Kipps - Themes

Themes

Kipps is a rags-to-riches study in class differences, and the novel's chief dramatic interest is how the protagonist negotiates the intellectual, moral, and emotional difficulties that come with wealth and a change of social station. Kipps is the only character in the novel who is fully developed, and all events are narrated from his point of view. A restrained Wellsian narrator's voice offers occasional comment, but only toward the end of the novel does this voice speak out in a page-long denunciation of "the ruling power of this land, Stupidity," which is "a monster, a lumpish monster, like some great clumsy griffin thing, like the Crystal Palace labyrinthodon, like Coote, like the leaden Goddess of the Dunciad, like some fat, proud flunkey, like pride, like indolence, like all that is darkening and heavy and obstructive in life."

Kipps's friend Sid becomes a socialist and houses a boarder, Masterman, who argues that society "is hopelessly out of joint. Man is a social animal with a mind nowadays that goes around the globe, and a community cannot be happy in one part and unhappy in another. . . . Society is one body, and it is either well or ill. That's the law. This society we live in is ill." But while Kipps admires Masterman and is in part receptive to this point of view, he tells Ann that "I don't agree with this socialism." At one time Wells intended to develop Masterman into a major character (and indeed convert Kipps to socialism) and wrote several versions in which he played an important role at the end of the novel, but in the end he eliminated Masterman altogether from the novel's conclusion. It is a critical commonplace to see in this an example of Wells's inner struggle between the roles of artist and prophet.

The speech of Artie Kipps is a careful rendering of the pronunciation of the English language as Wells first learned it. Kipps never does master another way of speaking, and after much effort reverts to the manner of his upbringing. An example: "'Speckylated it!' said Kipps, with an illustrative flourish of the arm that failed to illustrate. 'Bort things dear and sold 'em cheap, and played the 'ankey-pankey jackass with everything we got. That's what I mean 'e's done, Ann.'"