Set in Victorian England, Wells' text is viewed in modern times as a comment on the increasing inequality and class hatred of his era, which he speculated would lead to the rise of the Eloi and the Morlock races, with catastrophic effects on the future of human evolution . It is believed that Wells' depiction of the Eloi as a race living in plentitude and abandon was inspired by the utopic romance novel News from Nowhere (1890), though Wells' universe in the novel is notably more savage and brutal. In his 1931 preface to the book, Wells wrote that The Time Machine seemed "a very undergraduate performance to its now mature writer, as he looks over it once more", though he states that "the writer feels no remorse for this youthful effort". However, critics have praised the novella's handling of its thematic concerns, with Mariana Warner writing that the book was the most significant contribution to understanding fragments of desire before Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, with the novel "[conveying] how close he felt to the melancholy seeker after a door that he once opened on to a luminous vision and could never find again".
Set in Victorian England, Wells' text is viewed in modern times as a comment on the increasing inequality and class division of his era, which he projects as giving rise to separate human species: the fair Eloi and the savage Morlocks . It is believed that Wells' depiction of the Eloi as a race living in plentitude and abandon was inspired by the utopic romance novel News from Nowhere (1890), though Wells' universe in the novel is notably more savage and brutal. In his 1931 preface to the book, Wells wrote that The Time Machine seemed "a very undergraduate performance to its now mature writer, as he looks over it once more", though he states that "the writer feels no remorse for this youthful effort". However, critics have praised the novella's handling of its thematic concerns, with Mariana Warner writing that the book was the most significant contribution to understanding fragments of desire before Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, with the novel "[conveying] how close he felt to the melancholy seeker after a door that he once opened on to a luminous vision and could never find again".
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hatred
division
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speculated would lead to the rise of the
projects as giving rise to separate human species: the fair
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Morlock races, with catastrophic effects on the future of human evolution
savage Morlocks