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Post by Bagnew on Feb 27, 2009 19:23:21 GMT 1
Welcome, ParanormalHandy.
A very interesting post, that was.
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Post by MGMFilms on Mar 2, 2009 15:50:13 GMT 1
I think it is apparant that Wells created a middle class narrator in order to show that eventually in the great scheme of things, all men are created equal and can be bought down to just as equal levels.
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Post by paranormalhandy on Mar 2, 2009 17:40:01 GMT 1
Thank you for the welcome! ;D
We'll never know the motivation for the character's specifics. But I do wonder if it's a case of wish-fulfillment; there HG was, stuck in a little rented house, in his late-20s and still unsure of his future, so he imagined himself in ten years time in a more steady financial and social position, living "up the hill".
I also remember reading somewhere (HG's diaries or correspondence, possibly?) that his main "revenge" in writing WOTW was not against Woking, but rather on his old stamping of South Kensington.
Nerd fact: One of the few specific attack on an individual from Woking was the landlord of the "Spotted Dog". Interestingly, of the three pubs in the Maybury area, two are mentioned by name in the text - The College Arms (which was converted into flats late last year) and the Maybury Inn (which was reopened last year, after a period of being closed) - whereas the third pub, the Princess, is never mentioned in WOTW, despite the fact it is the closest of the three to both Wells' house on Maybury Road (maybe it was his local?) and the crest of Maybury Hill. But historical anecdote (as mentioned in the cycling guide I have) suggests that the landlord of the Princess in the 1890s owned a dog - a Dalmation ...
... One wonders what he did to Wells to illicit such (to his customers, at least) easily-identified ire!
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Post by silverlocusts on Mar 3, 2009 17:52:21 GMT 1
That was a really interesting post.
Unfortunately I have lost the original source of this information but if memory does serve me well here did Wells not have a falling out with a local merchant which was worked into the narrative also?
This passage is taken from Chapter 9 " The Fighting Begins"
“ But I will not weary the reader with a description of that long morning and of the longer afternoon. I did not succeed in getting a glimpse of the common, for even Horsell and Chobham church towers were in the hands of the military authorities. The soldiers I addressed didn't know anything; the officers were mysterious as well as busy. I found people in the town quite secure again in the presence of the military, and I heard for the first time from Marshall, the tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common. The soldiers had made the people on the outskirts of Horsell lock up and leave their houses.”
This may well be inaccurate information however if true only God knows what the "tobacconists" lad did to deserve that.
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Post by paranormalhandy on Mar 3, 2009 23:50:22 GMT 1
Again, like you, I'm not sure of the source but I recall there also being something about an apple seller on Chertsey Road who also has some Martian retribution meted out on him! Although, I've don't have any texts to hand to check.
Plus, all the people who gather in the Common to see the cylinder when it first lands seem to be very specific - and some, at least, were the aimless and the unemployed of Woking. I wonder what Wells view was of them in real life ...
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