Joan and Peter
Joan and Peter, a 1918 novel by H. G. Wells, is at once a satirical portrait of late-Victorian and Edwardian England, a critique of the English educational system on the eve of World War I, a study of the impact of that war on English society, and a general reflection on the purposes of education. Wells regarded it as "one of the most ambitious" of his novels.[1]
Author
United Kingdom
English
September 1918
784
Plot[edit]
The novel begins in 1893 with the birth of Peter Stublands, but the first three chapters are devoted to the lives of his parents. Peter's father, Arthur, is one of the heirs of a wealthy family of Quaker manufacturers from the West of England. His mother Dolly is the daughter of a vicar from a well-off family, but being intellectually inclined, she has "read herself out of the great Anglican culture."[2] Arthur, artistically inclined but not especially gifted, is a devotee of the Arts and Crafts movement and a Fabian socialist. Dolly meets him and falls in love with him while she is studying "in the Huxley days as a free student at the Royal College of Science."[3] Arthur designs a house near Limpsfield called the Ingle-Nook, where they live, and where Peter is born. Arthur has two sisters with advanced ideas, Aunt Phyllis and Aunt Phoebe, who are regular visitors.
Dolly, however, has retained strong feelings for a cousin who joined the navy, Oswald Sydenham, whose face is badly scarred from the bombardment of Alexandria, and is devoting his career to extending the British Empire in Africa. When Arthur's free-thinking goes so far as to make him unfaithful to Dolly, it is strongly implied that Oswald and Dolly fall in love, but Dolly eventually rejects Oswald's passionate appeal to defy convention and live with him in Central Africa. Dejected, Oswald returns to Africa. The reconciliation of Dolly and Arthur has a tragic consequence, however: on a trip meant to celebrate the overcoming of their differences, Arthur's recklessness with an amateur boatman causes them to drown off Capri.
In their wills, Dolly and Arthur had named Oswald as the guardian of their son; because of Dolly's leanings toward Oswald, Arthur changed his will before he died to replace him with three other guardians: Aunts Phoebe and Phyllis, on his side, and Lady Charlotte Sydenham on Dolly's, having assumed that she was a dignified, tolerable woman. The family solicitor, Mr. Sycamore, sends Oswald a letter telling him that, due to the lack of information, he has had to generalize and state that Dolly drowned before Arthur, therefore validating his will. This generalization results in an extended battle over the education of Peter and also of Joan, a child of Dolly's brother born out of wedlock and entrusted to them.
Phoebe and Phyllis are eccentrics devoted to the suffragette cause and undertake their guardianship with enthusiasm, but Lady Charlotte, "one of those large, ignorant, ruthless, Low-Church, wealthy, and well-born ladies who did so much to make England what it was in the days before the Great War,"[4] abhors their values. She schemes to christen Joan and Peter, then plots to remove the children from the faddish "School of St. George and the Venerable Bede," based on the ideas of Froebel and Ruskin, in order to educate them more traditionally. With the assistance of her solicitor, Lady Charlotte kidnaps the children; Peter is placed in the High Cross Preparatory School, located near Windsor Castle, and Joan finds herself at the mercy of an evil-spirited Mrs. Pybus, the sister of Lady Charlotte's maid. Peter is bullied and mistreated by fellow-students and teachers alike, and runs away after being unjustly punished; Joan falls ill with measles. Oswald returns to England after having "given nearly eighteen years to East and Central Africa,"[5] especially Uganda. It is 1903, and his health has forced him to return to England, determined to devote himself to the education of his wards.
The battle over control of the children's education ends when witnesses prove that Dolly perished after Arthur. As a result, her will prevails. Oswald becomes sole guardian of Joan and Peter and undertakes to find them the best education possible. He is disappointed to learn that there are no schools adapted to the needs of the time. Ultimately, he sends Peter to White Court and Joan to Highmorton School. Peter later attends Caxton, and Oswald moves to a home at Pelham Ford, in Ware, Hertfordshire. A lady named Mrs. Moxton keeps house.
Chapter 11, "Adolescence," is the longest of the novel, and analyzes in some detail the growth to maturity of Joan and Peter. That they have grown up as brother and sister delays the realization that they love each other; indeed, for much of their adolescence they are deeply at odds with one another, especially about their friends. But when Joan accidentally learns through a friend and Aunt Phyllis that her family is largely unrelated to Peter, deeper feelings re-emerge. Joan and Peter are now both students at Cambridge.
The Great War begins, and all the men of their acquaintance enlist. Oswald is invalided; most of Joan's lovers are killed in various ways; Peter joins the Royal Flying Corps. He is nearly killed in combat, and as he recovers from serious wounds that he becomes more enlightened about life. It is while he is on leave back in England that Joan tells Peter she loves him. They marry. Peter is again badly wounded when the observation balloon in which he is serving is shot down. But he is out of the war, and looks forward to working toward a future World State.
Reception[edit]
Joan and Peter was "well received by [Wells's] friends, but less so by outside reviewers"; Virginia Woolf, for example, judged it to be too didactic to be successful fiction.[17] However, she did grant the book "continuity and vitality" and praised Wells's ability to constitute a "whole world."[18] Thomas Hardy praised the book and read it aloud to his wife in the evening.[19]
