H.G. Wells' (1866-1946) 'The Time Machine' (1894) consists mainly of his predictions of what could happen in the future, according to his time. The Time Traveller travels forward to the year 802,701AD, but still in England is his, evolved, back garden. When he arrives, he finds two completely different social worlds: the Upper classes have become weak and their intellect decreased, whereas the Working class have moved underground and have become cannibalistic.Wells starts off his short story within the comfort of an expensive home; he emphasizes the contrast to the rest of the book, examples of which includes flowing language, drinking of champagne and a warm fire. We also find educated m ...view middle of the document...
His description of them includes, "it was a dull white and had strange large greyish-red eyes [and] flaxen hair on its head and...back". The Morlocks have become cannibalistic, The Time Traveller describes a large piece of meat on the 'table' and wonders "what large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw", then he realises that it is human meat.Wells thinks of the social conditions he is living in (1894) and continues these class divisions forward by about eight hundred thousand years. Mankind has regressed; Wells says that man's technology will eventually be his downfall.Henry Mayhew (1812-1887), the first sociologist, wrote about the street-sweepers (known as crossing-sweepers) in London. In particular, he describes an encounter with two boys and gives a vivid description of both, with good and subtle comparisons, such as "while his face...from the complexion of dirt, had an almost Indian look about it."; this is subtle because he implies that the boys were treated worse than the slaves in India. He sympathises with them in another way - their description: He describes one of them as cat-like and says he moans for money instead of asking for it. In a book titled 'A Preface to Dickens', by Allan Grant, there is an extract taken that basically says that, in the Victorian times, the upper-classes knew nothing about what was happening in the lower-classes and vice-versa; they were completely separated. Encarta '96 says that large families not being able to survive on a single, very low income mostly cause poverty. This would be true in the Victorian age, as there was no contraception. The small wage that a family would earn would not be enough for a family of at least five to live on; thus causing poverty and premature deaths.In Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', Dr. Jekyll is a respected gentleman living in a grand house in London. Stevenson's choice of a Doctor as the main character is quite a topical one, as around the time of writing, there were many medical advances seen; these advances include the realisation of microscopic organisms causing disease and death; because of this, such things as aspirin and antiseptic were created. There is a mysterious connection between the Doc...
