49 pages • 1 hour read
William MorrisNews from Nowhere
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1890A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Pleasure Without Property
“Pleasure begets pleasure” is the rallying cry of 21st-century society (75), and that pleasure is enabled, at its root, by the relinquishing of private property. Morris returns to this theme throughout the novel, pointing out how natural human emotions and inclinations are distorted when property enters the scene. Dick, for instance, recalls the “disease” of “idleness” that was common in the days soon after the civil war. People were afflicted because their ancestors forced other people to do work for them, and they became so ugly that they had to start working. In the absence of coercion, idleness could only be overcome by pleasure. Guest comes to hold a similar idea. When Ellen asks him what the buildings looked like on the river in old times, he responds that they were ugly and vulgar because of the sordidness they forced upon the working class (226). When explaining the change in their society, Hammond states that the purpose of revolution is to make people happy. If it does not, then there will naturally be another revolution. Hammond phrases this as a rhetorical question to emphasize its obviousness: “What! Shall we expect peace and stability from unhappiness?” (110).
Pleasure without property is also a bedrock of the social order. Far from being a principle of human nature, competition and struggle over resources, land, and necessities are as unnatural as private property itself. The utopian society of News From Nowhere is founded on care and reciprocity. One reason for this mutual care is that it is simply easier. In their society, Hammond explains that it is much harder to commit crimes than it is to live without doing so: “It is easy for us to live without robbing each other. It would be possible for us to contend with and rob each other, but it would be harder for us than refraining from strife and robbery” (95). This logic, while not arguing that humans are naturally averse to crime, proposes that when humans have what they need, they prefer not to hurt others. Their conditions of well-being create an environment of well-being. Humans want the best for each other because it means the best for them too. When crimes do occur, they are seen as “errors of friends, not the habitual actions of persons driven into enmity against society” (96). Instead of arguing about the nature of humans at their core, they see transgressions as mistakes and find that when they offer the transgressor kindness instead of punishment, they feel remorse and desire to change for the better.
The Familiar Made Strange
Set in the familiar environs of London and the Thames, the society depicted in News From Nowhere is both familiar and strange. The city provides a set of recognizable landmarks, such as Westminster Abbey and Trafalgar Square, and a catalogue of familiar social interactions in order to heighten the profound economic and ideological shift that has taken place. Indeed, from the moment Guest wakes up in Hammersmith, he engages in comparisons between the place he comes from and the place where he is. The theme of the familiar made strange reflects the double nature of the novel itself. As much as News From Nowhere is the description of a possible future, it remains rooted in the concerns of the 19th century. Moments such as the revelation that the Houses of Parliament are now manure storage facilities are meant as humorous satires on Victorian politics. More broadly, by imposing the distance of more than a century between the events of the novel and the time in which it was written, Morris renders the present unfamiliar in order to imagine something beyond it. By making the 19th century just one moment in a longer history, the novel serves as a reminder that what seems permanent and inevitable is very rarely so. The tour of Hampton Court Palace, once the home of royalty and now used by visitors on pleasure outings, reinforces this point. Other instances of the familiar made strange pass without excessive comment but subtly underline the transformations that have taken place. The village church, for instance, is recognizable to Guest as a church, but it no longer seems to be used for Christian worship. Although religion is barely discussed, the transformation of the church into a banqueting hall implies that part of the shift to socialism has entailed a broad process of secularization. Similarly, the trip to Hampton Court gestures toward England’s monarchist past (and present), but whatever happened to the monarchy itself in this version of the 21st century remains unstated.
Even as he imagines a seemingly impossible utopian world, Morris underlines the connection between his time and his imagined future. Language remains more or less the same, though Dick is unable to understand what Guest means when he talks about poor people or payment. While London contains a number of new constrictions, its general layout has remained stable enough that Guest can still orient himself in the city. Significantly, while social life has undergone a revolution in terms of gender equality, other norms of modesty and politeness still remain intact. The theme of blending the familiar and the strange lends plausibility to Morris’s imaginative project while also offering reassurance that a transition to socialism will not result in the collapse of everything that is familiar in society.
The Return to Nature After Industrialization
News From Nowhere depicts a society that has completely divested from industrial technology that, even in the 19th century, was altering the environment for the worse. The absence of industrial pollution allows Guest to notice the natural world in each new location on his journey. The beauty continuously astounds him, beginning with the quality of the water in his first few moments in the new society and ending with the rush of black that brings him back to his own world. The universal appreciation for the natural world also astounds him. Their appreciation and care for nature as they care for each other shows in the health and beauty of the river, the trees, and the people themselves. All of this, Morris emphasizes, is a result of turning away from industrialization.
Hammond compares his society to a “garden, where nothing is wasted and nothing is spoilt” (86), urging Guest to view society as a living thing in which everything has a purpose. Dick compares the cycle of life and death to that of the seasons, saying that “it is, then, in the autumn, when one almost believes in death” (244). When Guest criticizes this sympathy for the reason that Dick must be equally interested in all seasons, Dick says that indeed he is “part of it all, and [feels] the pain as well as the pleasure in [his] own person” (244). Here, Dick expresses the extent to which he feels connected to all aspects of the natural world, taking its pain and pleasure as his own. Clara explains the mistake of past societies in viewing themselves as separate from nature and therefore abusing it under the assumption that it will not affect them: “‘[N]ature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another” (210). This led them to abuse natural resources, without realizing they were abusing themselves. Their transgressions against the natural world ultimately hurt them. When they began to view their work as pleasurable and necessary for their happiness, they more easily found enthusiasm and purpose in their work with the land.
Guest reflects on how industrial capitalism separated so many people from nature in his own time. In the past, he muses, “outside their daily work country people knew little of the country,” whereas in this future society, the country folk “c[an] name a flower, and kn[o]w its qualities; c[an] tell you the habitat of such and such birds and fish, and the like (201-02). Finding pleasure in their work on the land allows them to feel connected to other living things in their world. When Ellen asks about the conditions of the river in his time, he explains that after railroads were built and the river had no commercial value, a company still tore it up as a way to pretend they had work to do. This bit of history serves to offer a contrast to the state of their current society—rather than ruining the natural world in an effort to pretend to work and get a salary, people in the 21st century work to create, learn, and move alongside the natural world. The pleasure they find in their work is inextricable from the love and appreciation they have for the natural world.
