I thought it was interesting to read a character like this from H.G. Wells. It was completely unlike anything I've read from him in the past, but I enjoyed it. I liked Ann's snappy personality and even though she's been called a feminist by other readers, I don't know that I'd use that word, but I can see why the book has been given that label. I have some issues with a few of the plot points, but generally, it was a decent book.

Ann Veronica is a late 19th century socialite who wants more than the wealth daddy can provide; she wants her independence. Fiercely independent and reckless, she runs from her privileged home and headfirst into a London Edwardian adventure. The story takes up the women’s suffrage movement, the Fabian society, sexism, classism, economic freedom, and the sexual revolution that was rapidly changing the world Well’s lived in.

The character, Ann Veronica, is so human, fluid, and interwoven into the fabric of 1900’s London, that even Wells does not know how to reign her in. He is content on leaving her as an experiment and seeing where she takes her own story. Written as such, the paths the story takes are always fresh and surprising.

There are may quotable passages from the book that will keep it fresh in my memory. Among my favorites is Manning’s proposal followed by the friend-zone letter Ann Veronica spends several days writing and revising because she does not want a lover but also does not want to lose a friend. The letter is a classic, “It’s not you, it’s me.” Of course, the Manning takes it as, ‘so there is still a way in?’

Ann Veronica read this (proposal for marriage) letter through with grave, attentive eyes. Her interest grew as she read, a certain distaste disappeared. Twice she smiled, but not unkindly. Then she went back and mixed up the sheets in a search for particular passages. Finally she fell into reflection. “Odd!” she said. “I suppose I shall have to write an answer.”

She evolved a dim image of herself cooped up in a house under the benevolent shadow of Mr. Manning. Who knows?--on the analogy of “Squiggles” she might come to call him “Mangles!”
Days later, perhaps weeks she decided uo settling up with Mr. Manning. At the cost of quite a number of torn drafts she succeeded in evolving this: “DEAR MR. MANNING,--I find it very difficult to answer your letter. I hope you won’t mind if I say first that I think it does me an extraordinary honor that you should think of any one like myself so highly and seriously, and, secondly, that I wish it had not been written.”

She surveyed this sentence for some time before going on. “I wonder,” she said, “why one writes him sentences like that? It’ll have to go,” she decided, “I’ve written too many already.”

She went on, with a desperate attempt to be easy and colloquial: “You see, we were rather good friends, I thought, and now perhaps it will be difficult for us to get back to the old friendly footing. But if that can possibly be done I want it to be done. You see, the plain fact of the case is that I think I am too young and ignorant for marriage. I have been thinking these things over lately, and it seems to me that marriage for a girl is just the supremest thing in life. It isn’t just one among a number of important things; for her it is the important thing, and until she knows far more than I know of the facts of life, how is she to undertake it? So please; if you will, forget that you wrote that letter, and forgive this answer. I want you to think of me just as if I was a man, and quite outside marriage altogether.

“I do hope you will be able to do this, because I value men friends. I shall be very sorry if I cannot have you for a friend. I think that there is no better friend for a girl than a man rather older than herself.”

Although written in 1909 Wells demonstrates the still timely subject of the difficulties involved in women being politically, legally, and economically independent, but the gem of the book is the main character, who evolves, self-contradicts, and refuses to be a slave to any man, not even the author. Only when she is capable of truly giving herself to another does she find joy in doing things for another.

I found this book to be a great period piece with valuable information about people’s lives and thinking in the early 1900’s.

H.G. Wells is widely known for his speculative science fiction work, but he also published across a variety of topics, both fiction and nonfiction. I struggled through his expository style in his first novel, The Time Machine (1895). Instead of showing the reader, he told the reader, in long, drawn-out sequences. I liked the ideas he was exploring, but I didn't enjoy the execution.

By 1909, Wells absolutely excelled at storytelling while still keeping a penetrating eye on the larger issues of the day, especially social relationships. In Ann Veronica, he writes about a young woman who is breaking out of old social norms by getting a postsecondary education and trying to live her life her own way. Her father, aunt and a suitor try to keep her "respectable," as they would define that term. To them, a respectable woman should be on a pedestal, kept unawares of the larger world about her and be worshiped until she is married and then she must fade back into the shadows. Bohemians, writers and theater people must be avoided at all costs.

Ann Veronica is strong-willed, intelligent and willing to take a stand. But Wells doesn't idealize or romanticize the situation. Her choices have consequences, both good and bad, throughout the story. She excels, she stumbles, but in the end, she is allowed to make those decisions for herself. She is allowed to become fully human, including having male friends who are not just relatives, suitors or husbands.

To read something like this in 1909 would have pushed so many people's boundaries. Interestingly, and sadly, you could change the 1 to a 2 (i.e. 1909 to 2009) and the story still works. Political and religious conservatives are still trying to push women back into the shadows and to demote them to living property, possessions not partners. Wells's words still ring true:

"She was never able to trace the changes her attitude had undergone, from the time when she believed herself to be the pampered Queen of Fortune, the crown of a good man's love..., to the time when she realized she was in fact just a mannequin for her lover's imagination, and that he cared no more for the realities of her being, for the things she felt and desired, for the passions and dreams that might move her, than a child cares for the sawdust in its doll. She was the actress his whim had chosen to play a passive part..." (p. 298)

I highly recommend this book.

I also enjoyed this book on a physical level. It is my second oldest book, clocking in at almost 96 years old when I read it (printing from September 1917). It's also the first time I read one of my Modern Library books that I've become addicted to and acquired over the last four months.