The Invisible Man: A Eugenic Pamphlet Sid Ali Kercenna College

Upon its publication in 1897, The Invisible Man came to supply the English market with another Faustian figure, by no means the first created by H.G. Wells, nor the earliest in the history of Victorian literature. Portrayed as a dangerous experimenter who had sacrificed his own safety, neglected that of others, and suffered his morals and ethics to be annihilated in the pursuit of an impossible quest; Hawley Griffin belongs to the archetypal group of mad scientists together with Wells’ earliest creation Dr. Moreau, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Although the marvelous events of this work fall within the realm of scientific romance, the fact of its being knit by the hands of a committed socialist and a member of the Eugenic society points in the direction of social reforms and a meaning deeper than the mere splendid happenings of the tale.

Wells was one of the founders of the Eugenics Education Society alongside Aldous Huxley, Marie Stopes and other intellectuals who were concerned about overpopulation and the threat it represented for society at the time. Their primary goal was to further Eugenic teaching and understanding, which developed later into campaigns for sterilization and...