Ann Veronica

Ann Veronica by H.G. Wells
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ann Veronica caused quite a stir when it was published in 1909. The story is about a “New Woman,” an independent girl who yearns to study science, leave her stultifying home and live alone in an apartment, and take her place in the world beside men.

The heroine manages to achieve independence despite dangers from suitors who would crush her spirit as thoroughly as her father has tried to do, and a seemingly friendly man who wants to seduce her. She finally falls in love with a married man and runs off with him.

This would all be shocking enough in the first decade of the 20th century. But added to it was a strongly autobiographical theme alluding to H G Wells’ affair with a young girl who bore his child out of wedlock. Even the name Ann Veronica was a bit too close to that of Wells’ inamorata, Amber Reeves.

So how has the book held up over time? A hundred years later we are no longer shocked at the heroine’s leaving home to live alone, her insistence on studying, or her having an affair with a married man. We may disapprove of the affair but we aren’t shocked by it. But Well’s having seduced an idealistic young girl and then written about it in such detail continues to be disturbing.

Wells was the son of a gardener and a domestic servant. One admires the grit with which he rose from that working class background to success in a middle-class world. Some of his writing, especially his science fiction, remains popular today (The War of the Worlds.) He was a socialist, a pacifist, and an atheist at a time when those were not popular isms. He married a cousin, left her for one of his students, and continued throughout his life to have frequent affairs, especially with women of note including Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Rebecca West. There were many others.

This is a wearying book, more a Fabian tract than a novel, and a lengthy fictional excuse for his behavior. I don’t care for science fiction and I haven’t read Wells’ famous work in that genre so I am no judge of his skill, though his novels having lasted so long makes it likely he was rather better at sci fi than at quasi-political fiction. I did not like this novel and I don’t think it has much lasting worth. And yes, I do recognize that I’m letting my distaste for his life affect my opinion of his work.

2011 No 79

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