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SF-TH Inc "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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. SF-TH Inc is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science Fiction Studies. http://www.jstor.org 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 265 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 nine- teenth 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 out- look. 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, how- ever, 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
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