And then there’s that part in the frame narrative where Prendick’s nephew says Prendick claimed his mind was blank the whole time.  I think he’s lying so he won’t have to tell the story that people won’t believe or will be horrified by, but it also adds to the idea of the experience as a trance.  It throws into some doubt what he actually experienced.

Also, I think Wells is participating in a tradition of stories about journeys that change the traveler thoroughly in negative ways—like Gulliver who returns home and hates humanity, and Young Goodman Brown who can’t bear to be around his family any more.  Prendick’s gone to a kind of hell, and he returns completely transformed.

I agree Dorothy that Wells is participating in a story tradition. He puts an interesting twist on it, doesn’t he?

What about The Law? I found the it interesting the things Moreau chose to use to remind the Beast People that they were “Men.” They were to walk upright, not suck up drink, be good vegetarians, don’t claw trees or chase other Men. As if by following these precepts the animals would be more human. In reality it is nothing but a sad sham.

Yeah—an interesting twist, all right.  He seems afraid of how science can possibly change humanity fundamentally—disrupt the balance of body and mind; rationality and instinct that make humans what they are.

It’s interesting that Moreau tells them that to be human they have to change their behavior, or regulate their behavior—they aren’t simply humans but must change themselves.  He’s worried about the Beast people turning back into animals, but it also implies that he thinks humans can’t just be what they are.  They must constantly be trying to change their nature—which strikes me as wrong and disturbing.  Why can’t humans be satisfied to be what they are?

What does everyone make of Prendick?  I mean, why does he come to loathe the Beast people as he does?  I find it interesting that he begins to enforce the Law himself when the Beast People begin to revert to animals.  He hates what Moreau is doing, but he uses the same language Moreau does in order to try to get control and save himself.  This seems ominous.

With regards to the Law, and the potshots Wells takes at religion here and there in the book, I couldn’t help thinking that these are just the feelings of a womanizer who wanted to believe there was something wrong, unnatural, or at least futile about self-control.

At first I was sympathetic to Prendick. After all, he ended up in a situation he didn’t ask for. But I lost my sympathy for him as soon as he and Montgomery drank together and Prendick ceased to be so disturbed by the puma’s cries. He was certainly afraid for his life and I think that is why he starts to try to enforce the Law when the Beast People start to revert. He seems to think he is better than Moreau or Montgomery but because he resorts to their tactics he really isn’t. Maybe Wells is trying to tell us that no one is immune from being a beast, that when one’s own survival and self-interest is at stake, we will throw all civilizing influence to the wind and do whatever it takes to live.

I definitely think Wells had issues with women. There are no actual human women in the book except the prostitues at the end and Prendick sees them as animals. The Beast women all tend to be cats and a vixen. Prendick is quite unsettled by the vixen. There is a swine woman too I think but it’s the puma and vixen who get all the attention. The thought did cross my mind from time to time that this is definitely a man book (sorry guys!) in the sense that women have no need to create life like Moreau because they already can naturally. Moreau is trying to take over as God and woman, removing both from the picture. It is all very disturbing.

Yes!  Like in Frankenstein, when Frankenstein takes over the roles of God and woman to make his creature—it’s all about fear of women, and fear of the body, of reproduction.

I didn’t even pay attention to the roles (what few there were) of women. This book just has so many layers. You can easily read it just for the story but the more you think about it the more you are uncovering.

I can’t remember but did Moreau ever say why he was making the experiments? I mean, was the ultimate goal to make a complete human or do you think the Beast People were to stay as that. I felt like he was making this sub-class so he could dominate them. To what ends I’m not sure yet but that’s the feeling I got.

Of course! It’s womb-envy! Actually you may be on to something. All these men with no women to bring them down to earth, it’s no wonder they got strange ideas in their heads. And why wasn’t Prendick married before his adventure...?

I think Prendick was faffing about being a dilettente before this.  I am curious about Wells himself and what his motivations were.  I have only read the short biographical information.  It sounds as though most people think he didn’t think well of women (and on this point I am not sure), but he did write Anne Veronica a book about a suffragette (have it, haven’t read it).  I get the feeling he was pretty liberal in his thinking and wanted people to wise up before it was too late (in terms of the Wars), which of course they didn’t.

All I know about Wells and women is that he had several wives and mistresses. Like chips, he couldn’t have just one…

Yeah, I got the impression - not so much from this as his “Collected Short Stories” that he couldn’t bear smart/ moral/ strong women. In his stories, they appear only as viscious harridens, dead bodies, or, at best, weaklings. Made me wonder, at the time, what kind of a relationship he had with his mother...also, what Rebecca West saw in him. Can’t imagine he would be the best companion for a girl.

I don’t know much about Wells’s personal life. He did tell Leonard Woolf that Virginia was “too intelligent.” Woolf commented in her diary when she met Wells that it seemed in his personal life he was rather a bully. I can’t imagine what Rebecca West saw in him either.

I think Wells was a feminist for the sole reason that he’d find more women to sleep with him that way.

Knowing that Wells would call Rebecca West Panther (or Panfur, as he lispingly wrote in his letters) and himself Jaguar made all the puma stuff even more upsetting than it would have otherwise. I kept reminding myself that many many years had passed and he’d probably forgotten what he’d written in Moreau, but I still found it squicky.

Lady Slaves, you bring up a whole new question not specific to this novel. Let’s say Wells is a womanizer, or woman-hater, or consumer-of-women-like-they-were-chips: how does that affect your opinion of what he wrote? Does it make Moreau less meaningful, and if so, in what ways? I noted that a female love interest was added to the movie version: does having a female in the story improve it somehow? In a world where woman are not scientists or sailors or merchants, as in Wells’ time, is it not possible that there are stories about sailing and science and commerce, such as The Island of Dr. Moreau, that don’t involve women? Like Sylvia, I find it hard to read this novel with the eyes and mind of a Victorian.

I think it’s obvious that there were, as you say, no female scientists, sailors, or merchants for Wells to plausibly add to his story. But it’s not as though there weren’t women in the world at that time. Prendick never makes reference to any women whatsoever - mother, sister, sweetheart, or spinster aunt. I don’t think this exclusion makes “Moreau” less meaningful as a story, but I do find it unusual. And in what I’ve read of his other work, the only sympathetic female character I can think of is “The Time Machine“‘s Weena, who is more like a dog than a person.

So I don’t have a lesser opinion of Wells for excluding strong women from his work - I still think he’s brilliant - but it makes me wonder why he chose to write like that.