The Question Mark by Muriel Jaeger

Ah, Utopias! I seem to have been circling, and repeatedly coming back to, the subject since first watching Richard Clay‘s “Utopia” series back in 2017. Then there’s the vexed subject of the loose Utopian reading list I set up for myself, which I haven’t actually got very near to approaching in recent months. However, a recent arrival from the lovely British Library, in the form of one of their Science Fiction Classics, has nudged me back closer again – as it’s a lost work that ties in with utopian/dystopian literature very significantly. It’s also a very thought-provoking read…

The book’s author, Muriel Jaeger, is an interesting subject herself. She attended Somerville College in the early 1910s, moving in a circle which included Dorothy L. Sayers and Winifred Holtby; Sayers, in particular, was a close friend. Jaeger went on to work for “Time and Tide” magazine, as well as writing her novels and scraping a precarious living; however, at the time, her novels were not particularly well received and she eventually abandoned writing. “The Question Mark” was originally published in 1926, and as the newly-reissued edition from the British Library (in their Science Fiction Classics series) reveals, it was put out by the Hogarth Press! The new edition reproduces a letter from Leonard Woolf to Jaeger about the publication of the book, as well as a striking portrait of the author; and the excellent introduction by Dr. Mo Moulton gives background on Jaeger’s life as well as putting her book in context.

“The Question Mark” takes a timely look at projections of the future, a popular subject in early science fiction, and draws on works like Wells’ “The Time Machine”. The main protagonist, a very ordinary and lowly clerk, one Guy Martin, is sent 200 years into the future. Martin is not a happy man; scraping a living, constantly short of money and struggling to make his way in the capitalist world, he finds the world of the future initially to be a blissfully comfortable and, yes, utopian one. Poverty has been wiped out; no-one wants for anything; and all manner of modern technologies provide for humanity’s every need. However, it isn’t long before Guy starts to see beneath the superficial reality of the future; because despite the comfort and convenience, something is missing. Complications come in the form of Ena, the daughter of the doctor treating Guy, who seems to be oddly immature despite her years and somewhat fixated on the visitor from the past. Guy begins to encounter humans who are not the rational, intelligent beings he first came across on his awakening; and he comes to realise that humanity seems to have replaced the capitalist class system with a new kind of system of its own…

“Do you mean that we might have had – all this,” Guy spread his hands in a wide gesture to the countryside, “if we had chosen?”

“Certainly, most of it, if you had set about getting rich collectively instead of individually.”

Jaeger’s book is an absolutely fascinating look at human behaviour and where it might go; and as I read on I sensed elements in it that were similar to another lost classic I read recently, Rose Macaulay’s “What Not“. The troubled subject of eugenics is bubbling under the surface of both narratives, and it becomes clear that instead of dividing humans into a complex strata of various classes, the future world is separated on simple lines between those deemed “intellectuals” and those deemed “normals”. The latter are portrayed as vapid and easily led; they’ll worship the latest sporting hero as easily as they will a preacher who claims to have a direct line to God. And the media feed on this, fuel the hysteria created and are a damaging influence on the whole of society (sounds familiar, that…) Once Guy realises this, he’s shocked and repelled by the world in which he finds himself; and in fact both classes seem to struggle to find a purpose in life, as all need for work and striving has actually gone. Our hero even starts to miss the past, despite the depression and alienation he felt; but as the story reveals, he may have no choice about where he lives and the book *does* end on a slightly ambiguous note.

I found “The Question Mark” absolutely compelling from start to finish. Jaeger writes really well, capturing brilliantly the depths of despair Martin sinks into before his journey to future; and painting equally well her portrait of a future world which is gradually revealed to both Guy and the reader. There are so many interesting issues here; whether human beings will always divide into types; whether we need work and a purpose to feel any worth in our lives; whether the influence of the media really *should* be dramatically curtailed; and so on. It raises difficult questions about collective responsibility and state control: at one point, Guy encounters a situation where he discovers that women can choose to be part of a harem and live in a situation where a man has multiple wives. Should humanity intervene or allow the women their choice? That’s another topic which has very modern resonances… Again, it needs to be remembered that Jaeger was publishing before “Brave New World” was written and as the introduction makes clear, took the utopian writing of Wells and his ilk which had gone before and gave it a twist. Her hero is given no easy answers, especially when faced by the response from one particular resident of the future. Ena, the product of a marriage of an “intellectual” and a “normal”, and who is classed as the latter, is portrayed as wanting to step outside that limited definition and she sees the possibility of more. The “normal” characters are motivated pretty much by romance, sex and violence; yet Ena touchingly perceives a world where she and Guy could be just ‘pals’, and that’s a heartbreaking element of the story.

Oh, what have you done with the world? What have you done with it? You have everything we ever wanted and everything to make you happy. I thought when I first came that all the nightmare was over. I thought you were all happy at last; and you are miserable – worse than miserable – so damn doubly hopeless that you clutch at every straw.

Underlying so much of the narrative are the many failed opportunities of humanity (another theme which resonates…) Guy comes to recognise that the inequalities are just the same as in his time, and that the intellectuals are detached and uncaring, leaving their fellow humans to get on with it in their overexcited and hysterical lives. The authorities will step in when there’s been a violent murder or such, and a visit to the location where euthanasia takes place is chilling in its matter-of-factness…

Jaeger’s portrait in the book

So “The Question Mark” turned out to be such an absorbing and interesting (and enjoyable!) read. It raises all manner of issues which are still sitting in my brain while I muse on them. In her own foreword, Jaeger takes issue with the utopias that have come before her – she accepts the worlds that have been created but she finds herself unable to accept that the inhabitants are realistic enough. As she says “At this point my effort to realise Utopia fails. With the best will in the world, I have found myself quite unable to believe in these wise, virtuous, gentle, artistic people. They do not seem to have any relation to humanity as I know it – even by the most distant descent; they suggest, rather, Special Creation.” Jaeger’s people are instantly recognisable to us, and I guess at the heart of subtext of the book is nature vs nurture: are we born a particular way or can we learn? It’s a subject that’s still debated (a recent example might be “Educating Rita”); and possibly always will be – because I don’t think there are any easy answers when it comes to humanity! Anyway; I think Leonard Woolf was right when he took a risk on “The Question Mark” – I found it a brilliant and thought-provoking book, another winner from the British Library and definitely most unjustly neglected!

Review copy kindly provided by the publisher, for which many thanks! 😀