I have to admit that
The War of the Worlds is the only H.G. Wells novel I am familiar with and it's been so long since I read it that my brain's probably making up half of what I remember. I don't really go for old-time science fiction -- the "science" (and the sexism! classism! racism!) tends to make me irritable -- but I happen to seriously ❤
H.G. from Warehouse 13 and so thought I should try to read some more H.G. Wells. (I know this makes no sense at all, but my reasons for picking up a novel seldom do make any kind of sense).
Anyway, I picked up The Penguin English Library Editions of
The Invisible Man,
The Island of Doctor Moreau, and
The Time Machine from The Book Depository (along with a bunch of other books I didn't really "need," but who buys books based on need? Boringly sensible people, that's who and I'll have none of that here, thank you).
The Invisible Man arrived first and so that's what I read first.
The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand.
As an albino junior scientist lacking a name or sufficient funds, academic and social standing has rendered Griffin metaphorically invisible. Griffin seems all right with that -- he seeks greatness in scientific mastery and thinks he finds it with the discovery of true, physical invisibility. First he makes a rag invisible, then a cat (all but the claws and backs of its eyes, poor puss), and then ... himself.
Initially, invisibly gives Griffin a great sense of power and superiority, but he quickly realizes just how hard it is to be invisible in London. It was fine to be metaphorically invisible when it was his choice (more-or-less), but the limitations of this unending physical invisibility are maddening.
"Before I made this mad experiment I had dreamt of a thousand advantages. That afternoon it seemed all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things a man reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they are got. Ambition—what is the good of pride of place when you cannot appear there?"
Griffin flees to the countryside where he initially seeks to cure himself, but eventually determines to use his invisibility as a weapon of terror. He will bend rural society to
his will and force it to serve
him as
he sees fit. He feels no remorse and revulsion at his choices and is, indeed, quite monstrous in his attitude toward others.
Reading
The Invisible Man, I was initially in danger of sympathizing with Griffin -- the moody, bandaged man who just wanted to conduct experiments without his land lady and her friends nosing about. When he burgled the vicarage and tried to avoid arrest, I thought surely he would realize his folly… and then he fell into company with that pathetic tramp, Marvel. Griffin's cruel tyranny over the tramp is indefensible and firmly moves Griffin from possibly-sympathetic antihero to Total Asshole in a few short pages.
And so, when the crowd overwhelmed Griffin and finally took him down, while I was admittedly disquieted by the violence of their actions ("And there was no shouting after Kemp's cry—only a sound of blows and feet and a heavy breathing … Then suddenly a wild scream of 'Mercy! Mercy!' that died down swiftly to a sound like choking"), I was also relieved.
(I really want to re-read
Frankenstein now, as it’s seems like such an antidote to
The Invisible Man -- Frankenstein isolates himself from humanity in order to work terrible science, but when faced with the repercussions of his actions, reacts with contrition. Griffin also initially isolates himself, but is never contrite -- seeing only the end goal of his experiments and not their costs to others).
The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H.G. Wells (Penguin English Library, 2012)
