The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance was written by H.G. Wells. Although Wells (1866-1946) is known today primarily for his science fiction, during his lifetime he was one of the most prolific, versatile, and popular writers in the English language.

The Invisible Man is about Griffin, a scientist who discovers the key to invisibility. However, because the treatment only turns his body invisible, rather than both his body and his clothes, Griffin finds that invisibility is not only not the great boon he anticipated it to be, but a positive nuisance. So Griffin travels to a small village, hiding his invisibility beneath several layers of clothing, to work on an antidote. But he is continually bothered by the village’s inhabitants, and when he is revealed to be invisible he is forced to flee the village. Griffin attempts to recruit a tramp to help him, but the tramp’s assistance is minor, and he is afraid of Griffin and eventually runs from him. Griffin attempts to punish the tramp but is shot and takes refuge in the house of an old acquaintance, Doctor Kemp. Doctor Kemp betrays Griffin to the police, and after Griffin terrorizes the village of Burdock, where Kemp lives, and then attempts to kill Kemp, a crowd attacks Griffin and kills him.

The Invisible Man is a combination of the anarchist novel and the Condition of England novel. During the 1840s English philosophers and legislators were forced to deal with the byproducts of the eighteenth century’s economic growth. These problems, which included gross urban overpopulation, insufficient housing, bad sanitation, and high levels of unemployment, were described by the writer Thomas Carlyle as “the Condition of England.” Writers from Elizabeth Gaskell (see: “The Old Nurse’s Story”) to Charles Dickens (see: Bleak House) wrote novels, variously called “Condition of England novels,” “industrial fiction,” and “social problem novels,” which examined the changes in the social classes and social structure and the current state of England. One of the themes of The Invisible Man is the clash between modern science and the backwards culture and ideology of provincial England which Wells so disliked.¹ Interestingly, however, and unlike many Condition of England novels and their authors, Wells and The Invisible Man are essentially in favor of industrialization and modern science. Ill-tempered though he is, Griffin is a brilliant scientist, and if not for the petty demands of the parochial villagers and of the capitalist society in which he lives, Griffin would have achieved great things. But the prying of the villagers and the need for money, to pay for rent and food as well as for materials for his experiments, goad Griffin and eventually drive him over the edge. (A recurring theme in Wells’ work is the scientist who is reluctant to use his discovery for the good of society. In The Time Machine the Traveler returns only to tell his adventures; in The Island of Dr. Moreau Moreau goes to a remote Pacific island to continue his experiments; and in The Invisible Man Griffin goes to rural Burdock).

The anarchic elements of the novel appear in its final section, when Griffin lays siege to the town of Burdock, declaring “This is day one of year one of the new epoch,–the Epoch of the Invisible Man!” Although Griffin commits his attacks personally, rather than through the use of “infernal devices,” his terrorism toward the town is similar to acts in other novels of anarchy. Some critics have seen the influence on Griffin of Sergei Nechaev (1847-1882), a Russian revolutionary.² Nechaev’s notorious manifesto Catechism of a Revolutionary (1869), however, is far more amoral and vicious than Griffin ever gets.

Another of the themes of The Invisible Man is Griffin’s hubris and folly. Griffin values his discovery of invisibility above everything and is willing to sacrifice almost anything to gain his ends, even stealing from his father. Griffin does not care about the cost of his discovery, and he does not think about its effects. For Griffin invisibility is the means to an end, and because he is trying to gain the secret of invisibility, he is more important than other people, and they must be sacrificed in his favor.

The book as a whole reads quickly and smoothly. Wells skillfully manipulates the dramatic tension, so that the final sequence arrives with a great deal of momentum. One of Wells’ skills as a writer is the accumulation of small, believable details so that the more fantastic elements of the novel are more easily accepted by the reader. Wells’ depiction of everyday life in provincial England nicely grounds the novel, and the combination of basic scientific principles and the attention to detail, such as the food in the Invisible Man’s body being visible until it is digested, creates a believable story. The Invisible Man has often been described as a comic novel, but the comedy seems to appeal more to the English than to Americans, who often find it lacking or nonexistent.

Regrettably, there is an element of antisemitism in The Invisible Man. Those who are aware of Wells’ antisemitic beliefs will not be surprised by this–a similar moment appears in War of the Worlds–but many readers are not aware of Wells’ beliefs will be surprised and distressed by the antisemitic remarks. Wells was a part of the pre-WW2 strain of English antisemitism which can be seen in writers as various as Hillaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and T.S. Eliot. English ambivalence about the price of modernity and progress, about politics, city values (as opposed to rural values), and the effects of unchecked Victorian capitalism manifested itself in a range of poems, stories, and novels with antisemitic comments and characters, from The Invisible Man to Chesterton’s Father Brown detective stories.

¹ Leon Stover, “Introduction,” in H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance. A Critical Text of the 1897 New York First Edition, with an Introduction and Appendices (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998), 32.

² Stover, “Introduction,” 23-24.