THE DEHONOZOGY OF INSTINCT: ALLEGCPY AND SETTING I?: II, G. HELLS' THE ISLAND OF DR. MOKEAU Jor. Paul Heusy B,A. University of British Coinmbia 3374 THE5IS SUBRITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILZ?lENT OF PfiE HEQUIREHENTS POX THE DEGREE OF &ASTEE OF BETS i~ the Deparlmect or' EngLish @ Jon Paui Hecry 1980 SIMON FRASER UMIYERSFTY August 1980 Ail rlyhts reserveJ. This wor# may cot be reproduced in rholr or ir par;, by ptotocopy or other Nears, without permission of the author. APP RQVAL NAME : Jon Paul Henry DEGREE : Master of Arts TITLE OF THESIS: The Demonology of Instinct: A1 legory and Setting in H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau EXAMINING COMMITTEE : Chairperson : Professor Paul Delany Professor Mason Harris, Associate Professor L / I Professor John Mil ls, Associate Professor ~+ilXchrLj&GZGeout, External Examinee Instructor Doug1 as Col 1ege Date Approved: PART l AL CQPYR l GHT L l CENSE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis, project or extended essay (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a reqbest from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or- the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission, Title of Thes i s/Project/Extended Essay Author: I -- _ - (signature) The term "scientific romance", which H. G. Wells coined to describe his early science fiction novels con- tains within it a contradiction. It stresses science, a method of patient observation and accurate descrip- - tion; yet there is an equal stress on romance, on the magical and irrational. There is, in short, a conflict within the scientific romances between reason and emotion that is reflected in the term itself. Nor is this the single common feature among the novels. In all of thex the hero is a typical or rep- resentative man, and the settings of all the novels tend to be strange, barely aczassibls islands in time or space. Wells usps the settings to isolate either single' societias or single inC~~iduals,ususily the hero. The isiand is used both as a paradig of a social organization and as a paradigm of the essential isolation of any mem- ber of society. Moreover, Wells' ronances all tend towards satire. His technique in projecting these satires involves the creation of isolated worlds (islands) psrllel to our own. which in their completeness reflect on the shortcomings of the society contemporary with the author. The method I have chosen to elucidate these common features and to sho~tLtir inter-relationships is a iii hero. The essential argument, therefore, is that in li~ningout a picture of his society-and Wells' pose of social critic and commentator is consistent throughout the scientilic romances-more especially in drawing a satiric, utopian or anti-utopian version of his society, Wells is ~scessarilyinvolved in a psychological delin-- eation m.2 exploration over which he has little conscious control. TIE romances then, each tell a different version of the same stwy. In The Island of Dr. Moreau Wells' man- ipulation of the setting as an anti-utopiz (an arena) illumiliates his we 02 it, in o';her rorcames, as a utopia (an island). .'l;c;r~over,in tne Preface to the 1924 reprint of the work Wells admits to a specific ail- egorical intention, that the operations of the doctor are an allegory of the processes of evolution by which humans have be~n'rough-hewn' from out their animal origins. These are the aspects of the novel to which the title of the present essay points; setting, allegory, and Wells' image of evolution. ..... ..... TABLE OF CONTENTS Approval .................................................. *.ii ... Abstract ...................................................a~~ 1. 1~5rruduction ...........................................I TI. hTelisi Self-Commectary ................................6 111. The Island L i f ......................................20 iV. ~rendickobserves the Beast Folk ..................... 26 8 . Prcndick' s Eyes and Ears ......................em...,..33 VI. Prendick acd the Leopard Man .........................45 VII. The Uccanriy Nature of Everts for Prendick and the Reader ........................e..........~...........54 VIf I . rloreau compared to TZhg Time &aching .....~..........53 IX. The Character of Hontgomcry ..........................b4 X. The Character of Moreau ...............................74 XI. Alfegory a~dthe Beast Polk ..........................87 XIT. allegory and a dreaming Prendick ...................100 XI11 . The Island I: ii] ................................... 115 XIV. Darwinian Evoiution in Freud acd ge2ls ............. 121 Appendix A: Savage Ancestors in gel1s ....................... 133 ~ibliography...........................~......e............. 1Ql I, Introduction When, several years ago, I re-read 8, G, s*;r& Time different 'hey seemed froa my first, adoiescect experience of them, Partly, I suppose, the iliffer-emx was ir; me, I was older, more critical, Yet the feclinqs f experiecced reading them weze 31ch ?he same, On redding others of &ells8 "scientific romancesw {:hi3 is the ?erm he uses for them), 1 and reading carefully, critically, in order to explain to myself my reactions to the works, I formulated two related as~umptions,1% is on one of I---------*-"----_ 11 cannot trace the exact oriyic of this term, zhough Zngvald Eakzca iz his e~cyclopedic8, G, Wells qgd big c&i&ics (Bergen: Universitetsfoslaget, 1902) and 3ernard Beryoczi in his xgs ----Sarly gi E, gg&&g {Toror=to: Univ. of Toronto Press, 3951), pp. 32-3, list a possible source for the term, fro~a scientific popularizer of *he 1880's ard go's, C, H, Eiiriton, who during that time published a series of pamphlets collected under the title gcientif&g Eomacces (London: Swan S~r~censcein,1884). Thouqh there is ro evidence thdt Wells read Hinton's volume, as Bergonzi shows he had ir,deed come into contact. with at least one of its essays, 'j8hat is the fourth dimcnsio~?~The earliest use of the term by Yells bi~selfrefesixg to Eis own uosk jtkdr f have seeL) is in a letter to Arnold EeIinett (I3 August 1301), which may be found ir. Harris Wilson (Ed.) Ar~oldBerme4t and EL G, ----Wells (Urbana: Univ, of fflinois Press, 1360) , p, 60, where iie-lls says he sees he is "doomed to write iscier:tifict rontacces and short_ stories for you cseatures of the mob, and [that] my novels aust be my private dissiyationS4~Hells use of quotatioa marks here indicates that, so far as he was concerned, the term, \, was not original with him, Nevertheless, thejuxtaposition of logic an3 emotion which the term implies accords bell kith gelis description of his srate of mind while wri5ixig clie romances, OrA this see Yells, Ereface to ??hs Coung~yof filing (Londonz Nelsoc, 2. d, f l9lO-ll I), p. iv, these -hat the preserlt essay is based, First, i seemed that all the novels were, in a sense, psychological and secocd, thdt each of then told the same scary from a different ~crspective, 1 imagined %he seven novels to myself as a kind of crys%l; rigidly s:rl~ctured, yet muftifaceted, acd, turned i one's hand against a light the successive faces show, to even a casual perception, aifferelzt and changing patterns, How are the two assuaptions related? Dealing with the second first, it can be recast as a statemeat about the formal properties of the works, that is, that so far as his science fictions are concerned, Bells is (like the contemporary 3obert A, Heinlein) a formufa writer, The Lormulaic assumption may be rehtel to the assum~tionsthat the novels are psychological by saying t5at the rndnifest similarities among the novels point *o latent simila~ities,that along with "he formula apparent in the surface contect there is at work a formula of e~otional sigzhfiuaace to the au'hor, While some of these latent contec's derive (or so it has seemed to Wells* uiographers) 2 from emotional co~flicts ic the au+.hor8s "selfH, all of the novels self-consciously address "social questions4' of one kind or another. Ttus i+ is possible *hat Wells in these romances 2Norman and Jeanne NacKenzie, &H GF hfgllg; & Brogg~h~[N~w York: Simon as,d Schuster, 1973) ctcipter eight, especially pp, 124-30. PublisEcd in England by Keideniield and Nickolson, 1373, sdBae paginatior,, mediates emotio~al corflicts +hat were--and pernaps still are--boAh a result and a determinant of the way in which we live our lives, In other words, Bells* cu~flictsace cot purely his ow2 2rivaca possassioss, but may equally be considered to fa13 wit hi^ the public domain, The investigation uhich grew from this starting point hds 3icce then covered a good deaf of ground, and looks to cover a qreat deal more before any satisfactory conclusions may be draw?, I5 has become apparent that I cannot at this point present a whole interpretation of Wells* science fictions. I have chosen therefore, to present "13 pilot szudy, ap examination of ore of the novels, together with a brief overview of the reasons for the study and some tentative conclusions an the dicho%omy between nature and cul+ure in the novel ,The Islarid --of -----Doctor gzgau. The present paper may be +bought of as a description of the current state of the larger project, which, when completed, will present in each chapter an aaalysis 05 that feature of Wellsr paradig% nost apparent irA a particular work, I have also embedded ir. the text a contin~i~gseries of refere~~ces to Wclf st earlier novel, E!g !4pchi11?, i~ order to suggest how the two stories may be viewed as differing fictiondl emhodimerts of thc same cmcerns, First,' however, it will be necessary to limn out i~ a.