H.G Wells

Influence

Thomas Huxley, a famous biologist and H.G. Wells' teacher, once said

that "We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the

plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he

can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than

it was before he entered it" (Zaadz). In other words, we all have the

duty to leave the world a better place by leaving our influence on

others. At some point of our lives, we've all had someone or something

close to us that has left their influence on us and H. G. Wells is no

different. His novella, The Time Machine, was inspired by the various

different traits of Wells' family and social life. The book in turn

influenced many others in the world. The society and his surroundings greatly

influenced H.G. Wells in The Time Machine, which in turn influenced

other human beings.

The Time Machine, although a science fiction, had many prospects that

were real, that were existent in the life of H.G. Wells. H.G. Wells

had many events and people around him whose influences were seen in The

Time Machine. The first thing that a person gets inspired by is their

loved ones, and so did H.G. Wells. His family background, referring to

his mother and father, and his own upbringing is seen clearly in the

main characters of the book.

H. G. Wells was born in a lower-middle class family and a class-ridden

society in 1966. During that time, the first thing that would be

settled between a newly employed maid servant and her mistress is what

names is the servant liable to answer to. The employed servant couldn't

answer unless the name was appropriate for the position she was hired

for; for example, a menial had to answer to menial names. Anthony West

explains that his "father always had a tin ear in this region, and his

more refined admirers often complained of the tiny flaw that allowed him

to give his females such awful names -- poor Weena of The Time Machine

being a favored case point" (West, 370).

Weena is the only character in the entire novella that has a name; all

the other characters are either known by their first initial or their

occupation. There hasn't been a specific reason in the past records as

to why Weena is the only character named in the book. But by looking

at Wells' life and his beliefs, we can guess the reason behind this

mystery. H.G. Wells was a true Socialist, a committed humanitarian, and a

supporter of women's rights. A supporter of women's rights at that

time would be laughed and ridiculed. But H.G. Wells, a devoted

humanitarian, wanted to help out and change the society (Keller). This could be

a possible explanation as to why Weena, a only woman character in the

book, was given a name and not the other men in the novella.

H.G. Wells says in the book that the Morlocks were "subterranean for

innumerable generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface

intolerable" (Wells, 51). The cavernous Morlocks' natural habitat had

degenerated from ages. They lived underground because they couldn't bear

the daylight and also had to stay below ground to keep the machines

working for their cattle, the Elois. Now, a normal person would think

this characterization as a work of imagination. But H.G. Wells had a

reason for the Morlocks to be how they were portrayed in the book. He had

a story behind the mysterious Morlocks that was related to his parents.

Wells' parents had always been in constant arguments. Wells' mother

had left her husband and his son to be a housekeeper in the castle

located in Uppark. His mother used to complaint about his father's lack of

consideration for her which "condemned her to spend the greater part of

her day every day below ground level in the basement kitchen of Atlas

House, a room that borrowed its light from a pit covered by a metal

grating set into the pavement of Bromley's High Street" (West, 226).

It is evident that Wells had gotten the idea of Morlocks from the

behaviors of her mother and father. Anthony West, H.G. Wells' illegitimate

son, clarifies this influence on his father in his book Aspects of a

Life: "His (Wells') bottled-up feelings on this score, mingled with

others, even more powerful, concerning the fundamentals of relationship

between his parents, had finally burst out into the open in his

descriptions of the loathly caverns inhabited