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The Time Machine and Wells Social TrajectoryBy John HuntingtonPresented by:Allison NorcrossBrittany NorcrossChelsea WheelerJessica Massie

Some of Wells' accomplishments are ignored if his social origin is ignored.

The Time Machine gave voice to Wells' social angers while still allowing him to become a successful writer.

Lionel Stevenson- H.G. Wells emerged from the lowest stratum of the middle class, which had previously produced only one major English novel- Dickens (Huntington 222).The Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting at dinner (p. 14).

Reveals that the Time Traveller had a social conscience before he saw the consequences of the class system in the future.Uncomfortable with the master-servant relationship, he still kept servants & enjoyed the benefits of having them. Not so much a sign of 'conscience' as it is a sign of a person who has been in the servant class (Huntington 222).The issue with how to handle a servant belonged to Wells just as much as the Time Traveller. The position of privilege... is also... an object of resentment (Huntington 223).

The attitude towards the Morlocks is one of mixed emotions.

Conditions of the underground servants' quarters at Uppark made Wells furious.Anthony West- such rage is evidence of sympathy rather than horror and fear (Huntington 224).

Wells hides the class criticism in The Time Machine by turning class differences into species differences.

Wells wanted the novel to make a great social statement without upsetting his audience and ruining his chances at success.Denied his outrage with the class system in public. He repeatedly expressed irritation at Marx for basing his theories on class hostility(Huntington 224).Denying the reality of the problem was Wells' way of reassuring himself that he could escape his birth class

It's my trump card and if it does not come off very much I shall know my place for the rest of my career -Wells (Huntington 224).

If The Time Machine failed, Wells would have to accept his place in the class system and give up his dreams of being a successful writer.The novel was his one chance to break free of his class. He must avoid being vulgar in his social criticism in order to be successful.

Wells avoids vulgarity by:

mostly ignoring class in his present dayturning class differences into species differencesidentifying the Morlocks (the working class) symbolically, not realisticallymaking the criticism of the Eloi stylisticnot showing the lower classes the way they really are- real servants kept out of sight

The Time Traveller was in a utopian situation, so time travel to him was like writing a story

It was logical, displayed ingenuity, and it was a paradox befitting a cultivating parlor.

Wells used the book the Chronic Argonauts (his first novel about time travel to try and explain what is going to happen in the future.He explains that there will be two types of divisions the Eloi and the MorlocksThese divisions are divided by economical situations

In his new and revised version of the Chronic Argonauts, The Time Machine he revises his view on social classes a bit

In 1895 the true utopia of the tale of The Time Machine, was that men were economically indistinguishable and the only thing that separated them was their intelligence I do not mean any split between working people and rich families drop and rise from toil to wealth continuallybut between the somber, mechanically industrious, arithmetical, inartistic type, the type of the puritan and the American millionaire and the pleasure loving, witty and graceful type that gives us our clever artists, actors and writers, some of our gentry, and many an elegant rogue (pg. 115).

The End