I posted a few reading suggestions on the Slaves Blog as Stefanie tagged me to choose the next book.  Please pop on over and see if any of them sound appealing.

Danielle

Susan P. - 31 August 2006 10:46 AM

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

Bingo!

For me, Well’s infidelities are part of the motivation behind the cynicism about religion and morality in the book (the ridiculousness and futility of the Law, plus the Ape-like clergyman at the end). It’s not nearly as important a theme in the book as the human/animal thing, and, for me, far more important than Wells’ portrayal (or non-portrayal) of women in the book. This is not about criticising Well’s life choices, this about criticizing the book, and it is often helpful to look at the author for corroborating evidence. Is there a piece of literature in existence that doesn’t reflect in some part the person and culture that created it? I haven’t read much but I haven’t seen it yet. Knowing the author and the time helps us to know the book, IMO.

I think it’s generally best to look at the book itself and not Wells’s reputation as a way of understanding the book.  I think every author is messed up and flawed in some way (like we all are), and I don’t really like to hold personal failings against an author.  But, still, I do think it’s significant that there aren’t really any women in the book—the book might have some problems in that regard.  And I can say that without reflecting on Wells’s personal life at all.  And yet it’s so hard to keep the bio and the book separate in this case, because they seem to fit together so well.

This debate seems to drive at the question who determines what a novel means, the writer or the reader? It seems undeniable readers bring their own baggage to a story. I guess our duty should be to do our best to leave that behind and read a novel as it was written. All writers should understand their writing comes without explanation, and I expect they put into their novel everything they feel is required to understand what they want to say. When we suggest Wells does not include women in his novel because he hates his mother, or is a misogynist, or simply doesn’t give women their due, we are saying at his most basic level Wells is more these things than he is a writer. This is possible, yet how does it affect the story? If he did not feel women were important to his novel, why should we feel it is lacking something without them? We may say we don’t care for novels that don’t have any women in them, although this does not necessarily mean the novel is missing some key element.

Didn’t we have this discussion on Stefanie’s blog not long ago, about whether there is anything wrong about a novel being autobiographical?

What about this (playing devil’s advocate here): Instead of criticizing the reader for drawing parallels between a book and its author, shouldn’t we criticize the author for putting himself or herself in the book? If we could make no connections, then we’d know the book was pure fiction, no autobiography, no personal agenda. Muriel Spark came across as that sort of writer. There wasn’t much of her as a person in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, as far as I could tell. Is she an exception or typical?

You bring up a good point about the reader, Jeff. A book is neither written nor read in a vacuum. Is there any way out of the soup of subjectivity? Is that even desireable?

If this was Dickens, would we even be having this conversation? Clearly he wrote his books because of his personal feelings and with the hope of creating social change. I don’t think we see anything wrong with that, or with identifying that that is what is going on in his books, among other things.

It sure is a soup of subjectivity, isn’t it?  I guess what I don’t like is when people are tempted to dismiss an author’s work because the author did some bad things or treated people badly, or whatever (not to imply that that’s what people were doing here—the discussion of Wells’s personal life is interesting).  You’re right Sylvia that looking at a book in its context is important, and that we understand Dickens better by understanding his interest in social reform.  What I don’t like is getting moralistic—in a simplistic way—about authors who happened to be (arguably) bad people.  Which is not to say issues of morality don’t matter, but sometimes it seems that people can be too quick to dismiss an author for some personal failings (although knowing about the personal life and the failings is sure interesting).  I think it makes perfect sense to say the novel is flawed because of its portrayal of women, but not that we shouldn’t read Wells because he treated women badly.  I think it also makes perfect sense to look for ways the novel might reflect attitudes about women that existed in the culture at the time—as people were doing earlier in the discussion when they considered the absence of women scientists at the time.

Quilhill—I guess I think the reader is the one who determines meaning.  Once a writer sends a book out into the world, it becomes its own creature, and the writer has no control over what happens to it, what readers think.  And readers are then free to make what they want of it.

I agree that while it is interesting to discuss Wells’s personal life and belief in relation to the book, it is not necessary, nor does it mean we should dismiss Wells or any other author for having beliefs different from our own. But I think it is potentially useful to know about the author’s beliefs and life because it can shed some interesting clues as to why he wrote what he did. All books have a context, and it is important to take that into consideration. In Margaret Atwood’s introduction to the novel she writes

Like many men of his time, Wells was obsessed with the New Woman. On the surface of it he was all in favor of sexual emancipation, including free love, but the freeing of Woman evidently had its frightening aspects. Rider Haggard’s She can be seen as a reaction to the feminist movement of his day--if women are granted power, men are doomed--and so can Wells’s deformed puma. Once the powerful, monstrous sexual cat tears her fetter out of the wall and gets loose, minus the improved brain she ought to have courtesy. Man the Scientist, look out.

Does this mean Moreau is a bad book and we shouldn’t read it? No. But it does require an acknowledgment of what, exactly, is going on and why.

I’m certainly not tempted to dismiss or denigrate Wells’ work just because he cheated on his wives. For me, identifying his lifestyle as a possible source of the attitude towards religion in Moreau has no bearing on whether the book is good or bad, but as Stefanie says, it partially helps us to understand why it it’s written the way it is. Personally I think the book is well-written and constructed, very enjoyable as a story, but a bit limited in that it deals with a philosophical issue that is specific to a place and time, though certainly still understandable and still current in some people and places (Kansas?). Perhaps this is a common problem for issue-driven rather than character-driven fiction.

Maybe this discussion is particularly bristling for me as a writer, as it must be for others as women, and as readers we need to set this aside to be fair to a work. Wells also did not include in his novel any Mexicans, Jews, or Lebanese. Does that say something too? Is anyone bothered that the only men in Spark’s novel was a cripple and an adulterer? Maybe Wells is trying to insert some authorial commentary into his fiction; if this is so, I find fault. I believe a writer should, and be allowed to, convey any ideas at all through their characters. In this case, the novel is told from Prendick’s point of view, so if it is consistent in that, it passes all muster.

Two things I’ve been wondering about:

Could Prendick’s hidden-away written account of his experiences on the island be intended as a parallel to Charles Darwin’s reluctance to publish his theory of evolution? Both men go to islands, find their views dramatically altered, but return to societies where such views won’t be readily believed.

and

How would a contemporary writer handle such a story today? Frame stories are still used in modern shipwreck stories (see Life of Pi), but would a narrator such as Prendick be necessary today? I keep imaging that filtering the story through Montgomery’s perspective might be chosen for a similar modern story--leave it to the readers to determinine just how much trust they ought to put in his version of things.

Susan P. - 01 September 2006 01:24 PM

Could Prendick’s hidden-away written account of his experiences on the island be intended as a parallel to Charles Darwin’s reluctance to publish his theory of evolution?

Ooo, I totally missed the parellel between the Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos and Prendick’s little misadventure. And I call myself a biologist!   I wonder if there are parellels with Alfred Wallace too (he also came up with the theory of natural selection at the same time as Darwin and is known as the father of island biogeography). It wouldn’t be surprising for people at the time to associate questions about evolution with tropical islands.

Such a thin little book--isn’t it amazing how much you can get out of a story?  There are so many things that I did not pick up on--at least not consciously thinking about all the little nuances and what they might mean.  I saw this as a movie a long time ago, and it was different than how I remembered it.

(and Sylvia I didn’t know you were a biologist--maybe being a scientist is why you have picked up on so many details).  I need to learn to read books more closely.

Sorry--slightly off topic--Sylvia and Quillhill I posted a few reading possibilities on the Slaves blog for next time around.  I think everyone else has picked a favorite (hopefully I didn’t leave anyone out--and of course anyone else who wants to read can do so)--if you want to choose what you would prefer to read please take a peek.  Otherwise I will go with the one that has the most “votes”.

Thanks.

Love the Darwin connection - I missed it too. I think a strong argument could be made that Darwin’s theories were just as revolutionary as Moreau’s… since Wells studied with TH Huxley, he would have probably gotten an earful about Darwin.