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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

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