, wealth disparities creating widening class divides and the aftermath of excessive urbanisation. Public outspokenness criticising the effects of capitalism was fuelled by the writings of Karl Marx and other socialist campaigners, whose publications were made easily available through the creation of printing presses and other media platforms. On the Origin of the Species was also extremely influential during this time of political and cultural conflict, because the book allowed for numerous, vastly different interpretations that could be used to both support or challenge capitalism. The most notable interpretation of mankind’s place in evolution for arguments within politics were the arguments made by social Darwinists. Social Darwinism allowed for the “justification of rampant capitalism, ruthless competition and unregulated economic individualism; a harsh doctrine praising survivors and victors and damning the unfit” (Crook, Darwinism: The Political
Implications 19). The theory tailored Darwin’s arguments to fit popular meditations of high and mass culture, such as arguments about degeneration that had fuelled prison reforms, the
Contagious Diseases Act and imperial aggression. It not only justified the dominance of the upper classes within society, but it often dismissed the labouring classes as “a mass of degenerates – being most exposed to unhygienic conditions over long generations” (28).
Socialists tried to expose these arguments as falsehood, by exposing “self-made men who were not necessarily the best eugenic types, nor even (according to Galton’s own theory of regression to the average) certain to produce equally talented offspring” (23). In both instances, Darwinism was manipulated to support a vast array of conflicting political ideologies.
While the political landscape in the late nineteenth century held contradictions, there was a strong cultural focus on the importance of self-development, moral earnestness and hard work, which was heavily threatened by the perceived degradation and social decline. The turn of the century – a period coined the ‘fin de siècle’ – was marked by ennui, political pessimism, aestheticism and decadence that were making the upper classes less isolated and dominant in society. Mirroring the use of Darwinism in politics, there was public anxiety that if society was regressing then mankind could regress back into the animals they had evolved from. The lower classes were considered by many as only slightly more evolved than animals, and in some cases the upper classes – having seen the violence of political revolts in Britain and neighbouring countries – questioned their ability to stay dominant over the ‘savage’ classes. Considerations of the evolutionary impact of this social decline “spawned a sense of impotence and a frenzy of activity” (Graff 35). There was a great deal of pessimism about the future of the species if degradation and social decline continued; Michel Serres describes how On the Origin of the
Species was frequently interpreted as a "myth of death, [which expresses a] greater likelihood of extinction than progress" (qtd. in Beer 9). There was a rise in social anxiety about whether society’s perceived regression would lead to humans taking a more animal form in the future.
Texts like Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s Zoological Philosophy (1809) or Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) demonstrated how these arguments affected mankind’s perception of the natural world and the human/animal boundary that had previously remained unchallenged. As Samantha Haas discusses: “The extension and consolidation of empire, industrialization, the emergence of animal welfare organizations, the anti-vivisection movement, and the rise of veterinary medicine all involved significant changes in human interactions with, and perceptions of, animals” (Mckechnie 439). It was these political uncertainties surround social Darwinism, social decline, socialism and the human/animal divide that were inspirations for the early works of Wells.
H.G. Wells and Darwinism
The famous biologist Huxley taught Wells at university and continued to have a strong influence of his writings throughout Wells’ career. Huxley believed that if humanity was to prevent extinction, people would need to use scientific objectivity to govern mankind, in order to ensure they didn’t revert to purely instinctual and selfish impulses. His writings promoted the ability of mankind to intervene with the process of evolution through the “artificial” means of a carefully governed society, which was a doctrine Wells adopted from the start of his career.
While Wells agreed that the social decline and degradation of the period was endangering the future evolution of mankind, he came from a humble background and stood against capitalism’s use of Darwinism to justify the oppression of the lower classes. Wells believed that poorer classes were as inherently intelligent and adapted for survival as the higher classes, but felt their perceived lower status was due to a lack of education. Wells’ writings reflect his opinion that mankind’s survival was dependent upon cooperation and scientific objectivity, arguing that society must adopt these principles to ensure that the mankind was taking steps to control how the species evolved, rather than relying on natural selection.
Wells’ writings were deeply representative of many of the Victorian attitudes towards the relationship between evolution and society. He benefitted from the literary trend that used
Darwin’s theory of evolution to contribute to the blurring of the gap between science and fantasy.
Equally, he drew from the abundant satire of the period through his prediction of the future of mankind, which exaggerated the potential effects of society’s decline, where in fantastical worlds there had been irreversible damage to the survival of mankind because of continued degradation.
He was also part of a genre of dystopian tales that “not only provided a dynamic vehicle for fictionalizing concerns about an increasingly urbanized humanity, they also examined the social implications of evolution itself” (Brake and Hook 280). Wells was utopian in his ideals of a society that functioned towards becoming an increasingly advanced species through a cooperative World State, believing that “moral theory should be deduced from an ideal social state” (Jonsson 295). Instead of a society based on the individual needs of those in Victorian society, he encouraged the population to fit itself to an imaginary ideal, which was best explored through fiction of this genre. This ideal was one where mankind cooperated to control the evolution of the species, under the flawed guidance of what was deemed ‘scientific objectivism’, which incorporated many aspects of social Darwinist arguments. The political hegemony that
Wells reinforced through his adoption of social Darwinists arguments have frequently repelled scholars within the humanities, as these ideologies have since allowed for the persecution of minority groups under the guise of scientific objectivity. For example, Joseph Carrol dismisses social Darwinism as a value-laden misinterpretation of evolutionary theory in Literary
Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature and Literature (2004), which acted in the detriment of both minority groups and the environment. Wells’ particular misinterpretation of evolutionary theory was due to his preexisting anthropocentricism; mirroring how political figures throughout history have justified slavery or incarceration of the mentally ill through Darwinism because of their preexisting, bigoted misunderstanding of these minorities.
Wells and Ecocriticism
This thesis will use the principles of ecocriticism to demonstrate how Wells’ manipulation of Darwinism supports his anthropocentric perspective that mankind is separate from and master of the natural world. Ecocriticism “takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies”
(Glotfelty xviii), thereby allowing critics to expose the negative, anthropocentric perspectives of the environment that literature has historically reinforced. The literary approach emerged in the
1980s when critics began to celebrate the environment through nature writing. However, this study will adhere to the more recent, second-wave of ecocriticism that (according to literary critic Greg Garrad) uses cultural artifacts to consider how the interconnections between nature and culture are frequently portrayed. Literary texts show a history of portraits of the environment that are founded on basic assumptions and attitudes that the author held about mankind and nature. In some cases, the way the environment is described intentionally addresses cultural preconceptions about the environment, in order to challenge or reinforce them through an environmentalist message. However, in most instances – including the works of Wells – the author’s prejudices towards nature are merely the repetition of hegemonic beliefs of the period and the connotations of their writings are meaningful but accidental. This thesis will build on critics who have shown how famous works throughout history have been “anthropocentric and dualist, implying that we humans are the center, surrounded by everything that is not us, the environment” (Glotfelty xx). It will assert that Wells roots himself in Darwinism, but reinforces the human/non-human and nature/culture dualisms rather than de-center mankind within the larger framework of natural history.
Wells’ novels make the assumption that mankind’s social decline and unjust treatment of the working classes could lead to the regression into a primitive species, which would eventually break down society and leave only the ‘anarchy’ of the natural world. Wells’ recognition of the interconnectivity of mankind and nature mirrors arguments by eco-marxists like Raymond
Williams, who discusses that “the conquest of nature, the domination of nature, the exploitation of nature” is “derived from the real human practices and relations between men and men”
(Problems in Materialism and Culture 84). Wells recognized within his premises that the way society is governed changes mankind’s relationship with its surroundings and “the economy as
“embedded” in the social and natural environment” (Lowy 122). However, Wells dismissed the effects of capitalism on the environment and focused purely on the effects on the labourer. This heavily conflicts with ecocriticism and environmentalism today, which aims to: Foster a new sort of ethical consciousness at the core of which is the conviction that
people should treat all things in nature as equals, as beings with ethical standing. If such a
consciousness can be reproduced widely enough, it is argued, there will follow a
paradigm shift that will go far toward reversing a continuing history of destruction
(Newman 20).
It is Wells’ anthropocentric prioritising of mankind over nature that has contributed to what
Goltfelty describes as the “limited humanistic vision has led to a narrowing anthropocentric view of what is consequential in life” (Goltfelty xxix) that continues to spread apathy towards exploitation of nature today.
In addition to Wells’ anthropocentric privileging of mankind’s interest over nature, his method of collapsing the dualisms between human/non-human and nature/culture to frighten the reader into social reform actually increases unjustified phobias of the environment. While the status quo during the late nineteenth century was that mankind was the “splendidly endowed end-produce of evolution…. a creature of civilisation and culture” (Crook, Darwin’s Coat-tails
10), conflicting arguments had emerged to suggest humans were nothing more than “a barely domesticated brute” (10). At a time of such great uncertainty about mankind’s birthright on
Earth, Wells’ threat of humanity’s loss of dominance and progression towards extinction exaggerated the existing social anxiety of the reader. The depiction of nature within Wells’ writings, as an object to be feared, is the manifestation of the author’s “ecophobia” – a term coined in 1995 by theorist Estok. Ecophobia is the “irrational and groundless hatred of the natural world, as present and subtle in our daily lives and literature as homophobia and racism and sexism” (qtd. in Gerrard 47). Critics like Edward Wilson have argued that the ungrounded, negative connotations mankind holds about the natural world have largely fuelled the current ecological crisis. Estok writes that “the rapid disappearance of species of which Wilson speaks so eloquently and persuasively has many causes, but among these ecophobia is dominant (Estok,
Narrativizing Science 146). The controversial term has emerged from ecocritical literary theory and opened up “opportunities to study nature in ways similar to the ways terms such as misogyny, racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism open up studies of the representations of women, race, sexuality, and Jewishness respectively” (Estok, Ecocriticism and Shakespeare:
Reading Ecophobia 2).
Further to Wells depicting nature as a threat to society, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The
War of the Worlds and The Time Machine also reinforce the myth that mankind must be in control of nature. Harold Fromm writes in “From Transcendence to Obsolescence” that ecophobia comes from the recognition that we cannot control nature, but have created a history of storytelling that allows mankind to falsely believe it is in their power. He argues: “In lieu of the ability to mold Nature to serve his own ends, man had chosen to extol and mythify that side of his being that seemed to transcend Nature by inhabiting universes of thought that Nature could not naysay” (Fromm 30). Wells exemplifies this myth that the environment should be controlled, by portraying dystopias where humans no longer control nature and this has led to nightmarish consequences. Wells encourages the reader to act on these anxieties by separating themselves from the dangers of nature by addressing social decline; thereby taking control over their own future evolution and defending their dominance over nature. Ultimately, this message reflected and reinforced the unfounded Victorian belief that nature is “the hateful object in need of our control, the loathed and feared thing that can only result in tragedy if left in control” (Estok,
Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia 6). This thesis will demonstrate that the vicious imagery associated with Wells’ dystopias is intended to encourage the education of the poor and provide criticism of the decadent lifestyles of his wealthy, Victorian contemporaries. However, his suggestion that mankind can lose their separation from nature in the future reinforces that these dualisms exists in the present day.
Therefore, Wells reinforced what philosopher Val Plumword calls “the hyperseparated binaries that assert that humans are separate from the rest of the living world” (qtd. in Solvic 6), which is the fundamental misapprehension that has historically justified the exploitation of nature. Further to demonstrating Wells’ assumption of mankind’s separation from nature, this thesis will show how these dystopia encourage the reader to fear the environment. It will argue that these anxieties related to the environment were irrational during the Victorian period, but cultural artifacts like literature prolonged the mythology that nature was in opposition with culture.
Carroll argues: “Throughout most of our evolutionary history, an alert attentiveness to the natural world would have been crucial to our survival, and the latent emotional responsiveness that attends this adaptive function has not disappeared with the advent of controlled climates and supermarket foods” (qtd. in Estok, Tracking Ecophobia 32). In studying Wells’ reinforcement of the falsified threat of nature to society, this thesis will considered how this canonised author has aided to the progression of ecophobic attitudes.
Through comparison of The Island of Doctor Moreau, The War of the Worlds and The
Time Machine, the thesis will show Wells’ prediction of the same dystopia for mankind in each novel: that degradation of the working classes will lead to their regression into a primitive, non- human species that will revolt against the more civilized upper classes. In “Chapter 1: The Island of Doctor Moreau”, the working are represented through the Beast Folk who eventually revolt against their drunken, decadent masters using primal violence. In “Chapter 2: The War of the Worlds” the Martians represent the future of labouring classes who become deformed due to their excessive proximity with technology. This affiliation with machinery results in a loss of altruism and consequently the Martian use this technology to destroy humanity. Finally, “Chapter 3: The
Time Machine” very explicitly identifies this loss of a human/animal divide using the working classes’ evolution into the Morlocks. Having lived underground with the technology they have previously used to serve the upper classes, the working class have become monstrous cannibals.
Their cruelty and lack of morality allow them to become masters of this new world, where the remaining humans have been turned into cattle. By demonstrated the continued repetition of the ungrounded, terrifying predictions for human evolution should society fail to address social decline, the thesis will show how Wells reinforces the need to defend its positions as masters of the natural world. It is Wells’ use of anthropocentric manipulations of Darwinism, repetition of extreme dualisms and excessive use of ecophobia that perpetuate the negative attitudes towards the environment. Through analysis of these themes, the thesis will determine how Wells encouraged destructive thought processes amongst his contemporaries and the continued effects this has left on today’s readers. Chapter 1: The Island of Doctor Moreau H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau is a satirical fable that shows a fictional world where degradation has led to a loss of the dualisms that separate mankind from nature. It draws on Victorian phobias that a loss of the human/animal and nature/culture divides would lead to the breakdown of society and the regression of mankind into untamed animals. The post-Darwinist era was marked by public anxieties that the divinely orchestrated divides between human/non- human and culture/nature could be lost if mankind didn’t take control of their future evolution.
This unsettling notion that a society in moral decline might lead to the loss of humanity was strongly fuelled by popular arguments of social Darwinists, eugenics scholars and the literary trend of authors focusing on the social implications of evolution. In the case of the latter, the period tended to bring negative connotations to the perception of nature by exploring the hypothetic collapse of these dualisms through hybrid creatures in gothic fiction. Characters such as the ape-like Mr. Hyde in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) or the werewolf in
Alexandre Dumas’ The Wolf Leader (1857) associated mankind’s fusing with nature as a horrifying loss of morality and increased violence. In doing this, the literary trend projected the ecophobic belief that mankind’s lack of separation from and dominance over the environment would put the human species in danger.
The Island of Doctor Moreau continued this trend by using the terrifying threat of animalised man to stimulate an emotional response to raise awareness of social issues that might lead to society’s descent into chaos. By describing this loss of the human/animal divide within the novel, Wells makes the assumption that this dualistic divide exists in the first place and that the loss of a divide from nature would have negative consequences. This chapter explores how
The Island of Doctor Moreau anchors its political message in ecophobic social anxieties, by drawing disturbing comparisons between the degradation of Victorian society and the violence of the natural world. It will assert that by suggesting moral decline could lead to a loss of mankind’s separation from nature and that this would result in a nightmarish dystopia, Wells is reinforcing ecophobic hatred of the environment and the need for mankind to control nature.
The narrator of The Island of Doctor Moreau is the archetype of a wealthy, well-educated
Victorian gentleman, who reinforces the status quo that man is separate to nature. Pendrick has exceedingly humane qualities that distance him from the savages of the island, breaking with
Wells' signature style of casting narrators that are under-developed and often unnamed. Pendrick proves his humanity within the first chapter by avoiding a fight to the death that leaves him the sole survivor of the Lady Vain. He has also studied biology under Huxley, which is associated with the dominance of nature because of its use of the manipulation of animals or vegetation during experiments. This is noted by Francis Bacon in New Atlantis – a novel that strongly influenced Victorian attitudes toward the treatment of animals and vivisection – which states that science demonstrates a “power over nature and with man’s proper place as separate from animals and close to God” (qtd. in Vint 86). This attitude is echoed when Pendrick relates this memory of doing experiments by removing “the ovary of the earthworm and the radula of the snail and all that” (Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau 7). Pendrick is a relatable character who the reader relies on to tell the story accurately, and therefore his anthropocentric beliefs are likely to influence the reader’s interpretation of the tale.
Despite Pendrick’s belief that man is the master of nature, he is witness to the collapse of the boundaries that justify such a separation when he encounters the Beast Folk. While he eventually accepts this collapse, his reluctance to believe it leads him to discover the origin of the Beast Folk much later than the reader. Pendrick is self-aware that he is narrating a story that seems impossible and therefore appeals directly to reader by describing it as a “horrible, and far stranger” (1) version of the report he has previously given about the shipwreck. This appeal helps the reader to indulge its implausibility, but his self-awareness provides hegemonic reinforcement that it is ‘normal’ for Victorians to believe these dualisms exist in real life. Consequently, the narrator asks the reader to break with reality and dismisses the loss of dualisms within the novel as fantastical, which is emphasized further by Wells’ inclusion of a Satyr among Dr. Moreau’s creations in homage to classical mythology
Wells’ comparison between the Beast Folk and the working class allow the reader to see how a similar collapse in the division between man and animal could occur with further social decline of the poor. In the late Victorian era it was common for wealthier classes to refer to the working class as ‘savage’; therefore, the association between the poor and animals in the wilderness had already been naturalised. The reader is encouraged to make this connection even prior to the appearance of the Beast Folk, through the vulgar sailors who have been living in squalor away from civilised society. While recovering consciousness after being rescued from the shipwreck, Pendrick is continually distracted by the barking of dogs and the activity of the sailors, which he hears simultaneously in the background. He is then shocked that the boat is
“anything but clean” (9), due to the crew refusing to clean up after the animals onboard. The association of the poor hygiene of animals and the working class sailors is poignant for the
Victorian reader, as acts of charity often included “scrubbing, aimed to confer dignity by returning the poor creature’s human appearance” (Ottis 487). Further to the setting and background noise, a more direct comparison is made when Pendrick meets the crew, who are racist towards Black-Face and led by an abusive, alcoholic captain. The captain is particularly violent towards Pendrick, threatening to “cut out his blasted insides” (Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau 15) and deciding to throw him overboard once they get to the island. The justification the captain gives for his behavior is “I’m the law here” (15). The crew are ungoverned by a structured society, implying that any humanity he might express on land was from fear of punishment rather than a commitment to the ethical standards that distinguishes mankind from animals. This same argument between the association of the sailors and the Beast
Folk is made by literary critic Taneja, who states that “just as the lower class members of London were given homogenized and animalized nineteenth century discourses drawing on evolutionary language, so too the British sailors of Moreau are treated as a monolithic group and identified closely with the grisly stage hounds” (Taneja 150). While the aforementioned similarity does not completely collapse the human/non-human dualisms, it uses a realistic setting to demonstrate how close the working class are to becoming human/non-human hybrids.
On the island, Wells continues to insinuate that the Beast Folk represent the future decline of the working class by placing them in submissive, service roles and showing their slow descent into criminality. The Beast Folk take on the roles of cooks, guards and butlers for the biologists working on the island, and are denied the middle class pleasures of brandy, meat, material assets and intellectual pursuits. The suggestion that their lack of wealth or status might correlate with their continual breaking of the law is made by Montgomery after one of his rabbits is eaten by the Beast Folk. He states that: “I showed him how to skin and cook a rabbit” (Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau 113), consciously suggesting the feasting was learned behavior, but unconsciously also linking the cook’s crime to its service role. As they are working class, the
Beast Folk are denied the luxury of meat and the desire to obtain it has overridden their desire to uphold the law. When capital punishment is used as justice for the murdering of the rabbit,
Pendrick highlights the Beast's similarity to humans: “seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal attitude, with the light gleaming in its eyes, and it’s imperfectly human face distorted with terror, I realized the fact of its humanity” (122). By reminding the reader of the Beast’s humanity,
Pendrick draws attention to the circumstances surrounding the crime and its similarity to savage labourers. This crime represented “long-standing anxiety about the effect of extreme poverty upon the religious and moral habits of the working class” (Collini 31). Like the poor,
Montgomery describes the moral decline of the Beast Folk, saying that they experience
“cravings, instincts, desires that harm humanity, a strange reservoir to burst suddenly and inundate the whole being of the creature with anger, hate, or fear” (Wells, The Island of Doctor
Moreau 99). These moments of primitive behavior are very similar to those of the sailors, who also threatened violence when angered. This comparison associates the two species through unethical behavior, but the crimes are only committed by the Beast Folk. The Beast Folk’s lower moral integrity acts as a warning about what these sailors might become if they continue to act on the primitive, ‘savage’ drives that are associated with nature rather than humanity.
The correlation between the Beast Folk and crime is partially explained by their lack of education, which is a circumstance the poor were also affected by in Victorian society. Where social Darwinists believed that the poor were “natural inferiors to their white masters who were elevated to the top of the evolutionary ladder” (Taneja 148), Wells argued that they were as inherently intelligent as the higher classes, but were denied the education that would allow them to reach their full potential. The novel demonstrates how the middle and upper classes withhold education to maintain their superiority, as well as showing how this ultimately leads to the moral decline of the working class. Initially, all three biologists have a false sense of security that the poor education of the Beast Folk will keep them submissive. They teach the Beast Folk simple
English skills and counting that allow them to fulfill service roles but nothing more intellectually fulfilling. Montgomery states this when he explains that “in spite of their increased intelligence… they had certain Fixed Ideas implanted by Moreau in their minds, which absolutely bounded their imaginations” (Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau 103). Further, an explanation of the Beast Folk’s origin is delivered to Pendrick in “Schoolboy Latin” (84), which
Pendrick alone can understand because of his elite, middle class education. While this limited education keeps the Beast Folk submissive, it also limits their understanding of why the law exists and therefore reduces their commitment to uphold it. The Beast Folk have learnt the laws of the island through a chant that they have rhythmically memorised through the repetition of
“that is the Law. Are we not men?” (76) rather than having fully grasped the reasoning behind these lessons. They are not fully aware of their origins so they cannot appreciate the rules are to stop their decent into a fully animal form. This mirrors Wells’ perception of the working class, who were equally becoming animalised because their lack of education led to a limited understanding of the importance of morality.
The consequences of this poor education are further shown when the Beast People are no longer governed by the middle class biologists and their education is forgotten at a similar rate to the increase in violence. Victorians believed that education “will slip away unless integrated into a receptive structure” (Ottis 500) and this structure is lost without the higher cultural values of the human biologists. Initially, the Dog Man is at his most articulate and seems determined to uphold the law, saying “We love the law, and will keep it; but there is no pain, no Master, no
Whips for ever again” (Wells, Island of Doctor Moreau 156). Pendrick feels safe in the first few weeks, until he notices the Beast Folk “slipping their hold upon speech” (162) signifying that they are becoming more animal-like and that the violence of the natural world will shortly emerge. This correlation is not merely the result of no longer fearing punishment, but also a loss of understanding of what the laws are and therefore an inability to feel ashamed of committing crimes. When Moreau recalls the creation his first creature, he describes how it climbed up a tree to rebel against two bullying Kanakas; thereby breaking the laws Moreau had set to discourage the creature regressing back to its animalistic behaviours. His behaviour is corrected when
Moreau reminds him of the law, explaining to “him the inhumanity of such a proceeding, aroused his sense of shame” (97). Once language is lost after the Beast Folk’s revolt, this sense of shame is no longer felt because the chant that taught them the law has been lost. When
Pendrick witnesses a Hyaena-Swine attacking the St. Bernard creature, he says “it was not afraid or ashamed; the last vestige of the human taint had vanished” (167). Therefore, Pendrick sees this shame that is learnt through education and knowledge as central to definitions of humanity.
The horrifying image of Beast Folk being unable to use language and therefore losing their understanding of ethics could be conceived as the need to educate the working class. However, the notion of language being purely human is anthropocentric, because as David Abram discusses in “The Discourse of the Birds”: “Birds have ceaselessly inspired us with their mellifluous and polyphonic utterances, undoubtedly instilling some of our earliest impulses towards song and spoken language” (273). In essence, by using language as the sole communicator of morality within the novel, Wells encourages ecophobia by ignoring that other species communicate with one another and the altruism that inherently exists within the animal kingdom.
The decline of the working class into a human/animal hybrid has horrific connotations because the degradation has made the upper classes weak at defending their dominance; therefore, the wealthy and educated cannot uphold the laws that would prevent regression and anarchy. Montgomery had joined the island after abusing his education in favour of indulging in pleasure, having been “clearly a very average student who preferred to spend his time in the music halls” (Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau 8). He brings this decadent lifestyle to the island, by continually drinking brandy and being too “sympathetic towards” (126) the Beast
Folk, which in turn reduces his superiority over them. These vices are highly relevant to
Victorian culture as they reflect existing fears that public houses led to an unwanted intermingling of the classes. Equally, sympathy was considered to be a loss of self-control and the rise of sensation novels that created sympathy for the poor were criticised for potentially spreading the primal values of the working class to higher class readers. Montgomery increasingly indulges in his vices leading to his drunken behaviour after the death of Moreau, where his violent mood has a brutality that mirrors both the drunk captain at the start of the novel and the Beast Folk in general. Pendrick confirms his animalisation has occurred from these vices, saying “You’ve made a beast of yourself. To the beasts you may go” (140). Therefore, while his education and status make him aware of the law and morality, his over-indulgence of pleasure has led to a similar collapse in the human/non-human and nature/culture dualisms.
The Island of Doctor Moreau has been described as “decadent Englishmen struggling to maintain their masculinity and imperial authority” (Taneja 140). Where Pendrick and Moreau are abstainers who pursued knowledge and kept their control over the Beast Folk until the revolt,
Montgomery declines into an inferior authority figure. When he fails to take charge after
Moreau’s death, Pendrick concludes that “He had been strangely under the influence of Moreau’s personality” (Wells, The Island of the Doctor Moreau 138) and therefore was subordinate to him.
The demotion in status increases in the chapter “Montgomery’s Bank Holiday”, where he becomes intoxicated rather than attempting to intercept the revolt. When Pendrick rejects his desire for social interaction by refusing to drink with him, he is reduced to socialising with the Beast Folk, where he offers them alcohol and drunkenly engages them in song. Realizing that
Beast People are closer to his equals than Pendrick, he burns the life rafts to prevent his return to a more sophisticated, human society. Previously, Pendrick had described the idea of himself falling to the level of the Beast Folk as “the most hideous degradation it was possible conceive – to send me off, a lost soul, a beast, to the rest of their Comus rout” (62). This “hideous degradation” that Pendrick fears happens through Montgomery’s inability to uphold his authority during the Beast Folk’s revolt. Montgomery’s moral decline means he is no longer separate from nature and therefore is no longer master of it, which results in humiliation and death.
Consequently, the loss of dualisms is associated with a fear of nature and enhances the existing ecophobia of the reader.
The collapse of the dualisms during the revolt of the Beast Folk is portrayed as having horrific consequences that must be avoided. The message of this revolt is that the rise of working class individuals who adhere to no higher moral understanding will lead to a loss of liberty for the masses, targeted towards an audience that had witnessed the vicious revolutions in Britain and neighbouring countries throughout Europe. Wells was a strong supporter of John Stuart
Mills, who wrote that “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant” (Mills 21). Wells argument that the Beast Folk’s behaviour is immoral is based on their choice to pursue their instinctive desires over the greater good of society, which (in turn) will lead to a loss of liberty for the surviving humans. In criticising the Beast Folk for their damage to the society that Doctor Moreau created on the island, Wells is making the anthropocentric assumption that human society should be prioritised over the animal kingdom that the Beast Folk belong to. The narrative focuses on the loss of liberty for the wealthy, well-educated humans rather considering the damage Doctor
Moreau has created on the island and applauding the Beast Folk to recovering the land and culture that rightly belongs to them. This assumption is an extension of speciesism, as it suggests the Beast Folk have no rights because Wells portrays them as lacking (or having very little) sentience. Speciesism is “a prejudice or attitude of bias towards the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species” (Singer 15). Though the island is fictional, the failure of the novel to validate the environment and animals for overthrowing their postcolonial invaders is consequential to Victorian attitudes in the nineteenth century, as colonisers where drastic reshaping the new landscapes that they entered. As William Beinart and
Lotte Hughes summarise, during this era: “British consumers and manufacturers sucked in resources that were gathered, hunted, fished, mined and farmed in a great profusion of extractive and agrarian systems” (vii). Wells mirrors this destructive behavior by suggesting that the natural world have no rights, because liberty is only applicable to human society rather than the nature.
However, the use of the Beast Folk to demonstrate this loss of liberty draws upon horrific images that foreground ecophobic beliefs that nature will destroy humanity if it is not controlled and dominated. This is shown through Pendrick’s decline who, despite maintaining his humanity, he eventually becomes more primitive through this affiliation with Montgomery and his proximity to the anarchy of the Beast Folk. In the case of the former, Montgomery’s weakness has undermined his authority as a middle class gentleman and brought him to a similar social status as the Beast Folk. This is shown when the Dog Man states: “The Master is dead; the Other with the Whip is dead. That Other who walked in the sea is-as we are” (Wells, The Island of
Doctor Moreau 156). Where Moreau was a god-like figure with prestige, Montgomery reduced the influence of humans to their ability to punish, which is a small shred of authority that dies with him. The distinction between ‘Master’ and the ‘Other’ debases Pendrick and Montgomery, who become figures that no longer belong in the new environment that the Beast Folk are dictating; the Beast Folk are now at the center and the humans are the ‘Other’. This low status is in itself associated with savagery because “certain behaviors are classified differently – as civilized or as savage – based solely on the status of the one performing them” (Vint 94). The animalised masses have created a new world where Pendrick occupies a debased role. The consequence of this loss of status is that Pendrick cannot reinforce this humanity because he no longer belongs to a society that allows him to uphold the customs and traditions that he associates with respectable living. An example of this is his animal appearance because he cannot uphold his hygiene and attire in the new environment: “My clothes hung about me as yellow rags, through whose rents glowed the tanned skin” (Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau
164). This poor cleanliness is not only viewed as primitive, but is also a sign of low status because it draws an image of Victorian labourers who could not afford new clothing and were tanned because they were continually working in the sun. Pendrick also fears “I may have caught something of the natural wilderness of my companions” (172), because he has not been able to exercise his language or etiquette with the Beast Folk.
When he is rescued, he “does not classify himself apart from the rest of humanity, but rather sees himself as an animal as well” (Vint 94). The impact of Pendrick’s decline into a more animalised state, regardless of his strong educational and moral grounding, highlights to the
Victorian reader that the degradation of individuals will lead to the animalisation of society as a whole. Pendrick is evolving to an animal state because of his embeddedness within the wilderness rather than society. The final image of the island is when Pendrick cowers over dead sailors and sees Wolf Beasts approaching: “When I saw them approaching those wretched remains, heard them snarling at one another, and caught the gleam of their teeth, a frantic horror succeeded my repulsion” (Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau 170). Unable to live in harmony with this wild island after seeing this scene, Pendrick escapes on a raft; literally and metaphorically distancing himself from the primacy of the island. Estok identifies that reading ecophobia means “to see the values that are written into and the work through the representations of nature we imagine, theorize and produce” (“Reading Ecophobia” 76). This final scene on the island is the crisis point where the narrator escapes and the final impression left on the reader is that if nature is left untamed it will lead to anarchy and violence that will ultimately destroy humanity. By the late nineteenth century, the rise of industrialism and technological advancements meant that “no longer does Nature seem quite so red in tooth and claw” (Fromm
31). Therefore, Wells invocation of these emotions is reaffirming ungrounded hatred for the natural world that was unjust in a period where the environment held very little threat towards mankind.
After Pendrick returns to London, he invites the reader to consider how the hypothetical collapse of the human/non-human divide that occurred on the island might happen in Victorian society. He describes the degradation of individuals surrounding him as posing a threat to humanity, saying “I feel as though the animal was surging up through them; that presently the degradation of the islanders will be played over again on a larger scale” (Wells, The Island of
Doctor Moreau 173). Rather than merely using the Beast Folk as a metaphor, Wells purposely focuses on the loss of dualisms to fuel the reader’s ecophobia and create a call to action that will reinforce these dualisms that are perceived to exist. Wells was publicly vocal during the late nineteenth century about the possibility of mankind evolving into something inhuman if it didn’t control its primitive instincts, stressing the need for “acquired factors” that would steer “itself against the currents and winds of the universe in which it finds itself” (Wells, The Shape of
Things to Come 430). Therefore, the novel’s message suggests that humans have a superiority over nature that allows mankind to change its evolution in a way that the Beast Folk could not.
This is reinstated in Pendrick’s conclusion of the tale, where he argues that: “There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope” (Wells, The
Island of Doctor Moreau 175). It is the “more than animal” aspect of humanity that reaffirms mankind’s superior power and associates the animal kingdom as a vicious arena that must be feared. This conclusion preaches the need for stronger moral values in the working class and a less indulgent culture for the middle and upper classes, but does so by suggesting mankind has a moral obligation to defend its separation from the anarchy of the natural world. This hierarchy of mankind over nature is foundation of Wells’ projected fears of regression, as he is considering only the interests of humanity rather than the wider biosphere. Glen A. Love writes in Practical
Criticism that “an evolutionarily informed knowledge of human beings is central to averting ecological disaster, and to champion a rethinking of the canon, reading from an ecological rather than a narrowly human-centered perspective” (Love, Practical Ecocriticism 35). Wells falsely argues from the perspective of scientific objectivism using Darwinism, but his ‘human-centered perspective’ manipulates this argument by focusing only on the evolution of mankind. Chapter 2: The War of the Worlds
Wells’ The War of the Worlds is the portrayal of an alien invasion, where humanity is required to defend their place as the dominant species on Earth. It is a story where lethargic, decadent people in the London suburbs are forced into a primitive state during an invasion by technologically-advanced Martians, who are imperially expanding during a time that stagnant
England was not. Wells used the Martian attack to rather explicitly demonstrate that the degradation of a decedent society has made mankind vulnerable when faced with social and physical struggles. What is more implicitly projected is Victorian phobias that working class labourers were becoming more automated because of their continual proximity to technology.
Within the novel, the fear of the working class losing their humanity is closely linked to
Victorian attitudes towards nature, because the novel describes the working class as the non- human ‘Other’ and conceptually aligns them with the surrounding, non-sentient environment that is perceived as inferior to mankind. Estok writes that by the nineteenth century there was a
“redefinition of nature from participative subject and organism in an organic community to a pure object, a machine that ideally could be intimately and infinitely controlled and forced to spit out products in the service of an increasingly utilitarian capitalist economy” (Ecocriticism and
Shakespeare 7). Within the novel, the working class have joined with nature to become part of this ‘machine’ that allows for capitalist production; therefore, they have become objectified rather than a subject that invokes sympathy. The Martians are representative of a future evolutionary shift, where the degradation of the working class has made them a more domineering but less altruistic species.
By bringing together these themes, Wells paints a fantastic dystopia that predicts how the world might be if mankind refused to take a more active role in its future evolution. This chapter will look at how The War of the Worlds provides hegemonic reinforcement of the belief that human beings are superior to all other life forms, because they hold higher cognitive functions and a unique relationship with God. Religion has continually been identified as a key reason for mankind’s history of anthropocentrism. Lynn White alludes to this when she argues “that the environmental crisis is fundamentally a matter of the beliefs and values that direct science and technology”, while Christopher Manes discusses “the theories of Michel Foucault to consider how both literacy and Christian exegesis have rendered nature silent in Western discourse” (qtd. in Glotfelty xxvii). The anthropocentric privileging of mankind over all other life forms, through the belief that God created the Earth for humans, strengthens the myth that there are dualisms that separate nature and culture. Through the establishment of the human/non-human and nature/culture divides at the start of the novel, the subsequent loss of these boundaries is shown as the terrifying prediction of the future. The extremely negative portrayal of a world where mankind is no longer separate from nature is reinforcing and highly reflective of Victorian ecophobia.
Wells characteristically represented the future social decline of the working classes through hybrid creatures that belonged to neither nature nor humanity, but are anthropocentrically categorised as part of nature because of their ‘otherness’. The Island of
Doctor Moreau featured this through the Beast Folk, who collapsed the binaries that define humanity by being both human and animal. Within The War of the Worlds, the Martians pose a similar collapse of dualisms through the representation of the working class who have evolved into robotic hybrids. The novel offers caricature depictions of a working class who have changed due to the harsh conditions of long days of physical labour, which has made them physically stronger, increased their exposure to technology and kept them in a beastly state that is closer to the perceived cruelty of the natural world. As Brake discusses in “Aliens and Time in the
Mechanical Age”, the Martians provide “a veiled criticism of the Mechanical Age, and the social machine of capitalist industry and its attendant troubles” (Brake 284). Characteristic of the time, it manifests fears that technology will strip mankind of its humanity and create hybrids between man and machine.
The Martians are compared to the working class through their connection to technology and detachment from society. When the Martians are seen out of their shell, their physical description is that they are “merely heads” without a digestion system or torso. This links the
Martians to the working class as they are deprived of sensory enjoyment that comes from eating or leisure, because they are adapted for survival rather than the pursuit of pleasure. Wells also points to the process that might have led to the working class declining into this hybrid state, writing that “[t]he immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts” (2). Like the working class who were reported to contract illnesses from the air pollution that increased during the industrial revolution, the Martians have been exposed to life-threatening surroundings and the consequence is their evolution into these monstrous creatures that have fused with machines. The narrator shows this in his reflections of the tripods the Martians use, saying “Were they intelligent mechanisms? Such a thing was impossible. Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body?” (Wells, The War of the Worlds 47). Just as the brain and the body are joined as one, so are the Martian and the tripod. The Martian are emphasised as being robotic through their use of the tripods as a life support machine, which creates the impression that they are conjoined with the machinery and lack the morality of a human mind. When they feed, it is the movement of the tripods that is described as doing the eating: “Apparently they tossed them into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him, much as a workman’s basket hangs over his shoulders” (114), which also furthers the comparison with the working class.
It is the Martian’s fusing with the machines that leads to their destruction of the Earth, because they lack the altruism and ethics of humans. The Martians have one telepathic mind and therefore lack the human society that prevents unethical individuals from mistreating others.
While the creatures are highly efficient, they do not stop to question whether their destruction of lower life forms is wrong and do not show altruism, even to their own species. This lack of ethics or altruism is depicted in their first appearance, where they ruthlessly destroy human onlookers.
Witnessing this scene, the narrator writes: “by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering and falling, and their supporters turning to run” (Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau
20). The Martians are experiencing great pain because they are on a planet with an incompatible atmosphere and they are falling down injured while they send out the heat ray, but there are no signs of concern or emotion shown between them. This is heavily in contrast with the humans who are wild with emotion and comically described as “supporters” because of their initial positivity and curiosity regarding the Martians.
The reader is encouraged to fear this declined state of the working class, because it suggests that their primitive instincts could lead to a revolt where they assume power, because they are technologically-advanced and have a ruthless lack of empathy. Wells demonstrates how the social decline of the decadent, overly-indulgent upper and middle classes could lead to their inability to maintain the social hierarchy. The social decline of the upper and middle classes is introduced in the opening lines of the novel:
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was
being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's… that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied,
perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient
creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water (1).
The ennui that is idiosyncratic of the period is addressed in this passage through the use of scale, where individuals “busied” with personal concerns are cast in a much larger frame of the greater universe, resulting in all these preoccupations being trivialised. The self-involvement of the upper and middle classes is a comment on the “fatuous self-satisfaction of the everyday life”
(Bergonzi 124); emphasised further by the novel being set in the quiet, leisurely suburbs of
Surrey.
Wells attacks the arrogance and ignorance of the decadent English as an extension of a corrupted culture that lacks cognitive stimulation and the urge for acquiring knowledge. Much of the early tragedies that befall the victims of invasions could be partially blamed society’s reliance of entertaining rather than informative media. During the Martian’s initial landing, the aliens are at their most vulnerable as they are contained in a cylinder. While this is reported in the scientific magazine Nature, the news of the landing fails to reach the masses in time for the population to form a strategy for protecting themselves. When the newspapers finally report the landing, they create a false sense of security by publishing titles like “Message from Mars” (Wells, The War of the Worlds 13) and turning the spacecraft into a place of spectacle. The consequence is that the masses gather around the craft while it opens and they are ultimately slaughtered. Contrasting this lazy reliance on mass publications and the decadence of culture is the character Ogilva, who stands apart from his peers because of his interest in science and astronomy. The character is one of the first people to witness the landing because he is watching the skies and, through his interest in science, develops an appropriate wariness to the landing. When the spacecraft begins to open he remains distant and tries to warn his fellow man by saying “help keep these idiots back. We don't know what's in the confounded thing” (15). Ogilva's unique reaction to the landing demonstrates the flaws of the masses that have invested their time pursuing pleasure rather than personal development. The narrator also highlights that Ogilva’s character is an exception to the masses, because he is part of the crowd that initially views the landing as a spectacle. Despite seeing the massacre on the green in person and fleeing from the event in fear, he immediately adapts to suburban life once he is back in an unaffected part of society, saying:
“There was no sensible transition from one state of mind to the other. I was immediately the self of every day again – a decent ordinary citizen” (25). Even when he is later faced with the realities of the situation, he is comforted when he “heard a train running towards Woking” (18) and is reassured that he is safe while everyday life continues. It is his own desire to stay within the comforts of leisurely culture that delays his escape to Leatherhead and nearly leads to his death.
The satirical portrayal of the decadent upper classes, as being like cattle or domesticated animals once society collapses, undermines the social Darwinist theories justifying laissez fair capitalism as a system that should favour the privileged. Instead, the novel shows that the wealthy would show little aptitude for survival when faced with the natural world. Not only has their lack of physical strain made them weak, but their reliance on the comforts of society makes them extremely emotional when deprived of luxuries. The privileged show little attempt to fight or defend their territory, but hide in brambles or bushes like animals much lower in the perceived evolutionary hierarchy. This is shown by the narrator, who says: “For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of man, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house” (142). The emotion he is describing in this passage is one of weakness seen in vulnerable animals who are primarily prey, rather than a more powerful predator in the natural kingdom. It is an excess of emotion associated with desperation and victimisation, which is also shown more explicitly by the extreme mental deterioration of the narrator's fellow survivor in the scullery. The narrator describes “the weakness and insanity of the curate” (135), who – despite the lack of characterisation – appears to be used to a wealthy lifestyle. This is supported by his fine attire and his inability to fast, which reflects a lifetime of not needing to.
Despite the vulnerability of mankind during the Martian invasion, anthropocentric human arrogance continues to be projected by the narrator. For example, he writes: “Before we judge them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races” (3). This statement sets up an ecological hierarchy with mankind at the top and separate from the non-human. While the sympathy advocated by the narrator initially suggests a comparison between humans and Martians, it draws attention to the cognitive and moral reasoning that mankind uniquely has, which allows them to reflect on their wider surroundings in a way the unethical Martians cannot. Throughout the novel, the narrator seeds other evidence of mankind’s superiority over nature even when faced with the collapse of the culture/nature divide.
An example of this is his observation that the Martians have no wheels and that “it is curious that even on this earth Nature has never hit upon the wheel” (127). It is humans who belong to culture that have the wheel and Martians who belong to nature that have not. Therefore, regardless of humans potentially becoming domesticated pets or monstrous aliens, the narrator reinforces the notion of humanity as a constant that belongs in a civilised, moral society that is separate from nature.
The narrator’s manipulation of the story to suit his anthropocentric perspective is evident in the novel’s conclusion. The narrator proclaims that the Martians were “slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this Earth”
(167), believing humans' place as masters of the natural world is a “birthright”. The death of the
Martians from lack of immunity to bacteria has the potential to demonstrate the irrelevance of mankind, echoing Christopher Manes’ argument that:
If fungus, one of the ‘lowliest’ of forms on a humanistic scale of values, were to go extinct
tomorrow, the effect on the rest of the biosphere would be catastrophic; in contrast, if Homo
sapiens disappeared the event would go virtually unnoticed by the vast majority of Earth’s
life forms (24).
However, the use of religion to distract from this obvious truth demonstrates the manipulation of science to suit anthropocentric biases. This notion even reinforces the privileging of human over non-human and culture over nature, because it supports popular Victorian, anthropocentric beliefs about evolution. For example, biologist St. George Jackson Mivart stated that only the body is governed by evolution, where: “the human soul was a supernatural product of divine creation and, as an expression of the soul's transcendence of nature, human morality manifested a uniquely human freedom from natural causality” (Arnhart 77). Therefore, the repetition within the novel of mankind's higher purpose through their unique relationship with God supports the anthropocentric justification of exploiting a natural world that was created to serve mankind. The narrator discusses that “our views of the human future must be greatly modified by these events” (Wells, The War of the Worlds 178) in reference to the global disillusionment left after the invasion, but these changes only strengthen mankind's belief that he is separate and superior to nature. The narrator emphasises that the invasion “has done much to promote the conception of the commonwealth of mankind” (178). Therefore, despite the story using a larger frame that highlights mankind's relationship with the wider ecosystem, when the threat of the invasion is overcome the narrator only is interested in benefits to his own species. This attitude appears to extend to his fellow survivors, as just weeks after the event “already they were busy with returning people; in places even there were shops open, and I saw a drinking fountain running water” (178). The narrator is celebrating this return of culture and society, unaware that the species is returning to the same state of self-absorption within their “busied” lives that he previously criticised. The invasion witnesses all of humanity desperately seeking food in the wild and reconnecting with the landscape, but the narrator only wishes to validate the rebuilding of buildings rather than the natural landscape in the aftermath. Love points out that in classic literature there are examples of “jaded European sophisticates temporarily withdraw from their corrupt cities and courts to a natural setting in which they experience change and redemption,” and this provides “grist for rich complications that have engaged many scholars, ecocritics in particular” (Love, Shakespeare’s Origin of the Species and Darwin’s Tempest 130). However,
Wells’ The War of the World is anthropocentric and does not allow the reader to consider the positive aspects that might have come from mankind’s time in the wilderness or reliance on nature. In the final chapters of the novel, the narrator states: “All about the pit, and saved as by a miracle from everlasting destruction, stretched the great Mother of Cities.” (Wells, The War of the Worlds 169). This repeated theme throughout the novel of praising city skylines following the absence of it, shows an appreciation for culture or the isolated human realm rather than the natural world that they are reliant upon.
The final chapters of The War of the World insinuate colonialism as a method of asserting this separation and dominance over nature, as mankind adopts the Martians’ technology to invade new landscapes. The narrator concludes “If the Martians can reach Venus, there is no reason to suppose that the thing is impossible for men” (179). This invasion of Venus’ landscape is comparable to the colonialism of the period, where “the transportation, both intentional and unintentional, of a vast array of ‘portmantau biota’: animals, plants and pathogens that in many cases dramatically reshaped the ecologies they entered” (Miller 480). Equally, John Miller argues in her essay “Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Victorian Studies” that “the nineteenth century comprised a pivotal state in global environmental history that brought dramatic ecological change to many regions of the world in the same moment that it forged momentous political shifts” and when considering this we must address “the question who can speak for nature” (476). Through Wells’ use of ecophobia to project the need to dominate landscapes, the novel supports the manipulation of the natural world through colonialisation and denies it a voice. The ecophobic imagery of destroyed cityscapes and the threat that “Martians will make pets of some of them; train them to do tricks” (Wells, The War of the Worlds 155) has vanished, thereby completing Wells’ pattern of envisioning the agency of nature and then overcoming it.
The cathartic release from mankind’s temporary, perspective lack of power over nature encourages an unjustified need to conquer nature before it tries to overthrow society. Chapter 3: The Time Machine Wells’ exploitation of ecophobia in Victorian culture is most explicit in his first commercially successful novel The Time Machine. In order to draw the readers’ attention to the growing class divides and increasing degradation, Wells writes this horror-infused story that predicts that social decline would lead to the loss of human/non-human and culture/nature dualisms. The story of the Time Traveller’s experiences of three future periods in time draws a clear timeline, in which animalist behaviour increases in correlation with mankind’s loss of separation from the natural world. The Time Traveller returns to Victorian society, where he believes these dualisms are still in place and urges influential upper-middle-class gentlemen to take precautions to protect them. This act reflects Wells’ own belief that mankind must be masters of nature and control evolution, because he “attributed human self-control and self- transcendence to the artificial evolution set apart from the natural one” (Jonsson 296).
Victorians often believed that mankind’s separation from and mastery of nature was a divine right and were consequently complacent in their perceived role. In order to challenge this status quo, the Time Traveller tells a nightmarish tale of the future where nature overthrows society, which appeals to the readers’ fear of the violence of the natural world. This chapter will argue that The Time Machine uses Victorian ecophobia towards the instability of perceived dualisms that separate humanity and the environment, in order to create an emotional response towards Wells’ criticisms of the period’s degradation. It will assert that in doing this he reinforces beliefs that these dualisms can exist and the anthropocentric notion that mankind should dominate the natural world.
The Time Machine primarily takes place at a dinner party, where the Time Traveller describes the future to an elite group of upper-middle-class gentlemen who are identified by profession rather than name. Working in the realms of science and media, these guests are respectable members of society who have pursued education rather than indulging in the decadent behaviour that Wells believed would lead to social decline. Initially these guests appear to have been selected because their professions place them in influential roles and therefore they are “ruling class male professionals, who might be able to effect the changes in society that would prevent such degradation of civilization” (James 465). However, their professions and ambition also make them particularly critical of the story, because they are unaccustomed to the decadent, lethargic lifestyle that the Time Traveller indirectly criticizes. The unnamed, underdeveloped, first-person narrator is amongst these guests and mirrors their beliefs. The reader enters the story through the narrator’s retelling of the Time Traveller’s story, and therefore much of the anthropocentric and ecophobic views of the upper-middle-class gentlemen is projected onto the reader through the narrator. On hearing the Time Traveller’s story, the guests take only moments to consider that “a man couldn’t roll himself with dust by rolling in a paradox” (Wells, The Time Machine 22) before concluding it was a hoax. By showing how the narrator and other influential, intelligent members of society would reject the possibility of the future loss of dualisms, Wells reinforces the status quo that these dualisms exist in Victorian culture.
Time Traveller only discusses the breakdown of dualisms in the future, rather than questioning their existence in modern Victorian society. When he describes his method of time travel to the group he writes: “we have no means of staying back for any length of time, any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilised man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon” (7).
While the Time Traveller’s comparison between the savage working class and animals is poignant to his story, he still defines them as separate categories in this quotation. The lower cognitive ability of the working class alludes to class divides and degradation, but they are still compared to ‘civilised’ man in a way that an animal is not. The consequence of these dinner table exchanges is that they divide the story into a realistic portrayal of Victorian society where dualisms are in place, and a fantastical, future setting where they are not. The failure of the novel to directly undermine these dualisms in Victorian culture strongly reaffirms their existence, which is equally emphasised by the narrators’ failure to recognize that the dualisms that separate mankind and nature do not exist in either the present day or the future.
The Time Traveller sees a collapse of the nature/culture and human/non-human dualisms through the Morlocks, who are human-animal hybrids. Where The Island of Doctor Moreau and
The War of the Worlds feature hybrids that symbolically reflect the future degradation of the working class, The Time Machine explicitly identifies that degradation was the reason for mankind’s regression. The Time Traveller explains that between the Victorian period and the year AD 802,701, the class divide has continued to increase and “in the end, above ground you must have the Have, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour” (83). The result of these different lifestyles was the poor becoming more savage until they took on the traits of animals. This comparison between the deformity of the poor and their transition into an animal form can be compared to the historical portrayals of the disabled as being non-human. This is shown in the Morlocks’ appearance, where they have developed sensitive retinas that make them nocturnal and have “a bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the dark” (81).
Lennard Davis writes in The Disability Studies Reader: “To have a disability is to be an animal, to be part of the other” (qtd. in Slovic 2), which arguably suggests the Morlock’s physical distortion has altered their behaviour as they have a sensitivity to the animals that are also ostracized from an anthropocentric human society. This process of degradation stems from the
1890s, which saw “years of increasing Socialist protest” (Tuerk 517), alongside public phobias of degradation through rising social Darwinist literature. The Time Traveller references these contemporary social concerns when he writes that “Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth?”
(Wells, The Time Machine 82). Wells uses this extension from the Victorian period to root itself in a reality familiar to the reader, so that they are able to see the possible truths of this prediction.
Wells uses the timeline to project the possible future of Victorian social decline; therefore using the collapse in dualisms – represented by the Morlocks – as the frightening consequence of what will happen if this social decline is not intercepted.
This ecophobic message is enhanced by the terrifying portrayal of the Morlocks, where the creatures are associated with the preconceptions of nature as a system of vicious anarchy that must be managed through humanity’s superior morality. Similarly to The Island of Doctor
Moreau and The War of the Worlds, hybrid creatures that are both human and animal reduce themselves to the immoral, primitive survival instincts that threaten society. The Morlocks live underground where they cannot farm, choosing instead to resort to a kind of cannibalism that would disgust the reader. This violent means of survival purposefully reflects the social anxieties within Victorian culture; as Hume comments “eat or be eaten is a way of characterizing some social systems, but in Wells’ futures, the words are literally applicable, and the text regales us with variations upon the theme of eating” (Hume 237). By attaching this horrific image of cannibalism explicitly to these social concerns, Wells draws out the emotions of the reader so they are further repulsed by the Morlocks. The Morlocks’ reverting back to primitive instincts, rather than follow the moral guidelines of civilized society, reflects several significant social issues of the Victorian period. As with the Martians in The War of the Worlds, the Morlocks’ close proximity and reliance on technology has stripped them of their humanity. The novel implies that the Morlocks have become less moral and more automated because of centuries of working class labourers carrying out repetitive tasks using machinery. Additionally, Wells partially addresses the lack of education for the working class leading the decline in values, which was an issue more heavily explored within The Island of Doctor Moreau. In contrast with the Elio, the Morlocks appear to have no language. The Time Traveller criticizes himself by writing that “had I been literary then I might have been more moral” (113), which suggests that the complete lack of literacy in the Morlocks might have led to their moral decline. These explanations for the degradation of the working class make the threat of the Morlocks more imminent for the reader because it is rooted in topical concerns, which Wells reinforces at the expense of fuelling existing ecophobia within Victorian society.
This connection between social anxieties regarding working class degradation and negative reactions to the natural world is perpetuated through the Time Traveller’s first-hand response to the Morlocks. As an upper-middle-class gentleman who does not partake in the degradation that Wells criticizes, he is repulsed by the Morlocks and how they have collapsed the dualisms that define humanity. The Morlocks have evolved into monsters because of living in continual poverty. On his first encounter with the Morlocks he writes that there was “the faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease” (34). Prior to any aggressive motions, the Time Traveller suggests the
Morlocks bring the threat of disease, which ties in with the poor hygiene in working class living quarters that lowered their immunity to illnesses. The Time Traveller speaks in the past tense and is therefore aware that this disease is the result of centuries of exploitation, but refuses to feel sympathy. Further, he writes that “in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the
Upper-world people were to theirs” (83). This statement overrides the narrative of the abused lower classes by allowing an upper-middle-class gentleman to speak on their behalf and suggests they are satisfied with their debased circumstances. The Time Traveller supports this exploitative argument by categorising the Morlocks as ‘non-human’ and therefore devoid of any rights. He justifies his murdering of the Morlocks by saying “I longed to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman… impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things” (113). This anthropocentric notion that non-human species can be killed without consequence has been strongly opposed by contemporary environmentalists and animal rights campaigners who argue that “animals possess not only rights, but citizenship” (Slovic 3). It through a dismissal of the importance of other species and the natural environment that the Time Traveller choses to justify his violence as different to the primitive violence displayed by the working class Morlocks.
In addition to suggesting the non-human species deserve no liberty, the Time Traveller encourages the reader to feel hatred towards the non-human Morlocks by comparing them to vermin like rats or spiders. The continual comparisons between the Morlocks and species that have negative connotations is inconsistent, because vermin – such as rats and spiders – are drastically different in appearance and behaviour. Therefore, these comparisons are made to fuel the ecophobia of the reader rather than to provide an accurate description and, in turn, the Time
Traveller is “imagining badness in nature and marketing that imagination” (Estok, Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia 5). Tuerk argues in “Upper-Middle-Class Madness” that the purpose of invoking this ecophobia is to repel the reader from the Morlocks is so he “protects himself from any acknowledgement of this self-centeredness by viewing his urges as scientific, but ultimately he sees himself as having the right to whatever he wants, and cherishes himself for being the only real human and therefore the only creature with rights” (qtd. in Hume 242). The
Time Traveller invokes negative affiliations of nature through ecophobia and then associates the
Morlocks with those aspects of nature, as a form of propaganda intended to excuse his mistreatment of them.
The threat of the hybrid Morlocks is perpetuated by their dominance over the Elio, whom the Time Traveller describes as humans that have been weakened through their decadent upper class lifestyle. Wells criticizes the indulgence of the wealthy by proposing that this regression could lead to the upper classes losing their dominance over both the working classes and the natural world. He does this by emphasising the humanity of the Elio, and demonstrating how their over-indulgence has created a culture that cannot protect itself against the threat of nature.
The Elio have no dedication to education or self-improvement, and are instead distracted by aestheticism. The Time Traveller is shocked by their lack of intelligence and notes “the disappearance of the written word and of sophisticated functions of language such as abstract nouns” (James 464). The Elio become easily bored with the strain of communicating with the
Time Traveller, who concludes that “I had never met people more indolent or more easily fatigued” (Wells, The Time Machine 44). Instead the Elio are preoccupied with leisure activities as they have no ambitions or duties, and their “strength and size must have declined because they were no longer needed for survival” (Hume 239). The Elio’s lack of duty also extends to gender roles within the family, as there has been a progression towards heterogeneity and therefore
“same sex and children were copies that were precocious” (Wells, The Time Machine 47). Consequently, the Elio are not bound to the responsibilities of either courting or child-rearing. It is the indulgence in a life of ease that has made the Elio unable to defend themselves against the uprising of the more primitive, working class Morlocks. As Partington writes “Wells banishes any doubts by didactically describing how the Elio rose to ascendancy and how they were subsequently de-throned by the static nature of their society” (Partington 59). The weakness of the Elio demonstrates how degradation can also affect the wealthy and make them unable to defend themselves from the social decline of the poor and dangers of the wider natural environment.
Wells reinforces this cultural criticism by exaggerating this loss of dominance over the working class and equating it to a loss of mastery over nature. The childish Elio appear to have lost their ability to defend their role in society, but they have also lost their survival instincts when faced with the threats of the natural world. The Elio’s lack of these instincts is relevant to the Victorian period, which had seen the violent revolts of the working class and the downfall of members of the upper class. Where Wells’ contemporaries feared their ability to defend the hierarchies of society, the exaggerated future prediction was that humanity would not be able to defend itself against nature. This is shown through the introduction of Weena who nearly drowns while surrounded by other distracted Elio that don’t make “the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing which was drowning before their eyes” (Wells, The Time Machine 71).
Equally, the Morlocks are human-animal hybrids that encapsulate the dangers of nature, which the Elio are unable to defend themselves against. Ultimately, the Elio’s loss of control reduces them to humans playing the debasing role of cattle. The Time Traveller concludes that: “I understood now what all the beauty of the over-world people covered. Very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field. Like the cattle, they knew of no enemies, and provided against no needs” (129). The degrading position of the Elio is enhanced by their acceptance of their place, which makes the efforts of the Time Traveller to reignite their survival instincts redundant. The consequence of this degradation of the upper classes is that they also begin to lose their humanity, because they occupy an animalistic role in a world where they are dominated by natural elements. This deliberately disturbing image of humans acting as cattle reinforces the need for readers to continually reinstate mankind’s separation from and mastery of the natural world, before the social decline becomes irreversible.
To exaggerate the terrifying consequences of allowing mankind to lose its dominance over nature, the Time Traveller’s final impression of the period AD 802,701 is one of nightmarish conflict with the overpowering Morlocks. The Time Traveller narrowly escapes the attack of the Morlocks and dramatically describes the scene, saying: “As it slipped from my hand, I had to butt in the dark with my head—I could hear the Morlock's skull ring—to recover it. It was a nearer thing than the fight in the forest, I think, this last scramble” (133). This tense moment of the protagonist running from vicious hybrid creatures heavily mirror’s Pendrick’s escape from the Beast Folk in The Island of Doctor Moreau after seeing wolves eating the corpses of human sailors. As discussed in Chapter 1, this final experience is deliberately written to allow the reader cathartic release once the protagonist has returned to the safety of Victorian society. In creating the moment of release, the reader can see the importance preventing the loss of dualisms that could recreate the threatening stimulus in real life. James discusses this in
“Witnessing the End of the World: H.G. Wells’ Educational Apocalypses”, writing that “Wells’ didactic portrayals of the end of the world functions as an apocalyptic revelation, in the hope that his audience might be shocked into grasping the truths of his political programme of universal education and utopian World State” (James 459). The Time Traveller is returning to his own period with a deeper belief in the dualisms of nature/culture and human/non-human, as well as a stronger certainty that mankind must be separate from and masters of the natural world to avoid the complete loss of humanity.
The Time Traveller’s desire to uphold these dualisms by sharing his story is enhanced by his visions of two time periods after the year AD802,701, which he visits directly prior to returning to the Victorian age. In doing this, a greater timeline is created that reaffirms the correlation between degradation and the loss of humanity across the world. In the earlier of these two periods, he sees giant butterflies and “monstrous crab-like creatures” (137), which supports the possibility that humanity could still be present but that the natural world has come to dominate the human race. In the latter period, the Time Traveller finds himself on a desolate wasteland where “the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens… there were fringes of ice along the sea margin” (139) and concludes the human race has become extinct. The relationship between the loss of humanity and the uprising of nature could be used to de-center mankind by establishing that mankind’s existence is relatively minor and short in the much greater timeline of natural history. However, this potentially positive message is undermined by the anthropocentric retelling of these images that specifically supports his arguments against social decline. When he describes these future periods he focuses purely on mankind’s place within these environments. He describes the dying planet in the future in relation to the “theories of a comic time-scale that had shrunk in an alarming manner between Darwin’s heyday and 1894” (Ruddick 345). He does not mourn the loss of all non-human life, but uses the scene to highlight the ignorance of Victorian society. The
Time Traveller’s anthropocentric reading on these scenes allows him to support his theory that mankind must protect himself from social decline in order to stay dominant over nature. When the Time Traveller returns to his own period, he is relieved to be back with humanity, stating “I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity” (Wells, The Time Machine 142). This quotation’s focus on the decadence and the separation of mankind from nature through housing emphasises his relief to be back in a setting where the dualisms between nature/culture and human/non- human are temporarily intact. This is highlighted further when he enters the dining room covered in the dirt he has accumulated from his interaction with nature, which is viewed as shocking by the surrounding gentleman in formal attire. In an attempt to maintain these boundaries that separate mankind and nature, the Time Traveller retells his story to the guests. Simon Schama writes in Landscape and Memory that “the Greek myth of Arcadian origins anticipated the theory of evolution in its assumptions of continuities between animals and men” (526) and Estok has also highlighted the possible influence of literature on Darwin’s writings. Schama also explains the effect of myth and stories about evolution on society, highlighting “their surprising endurance through the centuries and their power to shape institution that we still live with” (15). Therefore, the Time Traveller’s prophecy – that has been laced with ecophobia – has the power to impact these influential gentlemen and encourage them to share his anthropocentric warning with other members of society.
The impact of this mythology extends to the reader, who might fear the possibility of this future dystopia. The Time Traveller asks the guests – and, in turn, the reader – to “consider I have been speculated upon the destinies of our race, until I have hatched this fiction” (Wells, The
Time Machine 145), in order to demonstrate the need to end degradation regardless of whether this is a fictional prediction. The reader has thus far been emotionally engaged with the terrifying journey of the Time Traveller and felt a similar cathartic release on his return back to society, which makes them receptive to the meaning of story. They can recognise the “gulf of incomprehension that separates the more blinkered of the dinner guests from their host”
(Ruddick 338) and understand the importance of maintaining dualisms to avoid this potential future for mankind. Therefore, while Wells’ message of preventing social decline has been tactically interwoven into the story, it has been done at the expense of portraying the natural world as an object that should be feared and controlled.
Further to fuelling the Victorian period’s ecophobia, Wells also puts the onus on the reader to maintain humanity’s mastery over nature. Shortly after telling his story, the Time
Traveller becomes lost in time and leaves the responsibility of preventing the loss of dualisms on the guests who were present at the dinner. The narrator is the only guest that believes the story is true and in the final chapter he displays no intention of taking action beyond retelling the story to the reader. On finding the flower left behind by the Time Traveller, he concludes that “even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man”
(Wells, The Time Machine 152). By romanticising these nightmarish visions of the future by focusing on the survival on mankind’s morality through the Elio, the narrator appears to overlook the Time Traveller’s message. However, the metafictional style of the novel allows the reader the distance to question the narrator and recognise he has not taken the necessary steps for preventing mankind turning into cattle. Ultimately, the reader is passed the responsibility of preventing degradation in order to ensure that the dualisms that define humanity are not lost. Not only does this suggest that these dualisms exist in Victorian society, but also that it is the duty of civilised society to protect their place as masters of the natural world through addressing the imbalances within society and the mistreatment of the poor. Barri Gold writes in “Energy, Ecology, and Victorian Fiction” that “instead of pursing a ‘deep’ ecology among the Victorians, we may look for a kind of ‘social’ ecology… the roots of environmental problems in social problems” (217). It was Victorian society’s belief in their separation from nature that allowed for the continued exploitation of the landscape for the purposes of technological advancement and capitalist consumption. Michael Lowy explains that “even with Engels, who so often applauded the human “mastery” and “domination” of nature, one finds writings that call very explicit attention to the dangers of such a stance” (124). Therefore, despite Wells’ pro-socialist messages about the education of the poor and the inequality of the class system, he fails to recognise the potential damage of his ignorance of mankind’s dependency on the land. Therefore, this conclusion is reinforcing this same ignorance in the reader, who is led to believe that protection of the environment is irrelevant to addressing social issues within Victorian, capitalist culture. Conclusion
This thesis discussed how three of Wells’ earliest novels shared the same prediction of mankind’s loss of separation from and dominance over nature if society failed to correct the perceived degradation that defined the fin de siècle. Wells shows this within The Island of
Doctor Moreau, The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine through his repetition of the same basic narrative: the working class regress into human-animal hybrids and viciously revolt against the weak, indulgent upper classes. The animalistic Beast Folk murder their makers, the Martians use technology to overpower the upper and middle classes, and the Morlocks turn the Elio into cattle. In each novel, the reader is encouraged to associate the loss of nature/culture and human/non-human with the loss of humanity, as they feature dystopias where nature overthrows the morality of culture, leaving a world filled with anarchy, violence and aggression.
Wells made his predictions of regression based on the principles of Darwinism, but manipulated the theory according to his fundamental assumption about mankind’s separation from and superiority over nature. Consequently, Darwinism’s potential environmentalist message about mankind’s minor role in natural history and the species’ interconnectivity with their surrounding environment was lost. Instead, Wells promoted mankind’s dominance over all other species and reinforced the Victorian notion that humans were a superior species that must control nature. Pendrick’s story ends with the protagonist wishing to increase mankind’s separation from the violence of the natural world and steer society away from their primitive instincts to avoid mankind regressing. The narrator of The War of the Worlds is interested only in ensuring mankind is not complacent in their mastery of nature and encourages the continued colonising of new ecosystems. Even the Time Traveller chooses to reinforce anthropocentric dualisms within his own period and alter the future by ensuring nature remains subservient to mankind. In each case, it is the needs of mankind that are being privileged, without consideration of the damage inflected on the surrounding environment or the possible rights that other species should have.
Further, Wells’ novels provide reinforcement of anthropocentric dualisms through his ignorance of ambiguities that might undermine them. An example of this is Wells’ suggestion of language as a solely human trait, which David Abram demonstrates is not accurate; or his dismissal of the rights of non-human species as fellow Earthlings, which activists like Sue Donaldson and Will
Kymlicken argues for. By projecting such rigid dualisms, each novel suggests that the natural world will always form itself around the behaviour of humans, rather than de-centering mankind through using the backdrop of a larger biosphere.
While Wells demonstrates the fragility of mankind’s dominance over nature, he does so with the purpose of showing the importance of taking steps to remain dominant. As Jonsson discusses in “The Human Species and the Good Gripping Dreams of H.G. Wells”, the notion of
‘artificial evolution’ that Wells wishes to emphasise to the reader is reinforcing mankind’s dominance by suggesting humans have the higher cognitive faculties that would allow them to change the future of evolution. Wells enforces his message by invoking the reader’s emotion through descriptions horrific worlds where nature is not subordinate and human morality has been replaced by anarchy. He describes disturbing images of burning corpses, cannibalism and disfigurement to encourage the reader to feel disgust towards the loss of these boundaries.
Through reinforcing the ecophobic notion that nature is opposing mankind, Wells contributes to anthropocentric arguments justifying mankind’s historical and continued mistreatment of nature.
Further to this thesis considering Wells’ anthropocentric perspective of Darwinism, it also reinforced current literary debates about the Victorians’ relationship with nature, which Gillian
Beer discusses in Darwin’s Plots (2009) and George Levine addresses in Darwin and the Novelists (1992). The complexity of Wells’ negative associations with nature mirrors what has been defined as “the Victorian fascination with nature” that “has long seemed tinged by anxiety, from Tennyson’s depiction of nature red in tooth and claw to the late-century’s scientifically informed worries about nature’s inevitable decay” (Gold 214). It also contributes to contemporary eco-Marxist arguments by demonstrating the link between the exploitation of land and capitalism, by showing how the dismissal of non-human life in Wells’ quasi-socialist novels indirectly supported the exploitation of land during the Victorian era. This ignorance has also contributed to a history of individuals justifying the damage to nature by prioritising the progression of mankind. As Rob Nixon discusses in Slow Violence, “people ignoring ugly truths as they pursue material interests in the context of complex, uneven global relationship” (Nixon
84) has left proven damage to the landscape and today’s writers continue to naturalise the questionable anthropocentric perspective that has led to these destructive thought processes.
By studying the implications of Wells’ writing, it is possible to see the link between his anthropocentric perspective that reflected mainstream values, and the subsequent mistreatment of nature in the generations that followed. This analysis of Wells’ reflection of ecophobic attitudes, through his projection of the need to fear and control nature, contributes to the establishment of the newly-emerged theory of ecophobia as a method of analysing historical perceptions of the environment. Further, it adds to the mapping of a history of anthropocentric attitudes to better understand the negative thought processes that continue to contribute to the ecological crisis. As
Love summarises, it is through the identification of these negative thought processes that readers can navigate the “narrowly anthropocentric view of what is consequential in life” and strive to
“redirect us from ego-consciousness to eco-consciousness” (qtd. in Glotfelty xxix). Works Cited
Abram, David. “The Discourse of the Birds,” Biosemiotics 3:3 (2010): 263-275. Print.
Arnhart, Larry. Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature, New York:
State University of New York Press, 1998. Print.
Brake, Mark and Hook, Neil. “Aliens and Time in the Machine Age,” International Journal of
Astrobiology 5:4 (2006): 277-286. Print.
Beer, Gillian. Darwin’s Plots. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. Print.
Beinart, William, and Hughes, Lotte. Environment and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007. Print.
Bergonzi, Bernard. The Early HG Wells: A Study of the Scientific Romances. Toronto: The
University of Toronto Press, 1961. Print.
Carroll, Joseph. Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature. New York:
Routledge, 2004. Print.
Collini, Stefan. Liberalism & Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Print.
Cook, Paul. Darwin’s Coat-tails. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2007. Print.
Crook. Paul, “Darwinism: The Political Implications,” History of European Ideas 2:1 (1981):
19-34. Print.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. London: Pickering, 1988. Print. Estok, Simon. Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia. New York: Macmillan, 2011.
Print.
Estok, Simon. “Narrativizing Science: The Ecocritical Imagination and Ecophobia,”
Configurations 18:1 (2010): 141-150. Print.
Estok, Simon. “Reading Ecophobia: A Manifesto,” Ecozon@ 1.1 (2010): 75–79. Print.
Estok, Simon. “Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and Ecophobia,”
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 16:2 (2009): 203-225. Print.
Estok, Simon. “Tracking Ecophobia: The Utility of Empirical and Systems Studies for
Ecocriticism,” Comparative Literature 67:1 (2015): 29-36. Print.
Fromm, Harold. “From Transcendence to Obsolescence,” The Georgia Review 32:3 (1978): 543-
552. Print.
Garrard, Greg. “Ecocriticism,” The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 19:1 (2011):
46-82. Print.
Glotfelty, Cheryl. “Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis” in Hiltner,
Ken. Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader. London: New York: Routledge, Taylor &
Francis Group, 2015. Print.
Gold, Barri. “Energy, Ecology, and Victorian Fiction,” Literature Compass 9:2 (2012): 213-224.
Print. Graff, Ann. “Administrative Nihilism: Evolution, Ethics and Victorian Utopian Satire,” Utopian
Studies 12:2 (Spring 2001): 33-52. Print.
James, Simon. “Witnessing the End of the World: H.G. Wells’ Educational Apocalyses,”
Literature and Theology 26:4 (2012): 459-473. Print.
Jonsson, Emelie. “The Human Species and the Good Gripping Dreams of H.G. Wells,”
Literature Resource Center 47.3 (Fall 2013): 295-303. Print.
Hume, Kathryn. “Eat or Be Eaten: H.G. Wells’s Time Machine,” Philological Quarterly 69:2
(1990): 233-251. Print.
Levine, George. Darwin and the Novelists. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992. Print.
Love, Glen A. Practical Ecocriticism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003. Print.
Love, Glen A. “Shakespeare’s Origin of Species and Darwin’s Tempest,” Configurations 18:1
(2010): 121-140. Print.
Lowy, Michael. “From Marx to Ecosocialism,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 13:1 (2002): 121-
133. Print.
Manes, Christopher. “Nature and Silence,” The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary
Ecology. Ed. Cheryll Glotfelty, and Harold Fromm. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1996: 15–29.
Print.
Mckechnie, Claire Charlotte and Miller, John. “Victorian Animals,” Journal of Victorian
Culture 17:4 (2012): 436-441. Print. Miller, John. “Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Victorian Studies,” Literature Compass 9:7
(2012): 476-488. Print.
Mills, John Stuart. On Liberty. London: Parker, 1864. Print.
Newman, Lance, “Marxism and Ecocriticism,” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and
Environment 9:2 (2002): 1-12. Print.
Ottis, Laura. “Monkey in the Mirror: The Science of Professor Higgins and Doctor Moreau,”
Twentieth Century Literature 55:4 (December 2009): 485-509. Print.
Partington, John. “The Time Machine and a Modern Utopia: The Static and Kinetic Utopias of
the Early H.G. Wells,” Utopian Studies 13:1 (2002): 57-68. Print.
Ruddick, Nicholas. “Tell Us All about Little Rosebery: Topicality and Temporality in H.G.
Wells’ The Time Machine,” Science Fiction Studies 28:3 (2001): 337-354. Print.
Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. New York: Random House, 1995. Print.
Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics For Our Treatment of Animals. New York:
Discus, 1975. Print.
Slovic, Scott. “Introduction: Animality and Ecocriticism,” Forum of World Literature Studies 6:1
(March 2014): 1-6. Print.
Taneja, Payal. “The Tropical Empire: Exotic Animals and Beastly Men in the Island of Dr.
Moreau,” English Studies in Canada 39:1 (2013): 139-160. Print. Tuerk, Richard. “Upper-middle-class Madness: H.G. Wells’ Time Traveller Journeys to
Wonderland,” Extrapolation 46:4 (2005): 517-527. Print.
Vint, Sherryl. “Animals and Animality from the Island of Moreau to the Uplift Universe,”
Yearbook of English Studies 37:2 (2007): 85-105. Print.
Wells, H.G.. The Island of Doctor Moreau. London: William Heinemann, 1916. Print.
Wells, H.G.. The Shape of Things to Come. London: Everyman, 1999. Print.
Wells, H.G.. The Time Machine. London: William Heinemann, 1920. Print.
Wells, H.G.. The War of the Worlds. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1964. Print.
Williams, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso, 1980. Print.