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In the introduction: “There is at least this much in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge about latitude 5°s. and longitude 105°e., and reappeared in the same part of the ocean after a space of eleven months.”

While the editor of the version of Moreau I have notes that the coordinates are near the Galapagos Islands, this is incorrect. Look them up and you will see it falls in the eastern part of the island of Sumatra (in present-day Indonesia), in a region that Alfred Russel Wallace (the co-discoverer of natural selection) traveled and collected natural history specimens. Interesting.

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Invoking the naturalistic nature of life (chance, randomness) in chapter 4 (At the Schooner’s Rail):

“If I may say it,” said I [Prendick], after a time, “you have saved my life.”

“Chance,” he [Montgomery] answered. “Just chance.”

“I prefer to make my thanks to the accessible agent.”

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Materialism (man is just an animal, just body, no soul) in chapter 5 (The Man Who Had Nowhere to Go):

“Hunger and a lack of blood-corpuscles take all the manhood from a man.”

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It’s interesting to note that Wells attended the Royal College of Science in 1884 under Thomas Henry Huxley, better known as Darwin’s Bulldog.

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Island biology in chapter 6 (The Evil-Looking Boatmen), invoking Malthusian principles maybe:

” ‘Increase and multiply, my friends, ’said Montgomery. ‘Replenish the island. Hitherto we’ve had a certain lack of meat here.’ ”

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In chapter 9 (The Thing in the Forest):

“Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it–into its movements, into the expression of its countenance, into its whole presence–some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of the beast.”

Darwin, in the Descent of Man (1871): “Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”

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I have yet to finish this book (and it’s July already), but I wanted to share these bits from the book that struck me in a Darwinian fashion.

There are overtones right through of novels of Empire – the White man “going native” when he is too far from England. That is an obvious allusion but maybe the novel is also hinting at social engineering. How far are the gross experiments of Dr Moreau from the experiment of Professor Henry Higgins in changing a London flower-girl into an aristocrat? The idea of educating the masses so that they could better “Fight Life’s struggles” was very prevalent at the time with little idea that anything much could be learnt in return from “The Lower Orders”. I felt this in the novel. You do get a feeling that the Beast Folk are another race of people with their own civilisation – just like some of the native people of the islands ruled by the British Imperial system. Well individualises them by giving them names – the Hyena Swine, the Leopard-Man and the Little Sloth Creature who seems like a child, at one stage trying to hold Prendicks hand. They have their own little plots and factions as is obvious when the scientist accuses one of “drinking blood” but Prendick knows that others have been involved. The reader cannot help feeling pity for these poor creatures – flayed, cloned, their tongues split to make them speak with Moreau tossing ethics aside in a way that presages the experiments of Josef Mengele in Hitler’s concentration camps.

The novel raises echoes of Darwin – there are times when Prendick becomes so used to the beast folk that he almost thinks them normal – particularly the females who shroud themselves in white robes. When the medical student has his “Bank Holiday” (which leads to total collapse), he goes to join a trio of beast folk down by the sea-shore with some lissom white –shrouded figures among them. You do get the feeling of “Class” and “Caste” and “Hierarchy”