SOURCE: Parrington, John S. “The Time Machine: A Polemic on the Inevitability of Working-Class Liberation, and a Plea for a Socialist Solution to Late-Victorian Capitalist Exploitation.” Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens 46 (October 1997): 167-79.

In the following essay, Parrington provides a sociopolitical interpretation of The Time Machine.

H. G. Wells intended The Time Machine to be a polemic on the inevitability of a working-class rise to power and, an attempt to reveal why the achievement of revolutionary Socialism was necessary, as against Fabian parliamentary Socialism, the latter of which strives for Socialism without eliminating class struggle from society.

The Time Traveller's position in the book is interesting. He was a scientist of the Wellsian type in the sense that he was not a conventional late-Victorian inventor.

Throughout the story the reader is led to believe that the meetings held at the Time Traveller's home occurred not just in the two...