Satire in the Victorian novel

by Frances Theresa Russell

But the idea itself was a premature blossom, and the winds of March, though late Victorian, were ruthless. About that time, however, it was the much more massive figure of Ibsen that happened to stand in the main current of the blasts, and Butler was merely blown aside and left until Shaw and the Twentieth Century came along and picked him up. One of his recent biographers has a serious time trying to establish him as the laws of chronology would dictate, and finally decides it cannot be done:[101]

“How is it possible to fit a man like Butler, * * * into any system, * * * how are we to classify one who, above all others, belonged to no school, was traceable, it may fairly be said, to no influence at all direct in character, looking back to, and fitting in with, none of those particular habits of thought at any rate in the age just preceding and merging into his own? On an external view, of course, it might be maintained that Butler harmonized with the solid, scientific background of Victorian thought—harmonized with it, yet was not of it. Again * * * one might quite easily say that Samuel Butler stood outside the Victorian system. And this would be the truest description of him.”

The parallel noted above between the next two on the list, Lytton and Disraeli, is more applicable to their work in the realistic field than in this, for the reason already stated, that Lytton’s one contribution, The Coming Race, is more akin to Butler’s, both in date and design.

Accident rather than enterprise led to the discovery of Lytton’s Utopian people, the Vrilya, for they inhabit the concave inner surface of our own planet, and are to be reached only through a subterranean chasm leading down from the depths of a mine. The citizens of this highly cultivated nation regard the English intruder as a primitive barbarian, and despise him for his ignorance and his crude, carnivorous habits. Deciding, however, to spare his life and risk his presence until proved contaminating and pernicious, they proceed to educate him by means of the Vril Trance, a sort of telepathic radio-activity. The process is mutual, except that they accomplish more,—“partly because my language was much simpler than theirs, comprising far less of complex ideas; and partly because their organization was, by hereditary culture, much more ductile, and more readily capable of acquiring knowledge than mine.”[102]

Being adopted, the invader is treated with indulgent condescension, nicknamed Tish, a froglet, (in allusion to the Great Batrachian Theory, that humans sprang from frogs, or, according to one branch of the school, degenerated from them), and allowed to roam around with a child, who is about his equal in intellect. All goes well until the politely tolerated guest has the temerity to fall in love with a native maiden. This means death, by the painless Vril method (a marvelous application of electricity), in order to prevent the disgrace of so uneugenic an alliance; and the calamity is averted only by the skill and resourcefulness of the lady herself, who manages to return the unwelcome wooer to his native outer clime. This is made possible through the use of wings, another invention of this advanced people.[103]

The story has considerable picturesqueness, nor does it fail in point. The Modern Utopia of Wells is anticipated in the emphasis on sanitation and material welfare. As in Looking Backward, crime is eliminated through the elimination of poverty and disease. The dramatic conclusion is that this underground people are to be the coming race, against whom we must be prepared if we would not by them be conquered and exterminated. The philosophical conclusion, however, is the old paradox, the inescapable dilemma of stagnant perfection.[104]

Disraeli’s Popanilla was a jeu d’esprit of his youth, and develops an opposite situation from that of the preceding. Instead of the Britisher abroad, he pictures the foreigner in England, thus affording us a chance to see ourselves as others see us.[105]

The mechanism by which this new scrutiny is brought to bear upon our old establishments is well worn and familiar, but has some novelty in the application. A sailor’s chest is washed ashore on a remote island, and found by one of the aborigines, Popanilla, who becomes inoculated with ambition through perusal of some documents discovered therein. He immediately organizes a proselyting campaign, but encounters too much opposition from a recalcitrant public to make much headway. The people are well content with their present peaceful existence, and quite averse to receiving the serpent of aspiration in their idyllic though socially sophisticated Garden of Eden. They are provokingly obtuse even to the argument that “they might reasonably expect to be the terror and astonishment of the universe, and to be able to annoy every nation of any consequence.”[106] Finally to settle the trouble caused by the convert’s tactless propaganda, which has had the lamentable effect of inducing the young men to desert society for politics, the king orders the disturber of the peace to be set adrift, and bids him farewell with this encouraging prophecy:[107]

“As the axiom of your school seems to be that everything can be made perfect at once, without time, without experience, without practice, and without preparation, I have no doubt, with the aid of a treatise or two, you will make a consummate naval commander, although you have never been at sea in the whole course of your life.”

This is not exactly the destiny of the involuntary voyager, but his luck is good. In due time he lands on the shores of Vraibleusia, and forthwith meets Mr. Skindeep, an instantaneous guide and friend, if not a philosopher, whom he accompanies with implicit trust, “for, having now known him nearly half a day, his confidence in his honour and integrity was naturally unbounded.”[108]