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- Jan 22, 2008
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If I remember rightly, Moreau is clearly a racist, and at one point claims to have made a black man from a gorilla. He stands somewhere between a Victorian colonial overlord and a fascist, as he tries to "better" the servants he creates and beat religion into them, but also sees himself as a biologically superior creature. My suspicion is that he is a mixture of traits that Wells disliked. The only truly human characters are three white Europeans, but I don't think there's an argument there, as the satire is clearly aimed at them, and (grotesque as they are) the beast-people are secondary in that regard.
My suspicion is that a lot of people that we regard as "progressive" for their time were actually weirder and more nuanced that we think, and don't slot neatly into the fixed scale that we have these days. A lot of pseudo-science was knocking around in the late Victorian times, some of it very harmful and some of it just nonsense. Conan Doyle was taken in by the Cottingley Fairies, after all.
I don't know the real answer, perhaps there is someone with more info on the matter, it seems less clear cut than at first glance.
My suspicion is that a lot of people that we regard as "progressive" for their time were actually weirder and more nuanced that we think, and don't slot neatly into the fixed scale that we have these days. A lot of pseudo-science was knocking around in the late Victorian times, some of it very harmful and some of it just nonsense. Conan Doyle was taken in by the Cottingley Fairies, after all.