THE EVERYDAY, ESCAPE, AND THE ONGOING WORK OF UTOPIA IN THE ENDINGS OF THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY AND KIPPS

Abstract

This article examines the conclusions of Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul and The History of Mr. Polly and seeks to position these lyrical endings within a reading of H. G. Wells’s understanding of the relationship between the everyday and escape, reading between his Edwardian fiction and non-fiction. On the one hand, everyday life has been critiqued by Henri Lefebvre as symptomatic of capitalism’s reach over modern life, a contingency requiring urgent redress. On the other, Laurie Taylor and Stanley Cohen posit escaping the everyday as the inevitable response to life’s repetitions. Wells’s thinking mediates these two approaches: escape as determined response to a specific everyday and an ongoing endeavour. Though Kipps and Polly are subjected to the daily miseries of Edwardian capitalism, their escapes do not constitute a final reprieve. The equanimity of both novels’ conclusions is interrupted by a return to the everyday and Wells signals that permanent repose is anathema to the constitution of utopia.