"News from Nowhere, the Time Machine" and the Break-Up of Classical Realism Author(S): Patrick Parrinder Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol

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"News from Nowhere, the Time Machine" and the Break-Up of Classical Realism Author(s): Patrick Parrinder Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3, Science Fiction before Wells (Nov., 1976), pp. 265-274 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239042 . Accessed: 28/08/2014 12:22

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and Mythmakers:1877-1938," in Challengesin AmericanCulture, ed. Ray B. Browneet al. (US 1970),pp 150-77;two articlesby FranzRottensteiner, "Kurd Lasswitz, a GermanPioneer of Science Fiction,"in SF: 7he OtherSide of Realism,ed. ThomasD. Clareson(US 1971), pp 289-306,and "Ordnungsliebendim Weltraum:Kurd Lasswitz," in Polaris 1, ed. Rotten- steiner (1973);and Klaus Gunther Just, "Ueber Kurd Lasswitz,"in Aspekte der Zukunft (Bern 1972),pp 32-65,which subsumes two earlieressays on Lasswitz. 12.One might well speculate that Golden-AgeAnglo-American SF profitedfrom Ger- many's loss. In effect it was left to Anglo-Americanwriters to explore the implicationsof modernphysics and the Germanrocket researchof the twentiesand thirties.In doing so they had the assistanceof Germanemigres like WillyLey, an admirerof Lasswitz,who underother circumstancesmight well have contributedas a writerand criticto a GoldenAge of German SF.

PatrickParrinder

News from Nowhere, The TimeMachine and the Break-Upof ClassicalRealism

Critics of SF are understandablyconcerned with the integrityof the genre they study. Yet it is a commonplacethat majorworks are oftenthe fruitof an interaction of literarygenres, broughtabout by particularhistorical pressures. Novels such as Don Quixote,Madame Bouary and Ulysses may be read as symptomsof cultural upheaval,parodying and rejectingwhole classes of earlierfiction. My purposeis to suggest how this principlemight be appliedin the fieldof utopiaand SF. WhileMor- ris's News from Nowhere and Wells's The Time Machine have many generic antecedents, their historicalspecificity will be revealedas that of conflictingand yet related responses to the break-upof classicalrealism at the end of the nineteenth century.1 Patrick Brantlingerdescribes News from Nowhere in a recent essay2 as "a conscious anti-novel,hostile to virtuallyevery aspect of the great traditionof Vic- torianfiction." In a mutedsense, such a commentmight seem self-evident;Morris's book is an acknowledgedmasterpiece of the "romance"genre which came to the fore as a consciousreaction against realistic fiction after about 1880.Yet News from Nowhere is radicallyunlike the work of RiderHaggard, R.L. Stevenson or their fellow-romancersin being a near-didacticexpression of left-wingpolitical beliefs. WilliamMorris was a Communist,so that it is interestingto considerwhat might have been his reactionto Engels'letter to MargaretHarkness (1888), with its un- favorablecontrast of the "pointblank socialist novel"or "Tendenzroman"to the "realism"of Balzac:

That Balzacthus was compelledto go againsthis own class sympathiesand political prejudices, that he saw the necessityof the downfallof his favouritenobles, and described them as people deservingno betterfate; and that he saw the realmen of the futurewhere, for the timebeing, they alone were to be found-that I considerone of the greatesttriumphs of Realism,and one of the grandestfeatures in old Balzac.3 It is not clear from the wording(the letter was writtenin English)whether Engels saw Balzac's far-sightednessas a logical or an accidentalproduct of the Realist movement which in his day extended to Flaubert,Zola, Turgenev,Tolstoy and George Eliot. Engels' disparagementof Zola in this letter has led many Marxists

This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:22:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 266 SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES to endorse Balzac'stechnical achievement as a realistat the expense of his succes- sors. Yet the passage might also be read as a tribute to Balzac's social under- standingand politicalintegrity, without reference to any of the formaldoctrines of realism.What is certainis that the "triumph"Balzac secured for the Realistschool was in parta personal,moral triumph, based on his abilityto discardhis prejudices and see the true facts. Engels'sstatement seems to drawon two senses of the term "realism,"both of which originatedin the nineteenthcentury. Nor, I think,is this coincidence of literaryand politicalvaluations accidental. The fictionof Stendhal, Balzac and Flaubertin particularis characterizedby the systematicunmasking of bourgeois and romantic attitudes. In their politicaldimension, these novelists inherita traditionof analysisgoing back to Machiavelli,and which is most evident in Stendhal,who was not a professionalwriter but an ex-administratorand diplo- mat. Harry Levin defines the realismof these novelists as a critical,negational mode in which "the truth is approximatedby means of a satiricaltechnique, by unmaskingcant or debunkingcertain misconceptions."4 There are two processes suggested here: the writer'sown rejectionof cant and ideology,and his "satirical technique."Both are common to many SF novels, includingThe Time Machine, althoughin terms of representationalidiom these are the opposite of "realistic" works. News from Nowhere, on the other hand, is the utopianmasterpiece of a writerwho in his life went againsthis class sympathiesand joinedthe "realmen of the future,"as Balzac did by implicationin his books. Morrishas this in common with Engels (who distrustedhim personally).Hostile criticshave seen his socialist works as merelya transpositionof the longingsfor beauty,chivalry and vanquished greatness which inform his early poetry. As literarycriticism this seems to me shallow. Nor do Morris'spolitical activities provide evidence of poetic escapism or refusalto face the facts. It was not by courtesythat he was eventuallymourned as one of the stalwartsof the socialistmovement.5 On the surface,News from Nowhere (1890)was a response to a utopiaby a fellow-socialist-EdwardBellamy's Looking Backward, published two yearsearlier. Morrisreviewed it in The Commonweal,the weeklypaper of the SocialistLeague, on 22 June 1889.He was appalledby the servilityof Bellamy'svision of the corporate state, and felt that the book was politicallydangerous. He also noticed the sub- jectivity of the utopian form, its element of self-revelation.Whatever Bellamy's intentions,his book was the expression of a typicallyPhilistine, middle-class outlook. News from Nowhere was intended to provide a dynamic alternativeto Bellamy'smodel of socialist aspiration;a dream or vision which was ideologically superior as well as creative, organic and emotionallyfulfilling where Bellamy's was industrialized,mechanistic and stereotyped.Morris was strikinglysuccessful in these aims.IThe conviction and resonanceof his "utopianromance" speak, however, of deeper causes than the stimulusprovided by Bellamy. News from Nowhere is constructed around two basic images or topoi: the miraculoustranslation of the narratorinto a better future (contrastedwith the long historicalstruggle to buildthat future,as describedin the chapter"How the ChangeCame"), and the journeyup the Thames,which becomes a richlynostalgic passage towards an uncomplicatedhappiness-a happiness which proves to be a mirage,and which authorand readercan only aspireto in the measurein which they take up the burdenof the present. Only the firstof these topoi is paralleled in Bellamy.The second points in a quite differentdirection. News from Nowhere is a dream taking place within a frame of mundanepolitical life-the meeting at which "therewere six persons present, and consequentlysix sections of the party were represented, four of which had strong but divergentAnarchist opinions" (?1). The dream is only potentiallya symbol of reality,since there is no pseudo- scientific "necessity"that things will evolve in this way. The frame occasions a gentle didacticism(in dreams begin responsibilities),but also a degree of self-

This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:22:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THEBREAK-UP OF CLASSICALREALISM 267 consciousnessabout the narrativeart. "Guest,"the narrator,is both a thirdperson ("ourfriend") and Morrishimself; the change from third-to first-personnarration is made at the end of the opening chapter. Morris'ssubtitle, furthermore, refers to the story as a "UtopianRomance." Many objections which have been made to the book reflectthe reader'sdiscomfiture when asked to seriouslyimagine a world in which enjoymentand leisure are not paid for in the coin of other people's op- pression and suffering.It could be arguedthat Morrisshould not have attempted it--any more than Milton in Paradise Lost should have attempted the task of justifyingthe ways of God to men. Morris,however, held a view of the relationof art to politics which emphaticallyendorsed the project of imaginingNowhere. One of his guises is that of a self-proclaimedescapist: "Dreamerof dreams, born out of my due time,/Whyshould I strive to set the crooked straight?"News from Nowhere stands apartfrom these lines from The EarthlyParadise (1868-70), as well as fromthe majorityof Morris'sprose romances.Together with A Dreamof John Ball (1888) it was addressed to a socialist audience and serializedin The Commonweal.News from Nowhere retainssome of the colorationof John Ball's medievalsetting, but, for a Victorian,radical medievalism could serve as an "es- tranging," subversive technique. Two of the major diagnoses of industrial civilization,Carlyle's Past and Present and Ruskin'sessay "TheNature of Gothic," bearwitness to the power of such medievalistimagination. Morris's own influential lectures on art derivefrom "The Nature of Gothic,"and are strenuousattempts to "set the crooked straight"even at the cost of violentrevolution and the destruc- tion of the hierarchicaland predominantly"literary" art of the bourgeoisie.6It is easy to find gaps between his theory of culture and his practice in literatureand the decorative arts.7Nonetheless, his attack on middle-classart finds important expression in News from Nowhere, whichis an attemptto reawakenthose aspirations in the workingclass whichhave been deadenedand stultifiedunder capitalism. Genuine art for Morrisdoes more than merelyreflect an impoverishedlife back to the reader:"It is the provinceof art to set the true idealof a fulland reasonablelife before [the worker], a life to which the perceptionand creation of beauty, the enjoymentof real pleasurethat is, shall be felt to be as necessary to man as his daily bread."8News from Nowhere, however deficient in politicalscience, is a movingand convincingpicture of a communityof individualsliving full and reasonable lives. The "enjoymentof real pleasure"begins when the narratorwakes on a sunny summer morning,steps out of his Thames-sidehouse and meets the boatman who, refusingpayment, takes him for a leisurelytrip on the river. Morris'sattack on the shoddiness of Victoriandesign and the separationof highart frompopular art was pressed home in his lectures.In News fromNowhere he turns his attentionto anotherproduct of the same ethos-the Victoriannovel. Guest's girl-friend,Ellen, tells him that there is "somethingloathsome" about nineteenth-centurynovelists.

Some of them, indeed,do here and thereshow some feelingfor those whomthe history-books call "poor,"and of the miseryof whose lives we have some inkling;but presentlythey give it up, and towardsthe end of the story we must be contentedto see the hero and heroineliving happilyin an islandof bliss on other people's troubles;and that aftera long series of sham troubles(or mostly sham) of their own making,illustrated by drearyintrospective nonsense about theirfeelings and aspirations,and all the rest of it; whilethe worldmust even then have gone on its way, and dug and sewed and bakedand carpenteredround about these useless- animals. [?22] Morrisintroduced his poem The EarthlyParadise as the tale of an "isleof bliss" amid the "beatingof the steely sea"; but the "heroand heroine"evoked by Ellen are also clearly from Dickens. (The "drearyintrospective nonsense" might be George Eliot's.)Guest is seen by the Nowheriansas an emissaryfrom the landof

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Dickens (?19). Both Morris and Bellamy shared the general belief that future generationswould understandthe Victorianperiod throughDickens's works. In Looking Backward, Dr Leete is the spokesman for a more bourgeoisposterity: Judged by our standard,he [Dickens] overtops all the writersof his age, not because his literarygenius was highest,but because his great heart beat for the poor, because he made the cause of the victimsof society his own, and devotedhis pen to exposingits crueltiesand shams. No man of his time did so much as he to turnmen's minds to the wrongand wretched- ness of the old order of things,and open their eyes to the necessityof the greatchange that was coming,although he himselfdid not clearlyforesee it. [?131 Not only Morris would have found this "Philistine."But Morris's Ellen and Bellamy's Dr Leete are on opposite sides in the ideological debate about Dickens's value, which continues to this day. One of the earliest critics to register Dickens's ambi- guity was Ruskin, who denounced Bleak House as an expression of the corruption of industrial society, while praising Hard Times for its harshly truthful picture of the same society.'0 Morris,too, was dividedin his response. When asked to list the world's hundred best books, he came up with 54 names which included Dickens as the foremost contemporary novelist. The list was dominated by the "folk- bibles"-traditional epics, folktales and fairy tales-which he drew upon in his romances." Dickens's humour and fantasy appealed to the hearty, extrovert side of Morris stressed by his non-socialistfriends and biographers.'2 Yet he also reprintedthe "Podsnap"chapter of Our MutualFriend in The Commonweal,'3 and inveighedagainst Podsnappery and the "counting-houseon the top of a cinder- heap" in his essay "How I Became a Socialist." It is the world of the counting-house on the cinder-heap-the world of Our Mutual Friend-whose negation Morris set out to present in News from Nowhere. Not only do the words "our friend" identify Guest on the opening page, but one of the earliest characters Morris introduces is Henry Johnson, nicknamed Boffinor the "GoldenDustman" in honour of a Dickensianforebear. Mr Boffin in Our Mutual Friend is a legacy-holder earnestly acquiring some culture at the hands of the unscrupulous Silas Wegg; Morris's Golden Dustman really is both a cul- tured man and a dustman, and is leading a "full and reasonable life." He has a Dickensian eccentricity, quite frequent among the Nowherians and a token of the individuality their society fosters. This character, I would suggest, is strategically placed to insinuate the wider relation of Morris's "Utopian Romance" to nineteenthcentury fiction. The tone of News from Nowhere is set by Guest's initialouting on the Thames. Going to bed in mid-winter,he wakes to his boat-tripon an earlymorning in high summer. The water is clear, not muddy, and the bridge beneath which he rows is not of iron construction but a medieval creation resembling the Ponte Vecchio or the twelfth-century London Bridge. The boatman lacks the stigmata of the "working man" and looks amazed when Guest offers him money. This boat-trip is a negative counterpart to the opening chapter of Our Mutual Friend, in which Gaffer Hexam, a predatory Thames waterman, and his daughter Lizzie are disclosed rowing on the river at dusk on an autumn evening. Southwark and London Bridges, made of iron and stone respectively, tower above them. The water is slimy and oozy, the boat is caked with mud and the two people are lookingfor the floatingcorpses of suicides which provide a regular,indeed a nightly,source of livelihood.Dickens created no more horrifying image of city life. His scavengers inaugurate a tale of murderousness,conspiracy and bitter class-jealousy.Morris's utopian waterman, by contrast, guides his Guest through a classless world in which creativity and a calm Epicureanism flourish. Two further Dickensian parallelscentre upon the setting of the river. The Houses of Parliamentin News from Nowhere have been turnedinto the Dung Market,a

This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:22:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THEBREAK-UP OF CLASSICALREALISM 269 storageplace for manure. Dickens scrupulouslyavoids the explicitlyexcremental, but in Hard Timeshe calls Parliamentthe "nationalcinder-heap," and a reference to the sinisterdust-heaps of Our MutualFriend may also be detected both here and in "HowI Became a Socialist."It seems the Nowherianshave put the home of windbagsand scavengers to its properpurpose. In the second half of News from Nowhere, Guest journeys up-riverwith a party of friends;this again, perhaps recalls the furtiveand murderousjourney of BradleyHeadstone along the same route. Headstone tracks down Eugene Wrayburn,his rivalfor the love of Lizzie Hexam. Guest's love for Ellen,by contrast,flourishes among friendswho are free from sexual jealousy. Yet jealousyhas not disappearedaltogether, for at Maple- durhamthe travellershear of a quarrelin whicha jiltedlover attackedhis rivalwith an axe (?24). Shortly afterwards,we meet the Obstinate Refusers, whose ab- stention from the haymakingis likenedto that of Dickensiancharacters refusing to celebrateChristmas. Even in the high summerof Nowhere,the darkshadow of Dickens is occasionallypresent, preparingfor the black cloud at the end of the book under which Guest returnsto the nineteenthcentury. News from Nowhere has a series of deliberateechoes of Dickens'swork, and especially of Our Mutual Friend. Such echoes sharpen the reader'ssense of a miraculoustranslation into the future. In chapters 17 and 18 the miracleis "ex- plained"by Hammond'snarrative of the politicalgenesis of Nowhere-a narrative which recalls the historiographicalaims of novelists such as Scott, Disraeliand George Eliot. These elements of future history and Dickensianpastiche show Morrissubsuming and rejectingthe traditionof Victorianfiction and historiography. The same process guides his depiction of the kinds of individualand social relationshipswhich constitute the ideal of a "fulland reasonable life." Raymond Williamshas defined the achievementof classical realismin terms of the balance it maintainsbetween social and personalexistence: "Itoffers a valuingof a whole way of life, a society that is largerthan any of the individualscomposing it, and at the same time valuing creations of human beings who, while belongingto and affectedby and helpingto definethis way of life,are also, intheir own terms,absolute ends in themselves. Neither element, neither the society nor the individual,is there as a priority."'14SF and utopianfiction are notoriousfor theirfailure to main- tain such a blance.But the achievementthat Williamscelebrates should be regard- ed, in my view, not as an artisticunity so much as a coalitionof divergentinterests. Coalitionsare producedby the pressures of history;by the same pressuresthey fallapart. In mid-Victorianfiction, the individuallife is repeatedlydefined and valued in terms of its antithesisto the crowd, or mass society. The happinessof Dickens's LittleDorrit and Clennamis finallyengulfed by the noise of the streets; characters like George Eliot'sLydgate and GwendolenHarleth are proudindividuals struggling to keep apart from the mass, while their creator sets out to record the "whisper in the roar of hurryingexistence."'5 The loomingthreat of society in these novels is weighed against the possibilityof spiritualgrowth. George Eliot portraysthe mental strugglesof characterswho are, in the worldlysense, failures.She cannot portraythem achievingsocial success commensuratewith their gifts, so that even at her greatest her social range remains determinedly"provincial" and she can define her characters' limitationswith the finalityof an obituarist.She cannot show the source of change, only its effects and the way it is resisted. Dickens's despairat the irreducibleface of society led him in his later works to fantasizeit, portrayingit as throttled by monstrousinstitutions and presidedover by spirits and demons. His heroes and heroines are safe from the monstrous tentacles only in their "islandof bliss."One reason why Dickens's domestic scenes are so overloadedwith sentimentalsignificance is that here his thwartedutopian instincts were forced to seek outlet. The house as a miniatureparadise offsets the hell of a society.

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It shouldnot be surprisingthat a novelistsuch as Dickenspossessed elements of a fantastic and utopian vision.16They are distorted and disjointedelements, whereas Morris in News from Nowhere takes similarelements and reunitesthem in a pure and uncomplex whole. Several of his individualcharacters display a Dickensianeccentricity, and they all have the instantcapacity for mutualrecog- nitionand trust whichDickens's good charactersshow. Yet this mutualtrust is all- embracing;it no longer defines who you are, since it extends to everybody,even the most casual acquaintances(Hammond, the social philosopherof Nowhere, explains that there are no longer any criminalclasses, since crimes are not the workof fugitiveoutcasts but the "errorsof friends"[?12]). Guest's sense of estrange- ment in Nowhereis most vividin the earlyscenes wherehe is shown roundLondon. Not only has the city become a gardensuburb and the crowds thinnedout, but the people he meets are instinctivelyfriendly, responding immediately to a stranger's glance.They are the antithesisof Dickens'scrowds of the "noisyand the eagerand the arrogantand the forwardand the vain,"which "fretted,and chafed,and made their usual uproar."'17The friendlycrowd is such a paradoxthat Morris'simagina- tion ultimatelyfails him slightly,so that he relapses into WardourStreet fustian:

Therewithhe drewrein and jumped down, and I followed.A veryhandsome woman, splendidly clad in figuredsilk, was slowlypassing by, lookinginto the wAndowsas she went.To herquoth Dick: "Maiden,would you kindlyhold our horse whilewe go in for a little?"She noddedto us with a kindsmile, and fell to pattingthe horse with her prettyhand. "Whata beautifulcreature!" said I to Dick as we entered. "What,old Greylocks?"said he, with a sly grin. "No, no," said I; "Goldylocks,-the lady."[?6] Morris here is feeling his way toward the authenticallychildlike view of sexual relationshipswhich emerges duringthe journeyup-river. Guest begins to enjoy a gathering fulfillment,movingly portrayed but also clearly regressive. Annie at Hammersmithis a mother-figure,Ellen a mixture of sister and childhoodsweet- heart. Guest, though past his prime of life, feels a recoveryof vigourwhich is, in the event, illusory;his fate is not to be rejuvenatedin Nowhere but to returnto the nineteenthcentury, strengthenedonly in his longingfor change. Though he shares his companions'journey to the haymaking,his exclusion from the feast to celebrate their arrivalis another invertedDickensian symbol.'8 The returnto the present is doublyupsetting to the "happyending" convention (seen for example in Bellamy);for it is not a nightmarebut a stoicalaffirmation of politicalresponsibility. Guest's last momentsin Nowhereshow himrediscovering the forgottenexperience of alienationand anonymity. Dickens and George Eliot were moralistsin their fiction and supportersof social and educationalreform outside it. Morrisworked to improveVictorian taste while comingto believe that there were no "moral"or "reformist"solutions to the social crisis. It was the perspectiveof the labourmovement and the revolutionary "riverof fire"'9which enabled him to reassemble the distorted affirmationof a Dickens novel into a clear, utopian vision. His vision draws strength from its fidelityto socialist ideals and to Morris'sown emotionalneeds. But Morris,for all his narrativeself-consciousness, can only register and not transcend what is ultimatelyan aesthetic impasse.His book is News from Nowhere, or An Epoch of Rest; it shows not only the redemptionof man'ssuffering past but his enjoyment of Arcadianquietisrn. In Nowhere pleasuremay be had "withoutan afterthought of the injusticeand miserabletoil which made my leisure"(?20). Morrisomits to describe how in economic terms leisureis produced,and how in politicalterms a society builtby the mass labourmovement has dispersedinto peacefulanarchism. He stakes everythingon the mood of "second childhood":

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"Secondchildhood," said I in a low voice, and then blushedat my doublerudeness, and'hoped that he hadn'theard. But he had, and tumed to me smiling,and said:"Yes, why not?And for my part, I hope it may last long;and that the world'snext periodof wise and unhappyman- hood, if that should happen,will speedilylead us to a thirdchildhood: if indeedthis age be not our third.Meantime, my friend,you must know that we are too happy,both individually and collectivelyto troubleourselves about what is to come hereafter."[?16] It is true that the passage hints at furtherlabours of social constructionlying in store for man. Morris,however, prefers not to contemplatethem. One is forcedto conclude that in News from Nowhere the ideal of the perfectionof labouris de- veloped as an alternativeto the dynamismof Western society. We are left with the irresolvableambiguity of the Morrisianutopia, which peoples an exemplary socialist society with characters who are, in the strict sense in which Walter Pater had used the term, decadents.20 H.G. Wells first listened to Morrisat socialistmeetings at Hammersmithin the 1880s. Even for a penniless South Kensingtonscience student, attendingsuch meetingswas an act of social defiance.But, as he laterrecalled, he soon forgothis "idea of a council of war, and...was being vastly entertained by a comedy of picturesquepersonalities."2' He saw Morris as trapped in the role of poet and aesthete, yet in A Modern Utopia (1905) he readilyacknowledged the attractive- ness of a Morrisianearthly paradise:

Were we free to have our untrammelleddesire, I suppose we should followMorris to his Nowhere,we should change the natureof man and the natureof thingstogether; we should make the whole race wAse,tolerant, noble, perfect-wave our hands to a splendidanarchy, every man doingas it pleases him, and none pleased to do evil, in a worldas good in its es- sentialnature, as ripe and sunny, as the worldbefore the Fall.22

Wells, in effect, accuses Morrisof lackingintellectual "realism." His response to this appears to far less advantagein A Modern Utopia, however, than it does in his dystopianworks beginningwith The Time Machine (1895).A ModernUtopia is an over-ambitiouspiece of system-building,reflecting its author'seclectic search for a "new aristocracy"or administrativeelite; 7he TimeMachine is a mordantly criticalexamination of concepts of evolution and progress and the futurestate, with particularreference to News from Nowhere. WhileGuest wakes up in Hammersmith,the Time Travellerclimbs down from his machinein the year 802,701A.D. at a spot about three milesaway, in what was formerlyRichmond. The gay, brightly-dressedpeople, the verdantpark landscape and the bathingin the river are strongly reminiscentof Morris.The Eloi live in palace-likecommunal buildings, and are lackingin personalor sexual differentiation. On the evening of his arrival,the Time Travellerwalks up to a hilltopand surveys the green landscape,murmuring "Communism" to himself(?6). The referenceis to Morrisrather than to Marx(whose work and ideasWells never knew well). Wells has already begun his merciless examinationof the "second childhood"which Morrisblithely accepted in Nowhere. From the moment of landingwe are aware of tension in the Time Traveller's responses. He arrives in a thunderstormnear a sinister colossus, the White Sphinx, and soon he is in a frenzy of fear. The hospitalityof the Eloi,who shower him with garlandsand fruit,does not cure his anxiety.Unlike most previoustravel- lers in utopia,he is possessed of a humanpride, suspicion and highly-strungsensi- tivity which he cannot get rid of. He reacts with irritabilitywhen asked if he has come from the sun in a thunderstorm:"It let loose the judgmentI had suspended upon their clothes, their fraillight limbs and fragilefeatures. A flow of disappoint- ment rushedacross my mind.For a momentI felt that I had builtthe TimeMachine

This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:22:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 272 SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES in vain"(?5). When they teach him their language,it is he who feels like a "school- master amidstchildren," and soon he has the Eloi permanentlylabelled as a class of five-year-olds. The apparentpremise of The Time Machine is one of scientificanticipation, the imaginativeworking-out of the laws of evolution and thermodynamics,with a dash of Marxismadded. Critics sometimes stress the primacyof the didactic surface in such writing.23But The Time Machine is not exhaustedonce we have paraphrasedits explicit message. Like News from Nowhere, it is a notablyself- conscious work. Wells's story-tellingframe is more elaboratethan Morris's,and RobertM. Philmushas drawnattention to the studiedambiguity Wells puts in the Time Traveller'smouth: "Take it as a lie-or a prophecy.Say I dreamedit in the workshop"(?16).24 One of his hero's ways of authenticatinghis story is to expose the fabricationsof utopianwriters. A "realtraveller," he protests, has no access to the "vast amount of detail about building,and social arrangements,and so forth"found in utopianversions (?8). He has "noconvenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopianbooks" (?8). He has to work everythingout for himselfby a process of conjectureand refutation-a crucialfeature of The Time Machinewhich does much to convey the sense of intellectualrealism and authenticity.The visit to the Palace of Green Porcelainparallels Guest's visitto the BritishMuseum, but in- stead of a Hammondauthoritatively placed to expound"How the ChangeCame," the Time Travellermust rely on habits of observationand reasoningwhich his creatoracquired at the NormalSchool of Science. In The Time Machine Wells uses a halloweddevice of realisticfiction-the demonstrationof superior authenticityover some other class of fictions-in a "romance")context. His aim is, in Levin'swords, to "unmaskcant" and debunk misconceptions.The truths he affirmsare both of a scientific(or Huxleyan)and a more traditionalsort. The worldof Eloiand Morlocksis revealedfirst as devolution- ary and then as one of predatorand prey, of homo hominilupus. This must have a political,not merely a biologicalsignificance. No society, Wells is saying, can escape the brutish aspects of human nature defined by classical bourgeois rationalistssuch as Machiavelliand Hobbes.A society that claimsto have abolished these aspects may turn out to be harbouringpredatoriness in a peculiarlyhorrible form. This must become apparentonce we can see the whole society. In Morris's Nowhere,part of the economicstructure is suppressed;there is no way of knowing what it would have been like. In The TimeMachine it is only necessaryto put the Eloi and Morlocks in the picture together-whether they are linked by a class relationship,or a species relationship,or some evolutionarycombination of the two-to destroy the mirage of utopian communism.The Dickensiansociety of scavengerscannot be so lightlydismissed. In contrast to Morris'smellow Arcadianism, The TimeMachine is an aggres- sive book, moving through fear and melodramato the heights of poetic vision. The story began as a philosophicaldialogue and emergedfrom successive revisions as a grippingadventure-tale which is also a mine of poetic symbolism.To read throughthe variousversions is to trace Wells'spersonal discovery of the "scientific romance."25The TimeMachine in its finalform avoids certain limitations of both the Victorianrealist novel and the politicalutopia. An offshootof Wells'suse of fantasy to explore man's temporalhorizons is that he portrayshuman nature as at once more exalted and more degradedthan the conventionalrealist estimate. Imaginingthe futureliberates Wells's hero from individualmoral constraints; the story reveals a devolved, simian species which engages the Time Traveller in a ruthless, no-holds-barredstruggle. The scenario of the futureis a repository for symbolismof variouskinds. The towers and shafts of the storyare recognizably Freudian,while the names of the Eloiand Morlocksallude to Miltonicangels and devils. The Time Travellerhimself is a variantof the nineteenth-centuryromantic hero. Like Frankenstein,he is a modern Prometheus.The identificationis sealed

This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:22:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THEBREAK-UP OF CLASSICALREALISM 273

in the Palace of Green Porcelainepisode, where he steals a matchbox from the museum of earlierhumanity, whose massive architecturalremains might be those of Titans. But there is no longer a fit recipientfor the gift of fire, and the Time Traveller'smatches are only lit in self-defence.We see him travelto the end of the world,alone, clasped to his machineon the sea-shore.When he failsto returnfrom his second journeywe mightimagine him as condemnedto perpetualtime-travel- ling, as Prometheuswas condemnedto perpetualtorture. There are few unqualifiedheroes in Victorianrealistic fiction (this is a question of genericconventions, not of powerof characterization).The zenithof the realist's art appears in characters such as Lydgate, Dorothea, Pip and Clennam,all of whom are shown as failures,and not often very dignifiedfailures. They are people circumscribedand hemmed in by bourgeoisexistence. Intensityof consciousness alone distinguishestheirs from the average life of the ordinarymember of their social class. As against this, Wells offers an epic adventurerwho (like Morris's knightsand saga-heroes)is close to the supermenof popularromance. His hero is guiltyof sexual mawkishnessand indulgesin Byronicoutbursts of temperament. But what distinguisheshim from the run-of-the-millfantasy hero is the epic and public nature of his mission. As Time Travellerhe takes up the majorcognitive challengeof the Darwinistage. He boasts of coming"out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the humanrace, when Fear does not paralyseand mystery has lost its terrors"(?10). The retreat of superstitionbefore the sceptical, scientificattitude dictated that the exploit of a modern Prometheusor Faust should be told in a scaled-down,"romance" form. Nonetheless, the Time Travellershares the pride of the scientists, inventorsand explorers of the nineteenthcentury, and not the weakness or archaismof its literaryheroes. There is a dark side to his pride. The scene where he surveys the burning Morlocksshows Wells failingto distance his hero sufficiently.The Time Traveller is not ashamed of his cruel detachmentfrom the species he studies, nor does he regrethaving unleashed his superior"firepower." His only remorse is for Weena, the one creaturehe respondedto as "human,"and Wellshints that her death pro- vides justificationfor the slaughterof the Morlocks.This rationalizationis a clear example of imperialistpsychology; but Wells was both critic and product of the imperialistethos. Morris, who was so sharp about Bellamy,would surely have spotted his vulnerabilityhere. It is not merely the emotions of scientificcuriosity which are satisfiedby the portrayalof a Hobbesian,dehumanized world. News from Nowhere and The TimeMachine are based on a fusionof propa- ganda and dream.Their complexity is due in partto the genericinteractions which I have traced. Morris turns from the degraded world of Dickens to create its negativeimage in a Nowhere of mutualtrust and mutualfulfilment. Wells writes a visionarysatire on the utopianidea which reintroducesthe romantichero as ex- plorer and prophet of a menacing future. Both writerswere respondingto the break-upof the coalitionof interestsin mid-Victorianfiction, and theiruse of fantasy conventionsasserted the place of visionsand expectationsin the understandingof contemporaryreality. Schematically, we may see Wells'sSF novel as a productof the warringpoles of realismand utopianism,as representedby Dickensand Morris. More generally,I would suggest that to study the aetiologyof works such as News from Nowhere and The Time Machine is to ask oneself fundamentalquestions about the natureand functionsof literary"realism."

NOTES

1. I use "realism"in a broadlyLukacsian sense, to denote the majorrepresentational idiomof 19th-centuryfiction. See e.g. Georg Lukacs,Studies in EuropeanRealism (US 1964). I also arguethat "realism"in literaturecannot ultimatelybe separatedfrom the modernnon-

This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:22:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 274 SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES literarysenses of the term. No sooner is a conventionof literaryrealism established than the inherentlydynamic "realistic outlook" starts to turn againstthat convention. 2. PatrickBrantlinger, "News from Nowhere:Morris's Socialist Anti-Novel,"Victorian Studies 19(1975):35ff.This article examines Morris'saesthetic in greater depth than was possiblehere, withconclusions that are close to my own. 3. KarlMarx and FrederickEngels, On Literatureand Art, ed. Lee Baxandalland Stefan Morawski(US 1974),p 117. 4. HarryLevin, The Gates of Horn (US 1966),p 55. 5. The best politicalbiography is E.P.Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolution- ary (UK 1955). 6. Morris'spublished lectures are reprintedin his Collected Works, ed. May Morris, vols. 22-23 (UK 1914),and some unpublishedones in The UnpublishedLectures of William Morris,ed. Eugene D. LeMire(US 1969). Three recent (but no more than introductory) selectionsare: WilliamMorris: Selected Writingsand Designs, ed. Asa Briggs(US-UK 1962); PoliticalWritings of WilliamMorris, ed. A.L. Morton(US-UK 1962);and WilliamMorris, Selected Writings,ed. G.H. Cole (US 1961). 7. Morristook up the practiceof handicraftsin 1860and became, in effect, an extremely successfulmiddle-class designer. His theoriesof the unityof designand execution were often in advance of his workshoppractice. See e.g. Peter Floud, "TheInconsistencies of William Morris,"The Listener52(1954):615ff. 8. Morris,"How I Became a Socialist"(1894). 9. See note 6. 10. Ruskincommented on Bleak House in "Fiction-Fair and Foul,"published in the NineteenthCentury (1880-1), and on Hard Timesin Unto ThisLast (1860). 11. Collected Works22:xiii ff. 12. J.W. Mackailrecords somewhat fatuouslythat "In the moods when he was not dreamingof himselfas Tristramor Sigurd,he identifiedhimself very closely with...Joe Gargery and Mr Boffin."-The Life of WilliamMorris (UK 1901),1:220-21. Cf. PaulThompson, The Workof WilliamMorris (UK 1967),p 149. 13. See E.P. Thompson(Note 5) pp 165-67.I have not managedto locate this in the files of The Commonweal. 14. RaymondWilliams, The Long Revolution(UK 1961),p 268. 15. George Eliot,Introduction to Felix Holt (1866). 16. The fantasticand utopianelements in Dickens are associated with his genius for satireand melodrama:with his vision of the interlocking,institutional character of socialevil, and his delightin sharpand magicalpolarizations between the strongholdsof evil and those of beauty and innocence.The elementsof traditionalromance in Dickens'svision make him an exaggerated,but by no means uniquecase; a utopianelement could, I think,be tracedin every great novelist. 17. Dickens, LittleDorrit, ?34. 18. Tom Middlebro'argues that both river and feast are "religioussymbols"-"Brief Thoughtson News from Nowhere,"Journal of the WilliamMorris Society 2(1970):8.If so, this was true for Dickens as well, and I would see him as Morris'simmediate source. The symbolismof the feast is present in all Dickens'sworks and has been discussed by Angus Wilson,"Charles Dickens: A Haunting,"Critical Quarterly 2(1960):107-08. 19. Morris,"The Prospects of Architecturein Civilization"in Hopes and Fears for Art (1882). 20. Pater describesthe poetryof the Pleiadeas "anaftermath, a wonderfullater growth, the productsof which have to the full the subtle and delicatesweetness whichbelong to a refined and comely decadence."Preface to The Renaissance (1873). The compatibilityof one aspect of Pater'sand Morris'ssensibility is suggestedby the former'sreview of "Poems by WilliamMorris," Westminster Review 34(1868):300ff. 21. SaturdayReview 82(1896):413. 22. Wells,A ModernUtopia ?1:1. 23. See e.g. JoannaRuss's remarkson The TimeMachine, SFS 2(1975):114-15. 24. RobertM. Philmus,Into the Unknown(US 1970),p 73. 25. The most tellingcontrast is with the NationalObserver version (1894). For a reprint of this and an account of Wells'srevisions of The TimeMachine see his Early Writingsin Science and Science Fiction,ed. RobertM. Philmusand DavidY. Hughes(US 1975),pp 47ff.

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