The Brothers: the Shattered Mirror

Abstract

The Brothers, a short novel of about the same length as The Time Machine, was written in 1937 and published early in 1938. The Spanish Civil War was raging throughout its composition and is reflected in the conflict which forms its backcloth. That Wells had an allegorical intention is clear from the note he inserted on the title page: ‘If you like this story you will probably also like The Croquet Player, Star Begotten, Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island, The Time Machine, Men Like Gods and such short stories as “The Pearl of Love”, “The Country of the Blind”, “The Beautiful Suit” by the same author.’ This selection of novels and short stories is suggestive. The common denominator is that each is an allegory, a fable which seeks to explore the relation between fiction and reality through a series of metaphors. The genre had interested Wells since his boyhood at Up Park when he had read Gulliver’s Travels, Rasselas and Voltaire’s Candide. The Brothers is a significant addition to the genre, for within a narrative which ostensibly describes an ideological conflict between two warring factions he interweaves a rich tapestry of symbolism in which the duality of his own temperament is explored.

We are just prisms who sort out the rays of life in our way, bent mirrors that reflect them into relevant forms. Our minds are distorting mirrors. … Prisms and mirrors. That is all we are. Shatter the mirror and the story ends.

(H. G. Wells, The Brothers)

With many novels, our proper work as readers cannot begin until we have begun to discover the ‘figure in the carpet’, that is, the form and pattern that give meaning to the whole.

(John Colmer, Approaches to the Novel)