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= A_Modern_Utopia =
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Introduction
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'A Modern Utopia' is a 1905 novel by H. G. Wells.
Because of the complexity and sophistication of its narrative
structure, 'A Modern Utopia' has been called "not so much a modern as
a postmodern utopia." The novel is best known for its notion that a
voluntary order of nobility known as the Samurai could effectively
rule a "kinetic and not static" world state so as to solve "the
problem of combining progress with political stability".
Conception of the work
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In his preface Wells forecasts (incorrectly) that 'A Modern Utopia'
would be the last of a series of volumes on social problems that he
began in 1901 with 'Anticipations' and that included 'Mankind in the
Making' (1903). Unlike those non-fictional works, 'A Modern Utopia'
is presented as a tale told by a sketchily described character known
only as the Owner of the Voice, who, Wells warns the reader, "is not
to be taken as the Voice of the ostensible author who fathers these
pages." He is accompanied by another character known as "the
botanist." Interspersed into the narrative are discursive remarks on
various matters, creating what Wells calls in his preface "a sort of
shot-silk texture between philosophical discussion on the one hand and
imaginative narrative on the other." In addition, there are frequent
comparisons to and discussions of previous utopian works.
In his 'Experiment in Autobiography' (1934) Wells wrote that 'A Modern
Utopia' "was the first approach I made to the dialogue form," and that
"the trend towards dialogue, like the basal notion of the Samurai,
marks my debt to Plato. 'A Modern Utopia', quite as much as that of
More, derives frankly from the 'Republic'."
The premise of the novel is that there is a planet (for "No less than
a planet will serve the purpose of a modern Utopia") exactly like
Earth, with the same geography and biology. Moreover, on that planet
"all the men and women that you know and I" exist "in duplicate." They
have, however, "different habits, different traditions, different
knowledge, different ideas, different clothing, and different
appliances." (Not however, a different language: "Indeed, should we
be in Utopia at all, if we could not talk to everyone?").
Plot
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To this planet "out beyond Sirius" the Owner of the Voice and the
botanist are translated, imaginatively, "in the twinkling of an eye .
. . We should scarcely note the change. Not a cloud would have gone
from the sky." Their point of entry is on the slopes of the Piz
Lucendro in the Swiss Alps.
The adventures of these two characters are traced through eleven
chapters. Little by little they discover how Utopia is organized. It
is a world with "no positive compulsions at all . . . for the adult
Utopian--unless they fall upon him as penalties incurred."
The Owner of the Voice and the botanist are soon required to account
for their presence. When their thumbprints are checked against
records in "the central index housed in a vast series of buildings at
or near Paris," both discover they have doubles in Utopia. They
journey to London to meet them, and the Owner of the Voice's double is
a member of the Samurai, a voluntary order of nobility that rules
Utopia. "These 'samurai' form the real body of the State."
Running through the novel as a foil to the main narrative is the
botanist's obsession with an unhappy love affair back on Earth. The
Owner of the Voice is annoyed at this undignified and unworthy
insertion of earthly affairs in Utopia, but when the botanist meets
the double of his beloved in Utopia the violence of his reaction
bursts the imaginative bubble that has sustained the narrative and the
two men find themselves back in early twentieth-century London.
Utopian economics
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The world shares the same language, coinage, customs, and laws, and
freedom of movement is general. Some personal property is allowed, but
"all natural sources of force, and indeed all strictly natural
products" are "inalienably vested in the local authorities" occupying
"areas as large sometimes as half England." The World State is "the
sole landowner of the earth." Units of currency are based on units of
energy, so that "employment would constantly shift into the areas
where energy was cheap." Humanity has been almost entirely liberated
from the need for physical labor: "There appears to be no limit to
the invasion of life by the machine."
The samurai and Utopian society
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The narrator's double describes the ascetic Rule by which the samurai
live: it includes a ban on alcohol and drugs, and a mandatory annual
one-week solitary ramble in the wilderness. He also explains the
social theory of Utopia, which distinguished four "main classes of
mind": The Poietic, the Kinetic, the Dull, and the Base. Poietic minds
are creative or inventive; kinetic minds are able but not particularly
inventive; the Dull have "inadequate imagination," and the Base are
mired in egotism and lack "moral sense."
The relations of the sexes
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There is extensive discussion of gender roles in 'A Modern Utopia,'
but no recognition of the existence of homosexuality. A chapter
entitled "Women in a Modern Utopia" makes it clear that women are to
be as free as men. Motherhood is subsidized by the state. Only those
who can support themselves can marry, women at 21 and men at 26 or 27.
Marriages that remain childless "expire" after a term of three to five
years, but the partners may marry again if they choose.
Race in Utopia
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'A Modern Utopia' is also notable for Chapter 10 ("Race in Utopia"),
an enlightened discussion of race. Contemporary racialist discourse
is condemned as crude, ignorant, and extravagant. "For my own part I
am disposed to discount all adverse judgments and all statements of
insurmountable differences between race and race."
Meat
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The narrator is told, "In all the round world of Utopia there is no
meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of
slaughter-houses. And, in a population that is all educated, and at
about the same level of physical refinement, it is practically
impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. We never
settled the hygienic question of meat-eating at all. This other aspect
decided us. I can still remember, as a boy, the rejoicings over the
closing of the last slaughter-house." Members of the Utopian society
still consume fish, however, and no rational explanation is offered
for the discrepancy.
Cats, dogs and horses
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It is noted that the Utopian society embarked on "a systematic
world-wide attempt to destroy for ever a great number of contagious
and infectious diseases." This involved not only the elimination of
rats and mice, but also - "for a time at any rate" - "a stringent
suppression of the free movement of familiar animals," i.e.: "the race
of cats and dogs - providing, as it does, living fastnesses to which
such diseases as plague, influenza, catarrhs and the like, can retreat
to sally forth again - must pass for a time out of freedom, and the
filth made by horses and the other brutes of the highway vanish from
the face of the earth." There are no cats or dogs to be seen anywhere
in the Utopian cities. It is not specified what happened to the dogs,
cats and horses living in the world when this change took place and
whether some of them are still preserved in a location completely
segregated from human society, to be reintroduced at some future date.
Marriage
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A central principle of the Utopian regime depicted by Wells is that
not all people are allowed to get married. Marriage is a privilege
granted only to people who pass certain criteria set by the regime.
Wells does not refer to the obvious issue that people who are not
allowed to get married may still engage in sex and have children. Such
"unauthorized" children would evidently not benefit from the state-run
child care and educational system described in detail in the novel.
That, however, would tend to create an underclass of impoverished,
uneducated vagrants - of which the book makes no reference.
Exile islands
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Misfits who do not fit into the Utopian society are regularly exiled
to islands and there left to their own devices. They may perpetuate
institutions and social behaviors considered long obsolete elsewhere.
For example, they may erect Customs barriers and impose customs duties
on goods imported to their islands, while the rest of the world has
long since become a single economic zone.
This concept of "islands of exile" was later taken up by Aldus Huxley
in 'Brave New World' - but with a reversed value judgement. Where
Wells presented a positive Utopian society exiling incorrigible
reactionaries, Huxley had a Dystopian regime exiling creative people
who rebel against its stifling rule.
Origins
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The work was partly inspired by a trip to the Alps Wells made with his
friend Graham Wallas, a prominent member of the Fabian Society.
Reception
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Several Samurai societies were formed in response to 'A Modern
Utopia', and Wells met members of one of them in April 1907 at the New
Reform Club.
At a memorial service at the Royal Institution on 30 October 1946, two
and a half months after Wells's death, William Beveridge read passages
from the book and called it the work that had influenced him the most.
According to Vincent Brome, Wells's first comprehensive biographer
after his death, it was widely read by university students and
"released hundreds of young people into sexual adventure." W. Warren
Wagar praised it, describing it and Wells's other utopian novels ('Men
Like Gods' and 'The Shape of Things to Come') as "landmarks in that
extraordinarily difficult genre." Indeed, 'The Shape of Things to
Come' takes up many themes of the earlier book, also depicting a
self-appointed elite conducting massive social engineering and
remaking of the world.
Joseph Conrad complained to Wells that he did not "take sufficient
account of human imbecility, which is cunning and perfidious."
E.M. Forster satirised what he regarded as the book's unhealthy
conformism in his science-fiction story "The Machine Stops", first
published only four years later, in 1909.
Marie-Louise Berneri was also critical of the book, stating that
"Wells commits the faults of his forerunners by introducing a vast
amount of legislation into his utopia" and that "Wells's conception of
freedom turns out to be a very narrow one." Wells's biographer Michael
Sherborne criticizes the book for depicting "an undemocratic one-party
state" in which truth is established not by critical discussion but by
shared faith.
Bibliography
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* Deery, June. "H.G. Wells's A Modern Utopia as a Work in Progress."
'Extrapolation' (Kent State University Press). 34.3 (1993): 216-229.
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2005.
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