News from Nowhere

Dick acts as Guest’s tour guide through 21st-century London and beyond. He is the everyman of his time: generous, jolly, and childlike. He treats everyone as his neighbor, tries to make his companions feel comfortable, and defers to those around him. With Clara, he is affectionate and shy, despite their complex previous history. He expresses his love, admiration, and sympathy for the natural world and his appreciation of art and history, even if he himself is not an expert. Dick facilitates the experiences that Guest finds so transformative—the conversation with his great-grandfather and the journey through London and up the Thames River—but he himself remains substantially the same.

When Guest asks more perplexing questions, such as those about schooling or the exchange of money, Dick remains kind and genial. He instinctively makes people feel comfortable, offering self-deprecating jokes when others feel awkward. When he first meets Guest, he says, “If you think you can put up with me, pray take me as your guide” (16), putting himself down to a complete stranger just to help Guest learn more about their world. He is not afraid to admit that he does not understand or know the answer. The questions he asks his companion gently illuminates the absurdity of Guest’s 19th-century truisms. For instance, when Guest describes education as the teaching of children, Dick replies, “Why not old people also?” (35). The simple question—one that a man of his class in the 19th century would never ask—enables an illuminating conversation about the limits of what can be considered learning. His character acts as a connecting force as he facilitates Guest’s interactions with nearly everyone in the story—Hammond, Clara, and his friends at Hammersmith and along the Thames.

Clara emblematizes the typical woman of the 21st century. She is beautiful and, to Guest’s eyes, young looking. When Guest encounters her at the home of Dick’s great-grandfather Hammond, Clara catches his attention because of her affection for Dick. In conversation, Guest discovers that Clara and Dick used to be married and are the parents of two children. Because divorce is open to all, they separated when Clara came to believe that Dick was in love with someone else; since then, however, she has discovered her error, and her affection for him is undimmed.

Clara becomes a second interlocutor for Guest. She struggles to understand Guest’s ignorance of 21st-century customs. She is also childlike in her brutal honesty—when she notices something, she confronts her audience. For example, she steers the conversation back to the paintings of the fairytales in the Bloomsbury Market Hall after dinner when everyone else had forgotten. Similarly, when the old man they meet in Runnymede continues to fixate on the past, Clara says, “I don’t like this: something or another troubles me” (160). Despite the fact that she cannot name the feeling, Clara expresses it and expects those around her to accommodate. However, Clara remains recognizable as a virtuous woman in late-19th-century terms. In spite of the expansion of women’s equality, the access to divorce, and support systems for childrearing, Clara has not abused this freedom. She remains modest in dress and behavior and displays feminine qualities. In this way, she offers an implicit rebuff to critics of socialism who worried about its effect on morality and gender relations.

Ellen is the granddaughter of the grumbling old man who offers Guest, Dick, and Clara a place to stay at Runnymede. She is young, with bright hair and gray eyes, and her face, hands, and feet are tanned by the sun. Guest describes her as shrieking and giggling with pleasure and frequently dancing around and hugging people. She eloquently argues against her grandfather’s negative opinions and maintains an optimistic but realistic view of the world. Despite her femininity and childlike nature, she regularly contributes to their conversations about history, politics, and art. She is the dream within the dream; Dick calls her a “fairy,” and Guest feels like he is under her spell.

She and Guest develop a mutual attraction that leads her to follow him to the hay harvest. She is the only character with whom Guest feels comfortable revealing the truth of his temporal origins, and she takes the information in stride. She asks about his history and the conditions of his life so that when she has children, she can be sure they will not repeat her grandfather’s nostalgia for the past.

Ellen embodies the optimism and vision that Guest wants to hold onto in his own world. When Guest awakes back in 1890, he uses Ellen’s face and imagined dialogue to make sense of his experience. It is by imagining Ellen that he comes to understand the purpose of his visit to the 21st century.