Group D Final Paper on Gender:

In the story, the Eloi was a group of futuristic human that lived in a small community where building was deteriorating and their human characterizes was fading as well.  The Eloi looks alike and they are hard to differentiate male or female, or may be sexual identity were not long exist in the future.  They are a slight creature and only four feet high where they dressed in purple tunic, girdled at the waist and sandals.  It was very unlikely in the modern perception on furturistic people.  We always illustrate futuristic people to wear metallic spacesuit or something very slick in design.  But the Eloi were dressed in tunics and sandals where it was wore by the Greek.  And also Tunics were worn by both men and women in the Ancient Rome period.  H.G.Wells was living in Victorian period.  During the time, men were dressed in formal suit, and women were dressed in tailor made dresses in the Victorian fashion and there were no such thing as unsexed clothing like jeans or T-shirt either.  Men and women were dressing very distinctively from each other in Wells’ period, and yet it is very interesting that he illustrated the Eloi to wear something very ancient and un-gendered in the future.  They were wearing the same form of costume and everyone of the Eloi look alike.

In the Wells’s future world, there is one physical gender like communist political ideology. The processes of gender evolution and devolution as depicted in The Time Machine provide interesting insight into the concept of gender roles in modern society. Wells's Eloi all appear identical like communist’s homogeneous women level. As was pointed out earlier, the children are but miniatures of the adults and differences of gender are difficult to recognize. Indeed, although the Time Traveller refers to his companion of the future, Weena, as "she” throughout the story, he expresses uncertainty about her gender, referring to her at one stage as "my little woman, as I believe it was".(94) The Eloi's general appearance is uniform. Thus, "Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek, there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild".(64) And again the Time Traveller notes that "I perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb."(73-74)

Time traveler perceived that all had same form of costume, the same soft hairless visage. He felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect: for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force. The interesting is the indistinguishable gender of Eloi is similar with the ideal gender of communism. According to 1950 Marriage Law, Communism is based on gender equality and legitimated free love and marriage against polygamy like a caste system in India. The idea of gender equality has been and still is an exogenous concept in Romanian culture. Initially introduced and institutionalized by communist ideology after World War II along with other utopian egalitarian principles, gender equality remains today a somewhat strange concept in practice for the majority of the Romanian population. Nevertheless, in the early twenty-first century, with renewed economic growth and more liberal governance in Romania, the gender equality debate has intensified, and multiple advocacies now compete on the political and social arenas. The most notable actors shaping current attitudes toward women in Romania are the Orthodox Church, political parties, feminist organizations, and the media.(Romania) This communist ideology is fashioned by some science fiction including the Time Machine. Of course, Wells occationally wrote a lot of books about Russian communism. One of good example of challanging gender equality in the communist’s ideology is women as war heroes in World War II. In that time, it is true many women obtained more excellent result than men. The more interesting thing is that in the world of 802,701through the Morlocks and the Eloi, Wells depicts both indistinguishable physical sex of Eloi and distinguishable psychological gender of Eloi and Morlocks. Wells depicts Eloi as girl and child who have hardly indistinguishable gender, but he also depicts Eloi has Victorian's traditional woman’s psychological characteristics like pure, weak, and obeyable. In contrast to Eloi’s girlish shape and behavior, Morlocks are aggressive and sexually dominant like Western men. Also Morlocks is not look like women maybe muscular ape who is like traditional poweful men's shape. Today, Eloi's psychological and physical equal sex movement is expanded to all over the world. In Japan, many men were psychologically changed to women. They always more concern about their beauty for themselves like women than their health or wealth. In contrast to psychological change, many men and women try to find their physical sex identity over the world. According to American Community Survey, there are 8.8 million gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons in the US based on the 2006. In short, in the world of 802,701, there is both zero physical sex and two psychological genders.

The Time Traveler was struck by the Eloi where they have no fear to him when he first saw them.  He was expecting the people to be incredibly in front of them in knowledge, art, and everything, but the Eloi were only at the intellectual level of a five-year old children.  And he lost his interest in them immediately.  I think the author tried to illustrate the communism and reflected the social problems in the story.  In a communist society, all people are classless, and stateless, and all people educated the same way and not necessary to be intelligence to survive.  Communist emphasized gender equality, but this emphasis was to make the two sexes more united in the building of socialism. Therefore, gender was not emphasized.  The Time Traveler told himself that the future society was more like “Communism” where he recognized that all the households, buildings were vanished and the only things left were the tree house buildings.

From the perspective of man in the early 19 century, Eloi was probably a society uncivilized human where they do not have the worries in a modern society:  development of technology, competition in life, survives physically, social responsibility, wisdom, education, ethics and most importantly sexual relationship and gender roles.  Sexual relationship is very complicated in modern days.  Gender stereotypes have been causing a lot of social problem:  sex, fear, feminism, nudity, and discriminations.  I think the Eloi society is living in a prefect society where free of sexual and relationship problem.  But yet, the Time Traveler met Weena during his trip to the future.  Time Traveler was able to distinguish her from the other Eloi, and I think she had shown her female characteristic during the course of his journey.  Although the Eloi wasn’t sexual identical, but I think the appearance of Time Traveler had driven the feminine side of Weena which has been part of her human heritage and they developed an innocent relationship. 

Any time travel movie and novel always takes man and woman have some relationship to make a criticism. Somehow it is very romantic because it is created by author’s human world knowledge. It is simply recommend any human relationship is starting with lovey-dovey relationship, friendship, family relationship and business partnership.

From H.G Well’s “The Time Machine” has a special relationship with different gender and sex; this explores new adventure that makes issues to be romanticism by author’s plan. The time-traveler rescues the weakly crying little Eloi named Weena from drowning. It is the moment when these two start to develop an innocently affectionate relationship over the course of several days.

“This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little woman, as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centre from an exploration, and she received me with me with cries of delight and presented me with a big garland of flowers- evidently made for me and me alone. The thing took my imagination. … We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands. I did the same to hers. Then I tried talk, and found that her name was Weena, which, though I don’t know what it meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough. That was the beginning of a queer friendship which lasted a week, and ended- as I will tell you!”(49)

This is the term that H.G. Well is presenting their relationship. It is very fast going relationship since time-traveler is not a commoner as Eloi. When Weena gives flowers to the time traveler; this proceeding seems as gratitude and also symbolizing as reception like Hawaii tour. I also feel this is her personal thank toward him with expectation. As for the kiss, it shows clearly the closeness of their relationship. Because physical contact usually calls the romantic attachment, Kelly A. Brannan, a writer, she informs any sign of physical contact between two different sex works as measurement of love, and develops the relationship. Later, this Eloi character is becoming his distress because her devotion affects him as a comfort from this time space.

“I thought it was mere childish affection that made her cling to me. …..the little doll of a creature presently gave my return to the neighborhood of the White Sphinx almost the feeling of coming home; and I would watch for her tiny figure of white and gold so soon as I came over the hill.” (50)

Through author Well interprets the time-traveler’s distress as family bond, which it is kind a romantic way to present them. It is because author’s notion seems having a disclose after making audiences’ curiousity, which, it makes strong surmise to think something is gonna happen to them. Also having different gender and sex perfectly operates to build the term of relationship.

This kind of romantic evaluation is happened many different time travel related movies. As for example, “Back to the Future” is one of science fiction movie, which, it uses two main characters to go back to the past and future freely and have some trouble for coming back for own time. This movie has complicate relationship than Well’s “The Time Machine”, which, mom and son make difficult love without any notice. Their closeness also starts with some trouble and rescue mission, which it shows any lovey-dovey needs some critical monument. The character named Biff is one of bad guys that he bothers a cute girl, Marty’s mother from past; and somehow Marty, one of main character, saves her and starts to have close relationship for each other.  Their relationship is not going too far because in the end, they satisfy to become as friends. This progress seems their man and woman relationship grow as love kind but in the end it relates as family bond. This somehow sets the human emotion like tension, overwhelm, and confusion from audience.

If you go and see “Time Travel” in youtube, you can find this time traveling is great pretext, somewhat has related to the romanticism. Sometime time travel can be a meaning of memory, which, video cam is also can be one of time machine shows past moment. Though watching this video, I simply feel the same moment clearly helps to remember the beautiful and personal time line to make us feel much younger.

Any these movie, video and novel seems to make different characters somehow meet with different events so they can have any relationship like family or friend to be issued as with any different gender, sex, and bond. This term makes so much interest by audience who see it. It is because any human relationship takes the great response with great obstacles. Since humanity wants the knowledge of experience, this information makes so much interest to become issues for needing story of people’s social relationship.

Work Cite

Romania Communism http://www.iun.edu/~hisdcl/h207_2002/chang2.htm