Thoughts of perfectibility were surrounded by much controversy and excitement for Victorian England. It was widely agreed that the existential industrial growth in Britain at the time would be the beginning of a new progressive age. The popular main ideas of Socialism were born of the desperate need for social reform, particularly with regards toregulating the unpleasant working conditions of the lower classes. During this period of rapid scientific discovery andsubstantial academic research, the English upper classes regarded this as a time of great social optimism. Wells himself was a socialist, and supported the reforms which were in movement around the publishing of
The Time Machine, his first novel. Christopher Caudwell, a Marxist writer of the time with prevalent Communist sympathies, overturns Wells` sympathies, arguing that Wells comes from a class which regards the proletariat not as passive, inferior brutes but as something dirty and evil and dangerous and terribly near (Caudwell, 1971:93). It is here that we find a conflict for Wells. Caudwell s views of Wells class are not without merit: an underlying fear of revolt if reforms were not introduced was well-established among middle and upper class mill and factory owners. The idea of social optimism, progress, reform and compassion for the working classes, against the backdrop of the fearful and affluent circle in which Wells lived and worked, is incongruous on many levels. Wells comfortably wealthy counterparts would argue that the strife of the working class was an unavoidable and necessary part of social progress despite, of course, having very little part in the struggle for survival and improvement themselves.
This Darwinian struggle and the concept of perfectibility in terms of evolution and natural selection relies on competition for a species to thrive, there must be a struggle which makes positive change beneficial to, and occasionally imperative for, survival. Indeed, for Wells, this struggle is almost non-existent for the Victorian upper classes. Those who spend their lives at ease and in comfort simply do not have to struggle to survive. For Wells and for Darwin, toperfect, society requires the potential for competition.Whilst
The Time Machine has often been labelled as a work of utopian fiction, Wells breaks the expected pattern of positive future prediction. By opting for a critical view of the destiny of Victorian society, Wells moves away from the typically optimistic and paradisiacal works of the time such as William Morris
News from Nowhere in 1890. Certainly, Patrick Parrinder agrees with this stereotype when discussing Wells Genealogy
, where he asserts that this kind of prediction of the future of civilisation has, until this text, been mostly positive visions of paradise (Parrinder, 1995:118).
The Time Machine is a notably negative projection of a possible future society, in contrast with ideals of social optimism. Through his portrayal of the Darwinian degeneration of the Eloi species from the time travellers advanced and complex expectations into one of limited capabilities, Wells suggests that if society perfects and adapts as far as possible, it would become latent and too comfortable. The need for struggle and competition would diminish. In Darwinian theory, if the struggle for survival did not exist then evolution and the improvement of the species by natural selection becomes redundant and, naturally, ceases. While Darwin s theory of evolution states that some of us are ever-perfecting ourselves, as the weak go to the wall, it does not account for the resulting improvement of our environment. Neither does it account for an eventual stagnation in progress when the struggle is no longer being fought. So, when survival of the fittest (Spencer, 1849:437) no longer applies to a society, as with the Eloi, their innate capabilities and adaptations, which used to give them the means to compete, regress.Darwinian degeneration is obvious in the symbiotic eco-system Wells creates. By enlarge, the social landscape of the Upper World, and indeed the physical landscape, seems to us more prehistoric than futuristic. The time traveller describes the Eloi as fatted cattle who are preyed upon by the Morlocks (Wells, 1895:62). He acknowledges later in the novel that this was not how he foresaw this future society, basic and natural. The time traveller finds that without evolution as a driving force, a base and almost cave-man like society has formed in its absence. Social norms and self-perfecting ideals have all but vanished, replaced by wild and natural food chains and pecking orders. These pecking orders are also strange in themselves. The Morlocks literally peck (Wells, 1895:62), the use of this harsh verb alluding to their cruel and animal-like behaviours. Furthermore, the Eloi still remain prey to the lower class of society despite their privileged place above ground. Acting as both the haves and the prey for the have-nots is a muddled position in terms of the capitalist hierarchy that the time traveller knows. The time traveller begins his explorations believing that the society of the future will be ever-more complex, the natural product of his socially optimistic standpoint. He quickly retracts this belief when he observes the reality of the bizarre dynamics between the Eloi and the Morlocks. He sees, as does his readership, that evolution cannot always be considered socially optimistic. The perfecting of a species is not the inevitable outcome of evolution. Rather, evolution is a process by which a species adapts over time. Depending on the circumstances, this does not always result in an improvement.The assumption that the people of 802,701 AD would have vastly surpassed their Victorian predecessors in terms of science and arts is a second misconception in
The Time Machine. Again, the time traveller s social optimism is misplaced he is forced to admit that his optimistic predictions did not come to fruition:You see, I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art and everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children- asked me, in fact, if I had come from the Sun in a thunderstorm (Wells, 1895:25).Christy Cannariato s piece entitled
The Probability of Progress describes the Victorian tendency towards social optimism as a by-product of the rapid and marked advances in knowledge of science, medicine, agriculture, industry and education. She argues that due to this atmosphere of positive change, progress is at the heart of the Victorian novel (Cannariato, 2007:73)
. However, Wells instead presents us with a world in which the advancement of humanity has not only stagnated, it has actually regressed.Wells depicts the Eloi as sexually indistinguishable, which the time traveller notes explicitly in his narrative. It is fitting that this point is made alongside observations of their idle lifestyle. Rather than being something fixed and unchanging, Wells suggestion is that the differentiation between male and female in the Eloi race is something which is exaggerated by the need for struggle. Obvious sexual differentiation in a species develops because of a basic requirement to procreate. From a biological viewpoint, females must appear female and display feminine traits in order to be successful in attracting a male mate, and males must display their masculinity to attract a female. However, due to their idle lifestyle, the Eloi are faced with very little struggle or urgency to compete for procreation. Comfort and security have led to a diminished need for competition and, ultimately, the regression of the species. The time traveller asserts this argument very openly within the text:The too-perfect security of the Upper-worlders has led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength and intelligence. That I could see clearly enough (Wells, 1895: 89).By making explicit that their surroundings have become too-perfect , Wells reiterates the point that there is an excess of comfort here, and states that this has directly led the Eloi species to degenerate. Herbert Spencer, an English sociologist, biologist, anthropologist, philosopher and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era, studied the sociology of the nineteenth century in great depth. In his works, found in
The Emergence of Social Theory,he provides a sound basis for the premise of progress. He also leaves the possibility that the driving forces of social advancement could be removed open for discussion. He summarises that societies evolve from simple to ever-more complex forms there are always forces or mechanisms driving this movement of societies from simple to complex formations (Spencer, 1849:437).
The natural direction of a society, for Spencer and his fellow social optimists, is forward. The one weakness of his argument is found in his assertion that there is always [a] force or mechanism driving this movement . He thereby allows a potential loop-hole, where Wells considers an outcome other than greater complexity. If we could out-adapt these driving forces of evolution by natural selection, we can hypothesise the outcomes for a society where struggle and competition no longer exists. Wells suggests that where there [is] no signs of struggle, neither social or economical struggle (Wells, 1895: 22), society ceases to move forwards, and can even begin to move backwards.Evolutionary advantages also seem to move backwards in this social eco-system of the Eloi and the Morlocks. Emotion and bonding between people, human social links such as love and empathy seem to have all but vanished from the Upper-world. The vivid example of Weena very nearly drowning changes the tone of the time traveller s observations thus far. He is the only character within the narrative who feels a strong urge to save Weena, the Eloi are content to simply stand-by uselessly, singing, playing and dancing in the sunlight (Wells, 1895: 19). This childlike imagery of almost meaningless interaction, which is fruitless in terms of proactive survival, implies again that the Eloi have very little stimulation and, as a species, very little incentive to evolve or develop. Further to this lack of emotional engagement,
the Morlocks only enjoyable activity seems to be the occasional eating of one of the Elois.
Empathy for others is an aspect of personality which is developed, cultivated through social sharing and bonding, betweenindividuals who are capable of processing the needs of others. The Eloi s simplistic and hedonistic lifestyle suggests that the more complex traits which we expect from a well-rounded, successful person in a more modern society, are lost. The time traveller comes from a comparatively modern society where the advantage of having close bonds with loved ones and protecting one s own is proven useful by the continuation of one s genes. Evolutionarily, it is advantageous for us to care for our own. The process of adaptation towards empathy and regard for the safety of others usually begins at age four in human beings and is well-placed by age six. This mainly develops through interaction and linguistic communication. Indeed, the deterioration of language could be the primary cause for this degeneration, as the time traveller explains:Either I missed some subtle point, or their language was excessively simple -almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives or verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Their sentences were usually simple and of one or two words, and I failed to convey or understand any but the simplest prepositions. (Wells, 1895:19).It appears that the interaction, particularly through language, in the world of both the Eloi and the Morlocks is simple and problematic. The American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley s argument is that the cement holding diverse forms together is the capacity [of individuals] to interact and share ideas and concepts (1878:386). According to the time traveller, attempting to interact in a regressed society devoid of Victorian ideals of social cohesion and the family has rendered the Eloi and the Morlocks almost inarticulate. Without this social bonding, the vicious circle of degeneration continues for the Upper-worlders.The lack of Darwinian struggle causes other social structures seem to disintegrate within
The Time Machine, particularly the construct of the capitalist industry now so synonymous with the Victorian era. The heavy industrial work is left almost entirely to the Morlocks. Within this hierarchy, it is obvious that Wells champions the fixation of the Victorians on class systems and the proper place of the individual within it. The rigidity of the time traveller s observations is extremely telling as to his feelings of proper place within the social hierarchy of the Upper-worlders. Particularly notable is his use of you must have in his justification, suggesting that, for him, capitalism is the only conceivable way to organise a society: in the end, above ground
you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort, and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour (Wells, 1895:50). Certainly, Emily Alder goes further, and views this concept from a particularly Darwinian approach, saying that H.G Wells [is] among those writers who transform this fixation by placing within an evolutionary paradigm (Alder, 2008:114). The spiritual degeneration of the Morlocks is analogous to the moral degeneration which the upper Victorian classes predicted would occur when the working classes were subjected to intense working environments. On this subject, L on Faucher said that there [was] full scope for the birth and growth of passions which eventually refuse to submit to constraint (Faucher, 1844: 45).
While passions can be interpreted many ways, it is obvious that Faucher is suggesting that the oppressive nature of the circumstances in which the lower classes, the have-nots (Wells, 1895: 50)and therefore the Morlocks find themselves can lead to frustrations which cannot be tamed. Faucher and his counterparts suggested that the working classes of England would lose their morality and their self-restraint more easily when subjected to the harsh, foreign and dangerous conditions of the newly erupting mills and factories. In a very similar way, the Morlocks are wild , savage and animalistic due to the harsh nature of their existence, living underground and being unable to fight back against their better-placed, above-ground neighbours. Save for a few occasional reprieves where they can ease their frustrations by eating an Eloi, the Morlocks live in perpetual tension which occasionally refuse to submit to constraint (45).There is, however, one large difference which bucks the trend of Wells reflection on class systems. Alongside the have-nots , the haves also experience the same moral and intellectual and physical degeneration. Depicted as frail, fragile and foolish and being indolent and easily fatigued , it is clear that the Eloi are also part of this degenerative movement. Society degenerates as an entire body and the privileged haves are not spared. In actual fact, Wells makes it clear that their comfortable and too-easy lifestyle actually makes them more susceptible to a lack of struggle, and therefore regression.When Wells challenges Victorian ideals of advancement and social optimism, the result for both the Eloi and the Morlocksis Darwinian degeneration. On one end of the spectrum, the Eloi, whose process of moving towards perfection has reversed because of an over-reliance on comfort. On the other, the oppressed, working class Morlocks, whose perfecting process has slowed due to the harshness of their existence. The time travellers preconceived ideas of social optimism are consistently conflicted with the idea of evolution as a finite process which must eventually begin to stagnate and reverse itself if the need for competition is out-adapted. Wells leaves us with the idea that Victorian capitalist society is a society in which the struggle is very real and very present. However, through this conflict, perhaps unintentionally presented within the novel, Wells also leaves to contemplate that in the future, once we have adapted and advanced above and beyond the difficulties of our environment, and won the struggle for survival against nature and against each other, we could ultimately face evolutionary stagnation. Indeed, for Wells, after the battle comes Quiet (Wells, 1895: 32). Word Count: 2,675 words. Alder, E. 2008. Buildings of the New Age: Dwellings and the Natural Environment in the Futuristic Fiction of H.G. Wells and William Hope Hodgson
in
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Studies and Further Studies in a Dying Culture. New York: NYU Press. (93)Darwin, C. Huxley, L & Gosse E. (2012) Evolution in
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. W.W. Norton Company Inc. (1560-1580)Faucher, L. 1844. Disproportion of the Sexes
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The Emergence of Sociological Theory. SAGE publications. (386)Parrinder, P. 1995.
Shadows of the Future: H.G Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy. Syracruse University Press. (118)Spencer, H. 1849 (2012) in
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