The Apocalyptic Fables of H.G. Wells

The Apocalyptic Fables of H.G. WellsAlycia FordSoschia OwensRobby WrenchTiffany SeemanIn the book Going to Miami, author David Reiff shows total outrage at having to share a flight with two students from University of MiamiA Muscular looking, blond downed white boy and A tall black girl(213)

Reiff stereotypes the students as stupid, even though the man is reading an intellectual book.Reiff says that the students have a collective IQ barely above room temperatureReiff compares the students to EloiThese kids across from me, incapable of uttering a humane sentence, were Eloi. There was nothing whatsoever in their heads and. . . I wanted to eat them (214)

Reiff has a similar experience when he sees a young man in a museum dressed in a bright U of M shirt. Rieff states his thoughts I wanted to shout get out of here Eloi, go back to your vacation (214)

The correlation between Wells and Reiff is that they focus on classic conflict, sexual hostility, cannibalistic transgressions, racial fantasy, gender confusion, and. . . the final breakdown of civilized ethics.(214)These themes are seen more so in Wells writings The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau

Most quest writings took place in Africa or a dark area in the East. This is where the sexual and racial images merged. Africa was most chosen because it was a blank canvas with a dark-skinned race.

Both Reiff and Wells had a yearning to escape from the social norms of the time period evident within their writings.Many of Wells writings showed a desire for escaping the Victorian belief system.In both The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau, the antagonist returns to find the terrors of their travels depicted in the London streets.

Helen Cixous

Talks of how metaphorically, the Dark Continent was usually associated with the female body, even more specifically the black female body. Idea that men conquer her and make haste to depart from her bordersOne could understand how a man, could confusing himself for his male desires and rushing in for the attack, might feel resentment and fear of being taken by the woman, of being lost in her, absorbed or alone.

Joseph BooneWomens novels of the 19th century primarily ended in marriage while the mens novels were more about flight from marriage

Judith L. SensibarArgues wilderness may be sought as a place where people could go and more successfully mask homosexual panic and avoid threats that existed in the homophobic civilized world. Makes a tie between Wells divorcing Isabel to marry another woman with the character of Weena and her anxieties/distress when the Time Traveler leaves herThis insisting that Amy Catherine would prove to be a less possessive and tiresome wife

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Fantasies of male self-creation (i.e.: duplication or cloning) were also themes of the time.Able to avoid contact with the maternal body

The safe and secret place is the Male ImaginationThe social standards are well set in the time period from where the Time Traveler departs, however he continually guesses wrong on the standards of the future.

Wells thinking of a time machine long before airplanes is seen as propheticMany imagined the time machine looking like a bicycleWells loved cycling because it was . . .one of the few activities in which men and women could enjoy each others company without chaperones(Bachelor qtd. In Showalter 219)

The second way the time machine is pictured is a moving picture projectorThe third way to see the time machine is as a bachelor machine

The third reading of the time machine is as a machine celibataire or bachelor machineComes from Machines Celibataires, describes the literary, artistic, and scientific construction between 1850 and 1925 of anthropomorphized machines to represent the relation of the body to the social, the relation of the sexes to each other, the structure of the psyche, or the workings of history.

The bachelor machine is typically a closed, self sufficient system.Common themes are frictionless, sometimes perpetual motion, an ideal time of the magical possibilities of its reversal, electrification, voyeurism and masturbatory eroticism, the dream of the mechanical reproduction of art, and the artificial birth or reanimation.

The bachelor machine has obvious associations with the male bodyFreud claims it is highly probable that all complicated machinery and apparatus occurring in dreams stands for the genitals and as a rule the male ones.The time machine (reproduction) stands in contrast to the White Sphinx (a suggestion of disease)

The Sphinx is a union of sexual opposition, suggesting that the time travelers experience will go beyond his trainingThe Eloi (little pink hands, consumptive beauty, vegetarianism, and perpetual leisure) are hyper feminized.

When the time traveler enters the labyrinths of the Morlocks, the time traveler seems to be leaving the feminity of the surface and entering the male body itself. The Morlocks are being who are hyper masculinsed, technological, rapacious (greedy/gluttonous), and cannibalistic.They embody the upper class fear of working-class revolution, and the feminist dread of male violence and lust.

Sphinx is referential to Oedipus and his riddleOedipal and self-referential riddles are made explicit by his descent to underworld through wellsWells emphasized the wells leading to the unconscious, into the creative, violent, and sexual self.

The Morlocks also correspond to Wells writing process.Wells descended into his own unconscious, pulling out primitive imagesFin-de-sicle fiction= end of the century fiction

The Apocolyptic fables of h.g. wells- pgs 213-221