The Wheels of Chance
The Wheels of Chance – A Holiday Adventure | |
Author | H. G. Wells |
---|---|
Illustrator | J. Ayton Symington |
Language | English |
Genre | Comedy |
Publisher | J. M. Dent |
Publication date | 1896[1] |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Hardbound) |
Pages | 313 pp |
Text | The Wheels of Chance at Wikisource |
The Wheels of Chance is an early comic novel by H. G. Wells about an August 1895 cycling holiday, somewhat in the style of Three Men in a Boat. In 1922 it was adapted into a silent film The Wheels of Chance directed by Harold M. Shaw.
Plot introduction
The Wheels of Chance was written at the height of the cycling craze (1890–1905), when practical, comfortable bicycles first became widely and cheaply available and before the rise of the automobile (see History of the bicycle). The advent of the bicycle stirred sudden and profound changes in the social life of England. Even the working class could travel substantial distances, quickly and cheaply, and the very idea of travelling for pleasure became a possibility for thousands of people for the first time. This new freedom affected many. It began to weaken the rigid English class structure and it gave an especially powerful boost to the existing movement toward female emancipation. Wells explored these social changes in his story.
Plot
The hero of The Wheels of Chance, Mr. Hoopdriver, is a frustrated "draper's assistant" in Putney, a badly paid, grinding position (and one which Wells briefly held); and yet he owns a bicycle and is setting out on a bicycling tour of "the Southern Coast" on his annual ten days' holiday.[2]
Hoopdriver survives his frustration by escaping in his imagination into a world of fantasy. He is not a skilled rider of his forty-three-pound bicycle, and his awkwardness reflects both Wells's own uncertainties in negotiating the English class system and his critical view of that society. Nonetheless, Hoopdriver is treated sympathetically: "But if you see how a mere counter-jumper, a cad on castors, and a fool to boot, may come to feel the little insufficiencies of life, and if he has to any extent won your sympathies, my end is attained."[3]
Hoopdriver's summer adventure begins lyrically:
Only those who toil six long days out of the seven, and all the year round, save for one brief glorious fortnight or ten days in the summer time, know the exquisite sensations of the First Holiday Morning. All the dreary, uninteresting routine drops from you suddenly, your chains fall about your feet. . . . There were thrushes in the Richmond Road, and a lark on Putney Heath. The freshness of dew was in the air; dew or the relics of an overnight shower glittered on the leaves and grass. . . . He wheeled his machine up Putney Hill, and his heart sang within him.[4]
Hoopdriver encounters a pretty young woman cycling alone and wearing rationals (bloomers). He dares not speak to the Young Lady in Grey, as he calls her, but their paths keep crossing. She is ultimately revealed to be Jessie Milton, a girl of seventeen who has run away from her stepmother in Surbiton, risking "ruin" at the hands of the bounder Bechamel, an unscrupulous older man who has promised to help the naive Jessie to establish herself an independent life but who is really intent on seducing her. Ironically, her flight has in part been inspired by liberal ideals of unconventionality that have been hypocritically promoted by her stepmother's popular novels.
Hoopdriver half-inadvertently rescues her from Bechamel's clutches, and the two proceed to cycle across the south of England. Ashamed of his true circumstances, Hoopdriver spins droll tales of South African origins and the comforts of wealth until shame induces him to confess his true circumstances. But he also displays genuine courage, rebuking insolent travellers who insult Jessie's honour.
Hoopdriver's encounter inspires in him a desire to better himself, as well as impossibly romantic feelings toward Jessie. At last a party consisting of her stepmother, some of her stepmother's admirers, and her former schoolteacher catches up with them. Jessie returns home and Hoopdriver returns to the Drapery Emporium of Messrs. Antrobus & Co., but Jessie has promised to "send him some books" and has held out the vague prospect that "in six years' time" things may be different.[5]
Jessie's bookish and romantic education has kept her ignorant of the realities of life, and her ignorance contributes to the comedy of Hoopdriver's half-clever, half-ridiculous improvised stories of life in Africa. Jessie has her own aspirations: "She was going to Live her Own Life, with emphasis."[6] Wells's intention in The Wheels of Chance might be taken to be satirical, were his protagonists' circumstances not so closely related to his own history and that of his second wife, Catherine Robbins.
Setting
Wells used real places in plotting the novel, and the entire route can be followed on a map. Among the sites described in the novel are Ripley, Cobham, Guildford, Haslemere, Godalming, Milford, Midhurst, Chichester, Bognor (where, at the Vicuna Hotel, Hoopdriver comes to Jessie's rescue), Chichester Harbour, Havant, Botley, the hamlet of Wallenstock (where Hoopdriver defends Jessie's honour), Blandford (where Hoopdriver confesses his true identity to Jessie), Ringwood, Stoney Cross, and the Rufus Stone (where Hoopdriver says good-bye to Jessie).
Publication
The novel was paired with The Time Machine and included in the Everyman's Library (no. 915) in 1935.
The text of Wheels of Chance is available at several sites on the internet.
References
- ^ "HGWells". S4U Languages - Brazilian translation. Salvador and Sao Paulo. Ensino de idiomas and Brazilian Portuguese translations.
- ^ H. G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance, Ch. i–iii & xxxv.
- ^ H. G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance, Ch. xli.
- ^ H. G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance, Ch. iv.
- ^ H. G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance, Ch. xl.
- ^ H. G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance, Ch. xxxiii.
External links
Media related to The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll at Wikimedia Commons
- The Wheels of Chance at Project Gutenberg
- The Wheels of Chance at HathiTrust
- The Wheels of Chance public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- v
- t
- e
- The Time Machine (1895)
- The Wonderful Visit (1895)
- The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
- The Wheels of Chance (1896)
- The Invisible Man (1897)
- The War of the Worlds (1898)
- When the Sleeper Wakes (1899)
- Love and Mr Lewisham (1900)
- The First Men in the Moon (1901)
- The Sea Lady (1902)
- The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904)
- Kipps (1905)
- A Modern Utopia (1905)
- In the Days of the Comet (1906)
- The War in the Air (1908)
- Tono-Bungay (1909)
- Ann Veronica (1909)
- The History of Mr Polly (1910)
- The Sleeper Awakes (1910)
- The New Machiavelli (1911)
- Marriage (1912)
- The Passionate Friends (1913)
- The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914)
- The World Set Free (1914)
- Bealby (1915)
- Boon (1915)
- The Research Magnificent (1915)
- Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916)
- The Soul of a Bishop (1917)
- Joan and Peter (1918)
- The Undying Fire (1919)
- The Secret Places of the Heart (1922)
- Men Like Gods (1923)
- The Dream (1924)
- Christina Alberta's Father (1925)
- The World of William Clissold (1926)
- Meanwhile (1927)
- Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928)
- The Autocracy of Mr. Parham (1930)
- The Bulpington of Blup (1932)
- The Shape of Things to Come (1933)
- The Croquet Player (1936)
- Brynhild (1937)
- Star Begotten (1937)
- The Camford Visitation (1937)
- Apropos of Dolores (1938)
- The Brothers (1938)
- The Holy Terror (1939)
- Babes in the Darkling Wood (1940)
- All Aboard for Ararat (1940)
- You Can't Be Too Careful (1941)
- Anticipations
- Certain Personal Matters
- Crux Ansata
- The Discovery of the Future
- An Englishman Looks at the World
- Experiment in Autobiography
- The Fate of Man
- First and Last Things
- Floor Games
- The Future in America
- God the Invisible King
- In the Fourth Year
- Little Wars
- Mankind in the Making
- Mind at the End of Its Tether
- Mr. Belloc Objects to "The Outline of History"
- The New America
- The New World Order
- New Worlds for Old
- The Open Conspiracy
- The Outline of History
- Russia in the Shadows
- The Science of Life
- A Short History of the World
- The Story of a Great Schoolmaster
- This Misery of Boots
- Travels of a Republican Radical in Search of Hot Water
- War and the Future
- The Way the World Is Going
- The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind
- World Brain
- A Year of Prophesying
- "Æpyornis Island"
- "The Argonauts of the Air"
- "The Beautiful Suit"
- "The Chronic Argonauts"
- "The Cone"
- "The Country of the Blind"
- "The Crystal Egg"
- "A Deal in Ostriches"
- "The Diamond Maker"
- "The Door in the Wall"
- "A Dream of Armageddon"
- "The Empire of the Ants"
- "In the Abyss"
- "The Land Ironclads"
- "Mr. Ledbetter's Vacation"
- "The Lord of the Dynamos"
- "The Man Who Could Work Miracles"
- "The New Accelerator"
- "The Pearl of Love"
- "The Plattner Story"
- "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper"
- "The Red Room"
- "The Sea Raiders"
- "The Star"
- "The Stolen Body"
- "A Story of the Days to Come"
- "A Story of the Stone Age"
- "Triumphs of a Taxidermist"
- "The Truth About Pyecraft"
- "A Vision of Judgment"
- Things to Come (1936)
- The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937)
- Political views
- G. P. Wells
- Anthony West (son)
- Joseph Wells (father)
- Simon Wells (great-grandson)
- H. G. Wells Society
- Lunar crater
- Time After Time (1979 film)