The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah Analysis - Newsletter Study Guide

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah Analysis - Newsletter Study Guide

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The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah Analysis - Newsletter Study Guide

Detailed Text Analysis –

The Anatomy of Rot

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968) is set in Ghana during the last months of Kwame Nkrumah’s regime (specifically 1965-66, ending with the military coup of 24 February 1966). The plot is deliberately simple and circular, reflecting the stagnation of postcolonial society.

Plot Summary :

Part One (Chapters 1-3): 

An unnamed “Man” rides a filthy, overcrowded bus to his job as a railway clerk in Takoradi. He witnesses the conductor stealing change. At work, a timber merchant, Amankwa, offers him a bribe to expedite a train carriage. The Man refuses. His wife, Oyo, is furious when she learns, comparing him unfavourably to their rich, corrupt neighbour, Koomson.

Part Two (Chapters 4-7): 

Flashbacks and internal monologues reveal the Man’s history. He was once a promising student but lost his path. He visits “Teacher,” an intellectual who lives in near-poverty and isolation. Teacher offers no solutions but mirrors the Man’s own moral anxiety. The Man takes a solitary walk along the railway tracks, achieving a moment of transcendent clarity.

Part Three (Chapters 8-11): 

The Man and his family visit Koomson’s luxurious home. The hypocrisy of the elite is laid bare. Koomson offers to involve the Man’s family in a corrupt fishing-boat scheme. Soon after, the military coup occurs. Koomson flees to the Man’s house, begging for help. He escapes through a latrine (crawling through human waste). The novel ends with the Man laughing with Teacher, still poor, still honest, but with a grim sense of vindication.

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Key Thematic Analysis:

1. Corruption as a Total System:

Armah does not present corruption as a few bad apples. It is a total social, moral, and even physical condition. Every character except the Man and Teacher is compromised. The police take bribes; the lottery winner plans to bribe officials; Koomson embezzles; even the Man’s mother-in-law praises the corrupt minister. The famous slogan “End Bribery and Corruption” painted on a wall is ironic because the government itself is the biggest source of rot.

2. The Imagery of Decay (Scatology):

This is the novel’s most famous stylistic feature. The world is filled with “ooze,” “slime,” “vomit,” “urine,” “fetid breath,” and “rotting food.” The Man’s office staircase banister is “smooth with the slime of countless hands.” A garbage bin is described as “a swollen mound of refuse” that “had burst its sides.” Charles Nnolim, a major critic, calls this “pejorism” – the linguistic and imagistic insistence that things are moving from bad to worse. But a more sophisticated reading (Tess Onwueme) sees decay as transformative. The yam head must rot to give life. The Man’s immersion in filth is a ritual of purification. He sees clearly because he has smelled the stench.

3. Silence as Resistance:

Speech in the novel has been devalued. Politicians speak slogans that mean nothing. The bus conductor’s words are a “confused rattle.” The Man’s wife’s arguments are repetitive and materialistic. Against this cacophony, the Man deploys silence. When the conductor asks for money, the Man stares. “In the conductor’s mind everything was already too loudly and too completely said.” Silence is not weakness; it is a form of judgment. It forces others to confront their own guilt. This is a deeply original and exam-worthy concept.

4. The Failure of Political Change:

The military coup that ends the novel is not a liberation. The narrator notes it is merely a “change of embezzlers.” Koomson escapes. The “big corrupt people” are untouched. The circular structure – beginning and ending on a bus with a cheating conductor – embodies this paralysis. Armah argues that changing the ruling party or the form of government (from civilian to military) means nothing without a change in the human soul. The “beautiful ones” – the generation of uncorrupted leaders – are “not yet born.” This is not despair; it is a challenge to the reader.

Exam tip: When writing about themes, always link them to literary devices. For example, “Armah’s use of cyclical structure reinforces the theme that political revolutions are superficial; true change must be spiritual and generational.”

Chapter 3: Character Analysis –

The Allegorical Self

All major characters in the novel are unnamed or allegorically named. This is a deliberate technique to universalise the Ghanaian situation. Armah is not writing a local scandal; he is writing a parable of the postcolonial condition.

1. The Man (the Protagonist):

He is a railway clerk, a husband, a father, but his defining trait is his refusal. He refuses bribes. He refuses to envy Koomson. He refuses to participate in the national game. Society labels him a “fool,” a “coward,” and “unnatural.” His wife calls him a failure. He himself is tormented by self-doubt. Is he truly honest, or is he simply afraid to succeed? This ambiguity is crucial. The Man is not a flawless hero. He is a deeply conflicted, lonely, and often pathetic figure. And yet, his persistence in silence and refusal makes him the novel’s moral centre. He represents the conscience that must survive for any future renewal to be possible. His walk along the railway tracks is a spiritual retreat. He emerges with “sharp clarity of vision” and a “beautiful freedom from dirt.” He is the uncorrupted seed buried in the rotting earth.

2. Teacher:

Teacher is the Man’s only confidant. He is a writer and thinker who lives in a bare room, sleeping naked on a mattress. He has opted out of society entirely. Teacher embodies the intellectual’s paralysis: he sees the truth clearly but offers no strategy for change. When the Man asks for advice, Teacher says, “I have no solutions. I only see problems.” This is not useless; it is a form of honesty that the society lacks. Teacher functions as the Man’s superego (in Freudian terms) – the internal voice of moral judgment. Their meetings are not dialogues between two people but a single consciousness debating itself. Teacher’s existence proves that the novel is internal. The real action is in the mind.

3. Joseph Koomson:

The antagonist. Koomson was the Man’s classmate. Now he is a “Minister Plenipotentiary” – a high-ranking official in Nkrumah’s government. He is fat, perfumed, wealthy, and utterly corrupt. He owns a Mercedes, a large house, imported furniture, and arranges scholarships for his family. His wife Estella wears a wig and calls herself “Estie.” They are the “black skins, white masks” of Frantz Fanon’s theory. Koomson represents the postcolonial bourgeoisie that has inherited the coloniser’s wealth and values. He is a socialist in rhetoric (“the bank is ours”) but a capitalist in practice (he embezzles without guilt). His name is almost a pun on “Koomson” – “Come and son” – suggesting a dynasty of corruption. Yet Armah does not demonise him entirely. Koomson is also a product of the system. His escape through the latrine is richly symbolic: the great man is reduced to crawling through the excrement his own society produced.

4. Oyo (The Man’s Wife):

Oyo is often misread as a simple shrew. She is more tragic than villainous. She is a victim of what Cornel West calls “market culture” – the belief that material acquisition is the only measure of success. She is tired of poverty. She sees Koomson’s wife Estella living in luxury and wants the same for her family. Oyo represents the pressure to conform. She is the chorus of the society, the collective voice that says, “Why are you so foolish? Take what you can.” Her frustration humanises the corruption. It shows how a whole nation can be seduced by the gleam of wealth, regardless of its source.

5. Minor Characters of Note:

Maanan (Oyo’s mother): Even more avid for corruption. She praises Koomson openly.

Amankwa (the timber merchant): Represents the private sector’s role in bribery.

The Bus Conductor: A petty corrupt official who smells his money. He is the first figure the Man confronts, establishing the novel’s central conflict.

The Naked Man (from Teacher’s story?): A recurring image of vulnerability and truth.

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Exam tip: When writing about characters, avoid psychologising. These are not realistic portraits; they are allegorical positions. Ask: What idea does this character embody? How do they serve the novel’s argument?

Character Analysis- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson - A Newsletter Guide

 

Character Analysis- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson 

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Character Analysis- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson - A Newsletter Guide 

Character Analysis

1799 Characters

Joseph Fenwick – A scientist in his mid‑fifties, modelled on the gentleman philosophers of the Lunar Society. He is brilliant, progressive, and politically radical (he wants universal suffrage and the abolition of the monarchy). But he is also a neglectful husband, a dismissive father (of his daughter Harriet’s ambitions), and a man who cannot see his own complicity in the class structure that allows him to employ Isobel. His tragedy is that his ideals outrun his self‑awareness.

Susannah Fenwick – Fenwick’s wife, forty years old, formerly an artist and classicist. She is trapped in a marriage that values her only for her beauty. Her drinking is a symptom of her erasure. The play’s most explosive moment is her outburst: “You forget I exist!” She is not a feminist hero – she is too compromised, too bitter – but she is a devastating portrait of what patriarchy does to intelligent women.

Harriet Fenwick – The younger twin (twenty years old), bright, ambitious, and frustrated. She wants to be a scientist like her father; her mother insists she write plays and find a husband. Her masque is an act of rebellion – she fills it with industry and progress instead of pastoral innocence. Her future is uncertain, but the historical record tells us that in 1799 a woman could not attend medical school. She is a portrait of thwarted potential.

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Maria Fenwick – The older twin, more conventional, engaged to Edward (who is in India). Over the course of the play, she moves from naive romantic to disillusioned woman. Her letters to Edward are a subplot that mirrors the play’s larger themes: the coloniser adapts to the colony and forgets home; the woman left behind grows stronger. When she breaks off the engagement, it is a small but genuine victory.

Isobel Bridie – The Scottish servant, twenty‑five, with a spinal deformity (a hump). She is self‑educated, proud, and deeply vulnerable. She has long accepted that she will be solitary; Armstrong’s seduction briefly gives her hope. When she learns the truth, she kills herself. Isobel is the play’s moral centre and its most tragic figure. Stephenson’s decision to have her take the place of the bird in the final tableau is a damning indictment of scientific callousness.

Peter Roget – A young scientist (mid‑twenties), based on the historical figure who would later publish the first thesaurus. He is compassionate, methodical, and conflicted. He loves Isobel for her mind; he is horrified by Armstrong’s methods. His rebellion against Fenwick (releasing the bird) and his punch at the end are the play’s only moments of direct ethical action. But he is too late to save Isobel.

Thomas Armstrong – The villain, twenty‑six, ambitious, cold, and ruthless. He is a brilliant scientist with no moral compass. He seduces Isobel to study her deformity; when she hangs herself, he lets her die and hides the note. He represents the pure instrumental rationality that Stephenson warns against. But he is not a caricature – he is charming, intelligent, and recognisably human. That is what makes him frightening.

1999 Characters

Tom – Ellen’s husband, a retired English lecturer in his sixties. He is depressed about his redundancy and threatened by his wife’s professional success. He opposes her work on stem cells partly for ethical reasons (he believes life begins at conception) and partly because he feels irrelevant. His spiritual connection to the bones makes him the keeper of memory. He is not a hero, but he is sympathetic.

Ellen – A geneticist in her fifties, offered a job at a biotech company. She is brilliant, ambitious, and ethically conflicted. She has had six miscarriages; prenatal testing is therefore not abstract for her. She wants to take the job, but she fears its implications. Her final decision to accept it is unresolved – the play does not tell us whether she is right or wrong. This ambiguity is the point.

Kate – A young scientist (twenty‑eight), Ellen’s former student, now a corporate recruiter. She is ambitious, cold, and dismissive of ethical qualms. She refers to pre‑embryos as “a cluster of cells” and tells Ellen that Tom’s opinion doesn’t matter. She is not evil – she genuinely believes in the benefits of genetic research – but she has learned to suppress her empathy. She is the future that Ellen fears becoming.

Phil – A builder in his thirties, hired to measure the house for renovation. He is working‑class, self‑educated, and deeply human. He believes in UFOs and spontaneous combustion; Kate mocks him. But his ethical instincts are sound: he loves his disabled uncle Stan; he lights a candle for the bones; he fears the eugenic implications of genetic testing. He is the voice of the public – and the play respects him.

The Doubling of Actors and Its Significance

The same actor plays:

Fenwick (1799) and Tom (1999) – The patriarch becomes the redundant spouse. Power shifts but does not disappear.

Susannah (1799) and Ellen (1999) – The trapped wife becomes the conflicted scientist. Progress is ambiguous.

Harriet (1799) and Kate (1999) – The frustrated rebel becomes the cold corporate woman. Ambition without ethics leads to a different kind of prison.

Armstrong (1799) and Phil (1999) – The villain becomes the compassionate builder. This is the most interesting doubling: the same actor plays the amoral scientist and the working‑class everyman, suggesting that cruelty and compassion are not fixed traits but responses to social position.

The doubling is not mere convenience. It insists that the past and present are not separate – the same people (the same actors) make the same choices across centuries. Progress is an illusion; human nature is the constant

Key Facts and Contextual Background

Historical Context – England in 1799

The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions: Between 1785 and 1830, the population of England and Wales doubled. Enclosure Acts privatised common land, displacing small farmers. New machines (the spinning jenny, the water frame, the steam engine) destroyed cottage industries. The poor rioted – as they do in the play’s opening scene.

The Luddite Riots: The Luddites (named after the mythical Ned Ludd) smashed machinery in the great industrial centres of northern England between 1811 and 1816. Stephenson’s rioters, protesting the price of fish and corn, are precursors of the Luddites. Fenwick dismisses them as shortsighted, but the play sympathises with their desperation.

The French Revolution and Republicanism: The French Revolution began in 1789. Fenwick’s radicalism – universal suffrage, the end of monarchy – is inspired by it. Roget’s caution (“at what cost, sir?”) reflects the disillusionment that followed the Reign of Terror (1793–94). The play does not resolve this debate.

The Colonisation of India: Edward’s letters reflect the British experience in India. The East India Company effectively ruled India by 1800. Edward’s transformation – from homesick Englishman to colonial administrator who forgets what England looks like – is a portrait of the coloniser’s psychology.

Robert Boyle and the Air Pump: Boyle’s experiments (1660) were the foundation of pneumatic chemistry. His air pump was an expensive, delicate instrument – a symbol of scientific progress. The travelling lecturers who used it were as much showmen as scientists, a detail that Phil recognises: “They were comedians.”

Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869): The historical Roget was a physician, philologist, and amateur scientist. He invented the “log‑slide” rule for calculating roots and powers, and his theory of the persistence of vision provided the foundation for animation. He began compiling his Thesaurus at age 63. Stephenson honours him by making him the play’s ethical centre.

The Anatomy Act (1832): Before the Act, medical schools relied on grave robbers for cadavers. The murderers Burke and Hare (1828) escalated the scandal. Armstrong’s boast – “I find them before they’re dead” – is a reference to this history. The Act legalised dissection of the unclaimed poor – a solution that institutionalised, rather than eliminated, exploitation.

Contemporary Context – The 1990s

The Human Genome Project (1990–2003): An international scientific project to map all human genes. Stephenson wrote the play as it was nearing completion. Kate’s rhapsody – “It’s breathtaking” – reflects the project’s rhetoric. Ellen’s caution reflects the ethical debates that accompanied it.

Dolly the Sheep (1997): The first cloned mammal, born at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. Dolly was euthanised in 2003 due to premature ageing. Phil’s fear of cloning (“William Hague cloned himself – there’d be two of him”) satirises public panic, but the underlying concern – the commodification of life – is serious.

Stem Cell Research and Pre‑implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD): PGD allows the detection of genetic abnormalities in embryos before implantation. Kate’s vision of eradicating manic depression is plausible (the genetic basis of bipolar disorder is still debated). Phil’s defence of his uncle Stan – “He was magic” – is a humanist counter‑argument.

The UNESCO Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997): Article 4 specifies that the human genome in its natural state shall not give rise to financial gain. The play’s biotech company represents the commercialisation that UNESCO sought to prevent.

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Neo‑Luddism: In the 1990s, a movement of “Neo‑Luddites” emerged to resist technology and the “branded existence” of the second Industrial Revolution. Phil is not a Neo‑Luddite – he uses electric drills – but his suspicion of genetic engineering aligns with their manifesto.

Major Themes- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson - A Newsletter Guide

Major Themes- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson

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Major Themes- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson 

Shelagh Stephenson (b. 1955) emerged from the socially conscious northern British theatre tradition of the 1970s, and her work is defined by its sharp ethical inquiry, dark humour, and profound compassion for the vulnerable. An Experiment with an Air Pump (1998) – joint winner of the Peggy Ramsay Award – is her masterpiece. The play takes as its inspiration Joseph Wright of Derby’s famous 1768 painting of the same name, and weaves two parallel narratives: one set in 1799, on the cusp of a new century, and another in 1999, on the brink of the millennium. In a single house in Newcastle‑upon‑Tyne, the same actors play different characters across two hundred years, creating a resonant dialogue between past and present.

Major Themes

1. Science Replacing Religion – The Scientist as Demiurge

The most explicit theme of the play, drawn directly from Wright’s painting, is the idea that science has taken the place of religion as the primary source of wonder, authority, and meaning in Western culture. Ellen’s prologue states it directly: “the scientist is where God used to be.”

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In 1799, Fenwick dismisses the local vicar’s lecture as “not science, theology”. He despises monarchy because it claims divine right. He believes that the relentless advance of science will inevitably produce universal suffrage and the end of kings. His faith is messianic: science will redeem humanity.

In 1999, Kate speaks of the Human Genome Project in quasi‑religious language: “It’s like a new map of humanity – every element described and understood. It’s breathtaking.” She believes that genetic knowledge will eliminate suffering. Ellen is more cautious, but she too admits that she wanted to be “God the scientist”.

Stephenson is not anti‑science. She allows that scientific ambition can be a powerful, even noble, human passion. But she warns against the sacralisation of science – treating it as an unquestionable good, exempt from ethical scrutiny.

2. The Ethical and Moral Limits of Scientific Research

The play’s central ethical question is: what lines should science not cross? In 1799, the issue is grave robbing – using the bodies of the poor for dissection. Armstrong has no compunction; Roget is deeply troubled. “The ends justify the means,” Armstrong argues. “Morality kills science.”

In 1999, the issue is stem cell research and prenatal genetic testing. Kate dismisses the moral dimension: “It’s a cluster of cells.” Phil, whose uncle Stan had manic depression, replies: “You never met him. You don’t know anything about what went on in his life.”

Stephenson refuses to give a definitive answer. Ellen agonises, and in the end she accepts the job – but the play does not tell us whether she is right or wrong. What the play insists on is that the question be asked. Silence is complicity.

3. The Role of Women in Science Across History

The doubling of actors is the play’s most powerful device for exploring this theme. In 1799, the women are excluded from scientific conversation. Susannah is ignored; Harriet is mocked for wanting to be a physician. In 1999, Ellen and Kate are the scientists; Tom is the redundant humanist. On the surface, this represents progress.

But Stephenson complicates this narrative. Ellen’s professional success does not liberate her from ethical agony. Kate, though powerful, has internalised the cold, reductive values of the patriarchal institution she serves. The play asks: has the structure changed, or have women simply learned to operate within it?

Isobel, the servant with a spinal deformity, is the ultimate figure of the female body as object of scientific scrutiny. She is studied, seduced, and discarded. Her death is the cost of progress.

4. Estrangement, Ignorance, and the Public Understanding of Science

Phil represents the general public – intelligent but not formally educated, suspicious of science, reliant on popular media for information. He believes in UFOs, spontaneous combustion, and urban legends. Kate mocks him. But Phil’s instincts are often more ethical than Kate’s professionalism.

The play suggests that the gap between scientists and the public is dangerous. When scientists speak only to each other, in their own jargon, they lose accountability. Tom accuses Kate: “You do all your experiments in a vacuum.” The air pump becomes a metaphor for the bubble of scientific isolation.

5. Gender and Power Reversal – 1799 vs. 1999

The role reversal between the two time periods is stark. In 1799, the men are the educated, powerful figures; the women are domestic and marginalised. In 1999, the women (Ellen, Kate) are the scientists; Tom is the stay‑at‑home (redundant) spouse.

But power has not disappeared – it has shifted. Tom feels emasculated: “I’m going to sail into the twenty‑first century as a middle‑aged redundant man supported by a younger sexier wife.” His joke masks genuine pain. The play refuses to celebrate the reversal as simple justice; it shows that power imbalances hurt everyone, regardless of gender.

6. Class, Nationality, and the Vulnerable Body

Isobel is multiply marginalised: she is a woman, a servant (working‑class), Scottish (a national minority), and physically deformed. Her body is the site on which the play’s ethical questions are inscribed. Armstrong does not love her; he wants to study her hump. When she realises she has been tricked, she kills herself.

The box of bones found in the 1999 basement is the material trace of this exploitation. The poor, the disabled, the colonised – their bodies are used and discarded. The play asks: who will be sacrificed for the next scientific advance?

7. Memory, History, and the Colonisation of the Past

The dual time frame is not just a gimmick; it is a philosophical device. The play insists that the past is not dead – it is alive under the floorboards, in the bones, in the walls. Tom feels a spiritual connection to the dead girl; Phil lights a candle for her soul. Ellen is impatient: “She’s dead.” But the play sides with Tom and Phil.

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The plan to turn the house into a “heritage trail” – a themed attraction – represents the commodification of history. Ellen is horrified: “The history of this house is the history of radicalism and dissent and intellectual inquiry, and they’re going to turn it into a tin of souvenir biscuits.” The play mourns this erasure.

Act-wise Detailed Analysis- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson

 

Act-wise Detailed Analysis- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson

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Act-wise Detailed Analysis- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson

The play opens on a darkened stage. Projections of Wright of Derby’s painting An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump appear above. Ellen, a scientist in her fifties, stands alone and addresses the audience directly (a Brechtian technique of direct address, or “breaking the fourth wall”).

Ellen explains that she has loved this painting since she was thirteen years old. “I think it’s because the scientist is where God used to be,” she says. As a child, she was drawn to the idea of science as a transcendent, even spiritual, pursuit – a way of seeing “light in the darkness”.

She describes the painting in detail, noting the different figures and their expressions. Her analysis is both art‑historical and personal. She wonders about the people in the painting – their lives, their secrets, their relationships. “You can’t help but make up stories about them,” she says.

As she speaks, four projections of the painting are shown above the stage. Then, stage dressers enter and begin to transform Ellen into an eighteenth‑century woman. She is corseted, costumed, and wigged in full view of the audience. Simultaneously, the other actors enter and form a tableau vivant (a “living picture”) recreating the composition of Wright’s painting. The 1799 characters – Fenwick, Susannah, Harriet, Maria, Roget, Armstrong, and Isobel – freeze in position.

Ellen completes her transformation and becomes Susannah Fenwick. She steps into the tableau, taking her place. The lights change, and the 1799 action begins.

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Act One – 1799: The Experiment

Scene 1 (1799): The Fenwick family living room. Dr. Joseph Fenwick is demonstrating the air pump to his family and his two young scientific protégés, Peter Roget and Thomas Armstrong. The bird in the glass vessel is his daughter Maria’s pet.

Maria is distressed: “Please stop it, Papa, he’s frightened.” Harriet, her twin, is fascinated: “Don’t be so silly, he’s not frightened.” Susannah, their mother, tries to calm Maria but is ignored by the men.

Fenwick removes air from the chamber. The bird struggles, then falls unconscious. Maria screams. Roget looks uncomfortable. Armstrong watches impassively, timing the experiment with a pocket watch. Fenwick’s hand hovers over the stopcock. Should he let air back in? The moment is frozen, exactly like the painting.

Finally, Roget cannot bear it any longer. He steps forward and releases the valve himself, defying Fenwick’s authority. Air rushes back into the chamber; the bird revives. Maria seizes the cage and runs out.

Fenwick is annoyed: “You’ve ruined the demonstration, Roget.” Roget replies, “The demonstration was over, sir. The bird was near death.” This small rebellion establishes the ethical divide between Roget (compassionate) and Armstrong (coldly objective).

Scene 2 (1799): The family discusses a lecture for New Year’s Eve. Susannah tries to join the conversation but is ignored. She drinks heavily. Armstrong wants to attend a demonstration by Dr. Farleigh (a notorious anatomist who uses illegally obtained cadavers). Fenwick refuses – there is rioting in the streets about the price of corn, and it is unsafe.

Scene 3 (1799): Harriet and Maria reveal their play – a masque that Harriet has written to please her mother, but which she has secretly filled with her own interests: industry, progress, the rejection of religion. Harriet, dressed as Britannia, represents the future; Maria, as a shepherdess, represents the pastoral past. The play is interrupted by the rioters, who throw a stone through the window.

Scene 4 (1799): Fenwick notices Isobel’s intelligence. She corrects his word choice (“cusp” vs. “threshold”) and reveals that all Scots can read. Armstrong mocks her deformity; Isobel responds with dignity. Roget and Isobel play a word game (listing synonyms for “servant”); Isobel wins. A romantic interest between Roget and Isobel is hinted.

Interlude – Maria’s letters: Maria reads letters from her fiancé, Edward, who is in India. He is homesick, then increasingly adapted to the colony. He mentions a “Miss Cholmondley” with growing familiarity. Maria becomes anxious.

Scene 5 (1999): The house, now owned by Tom (a retired English lecturer) and Ellen (a geneticist). They are selling the house. Phil, a builder, is measuring for renovation. Kate, a young scientist and Ellen’s former student, arrives to persuade Ellen to take a job at her biotech company.

The conversation turns to Ellen’s work – prenatal genetic testing – and its ethical implications. Phil is uncomfortable: “What’s the point of it?” Kate explains that it allows parents to abort foetuses with severe abnormalities. Phil, who has a daughter with health problems, is offended. “My uncle Stan was manic‑depressive and he was magic,” he says.

Tom enters from the basement. He has found a box of bones – human remains.

Act One – Continued (1799)

Scene 6 (1799): Another letter from Edward. He is no longer homesick – he has forgotten what England looks like. He writes of a friend being crushed by an elephant. Maria realises that Edward has become a different person.

Scene 7 (1799): Roget tries to woo Isobel, giving her a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets. She deflects him: “I have no intention of marrying, sir. I intend to be solitary.” Fenwick interrupts, disapproving.

Scene 8 (1799): Fenwick lectures Roget about the future – a republic of reason where everyone will understand science. Susannah erupts: “You don’t listen to me! You forget I exist!” She storms out. Fenwick admits to Roget that he only has Armstrong in the house as a favour to Dr. Farleigh.

Scene 9 (1799): Armstrong apologises to Isobel for mocking her hump. He gives her a gift – a book of sonnets (echoing Roget’s gesture). He begins to seduce her, but his interest is clinical: he wants to examine her spinal deformity. Isobel is suspicious but vulnerable.

Act Two – 1999 and 1799 Alternating

Act Two, Scene 1 (1999): Tom and Phil bond over their shared outsider status. Tom is haunted by the box of bones; Phil lights a candle for the soul of the dead girl. Kate mocks them. Ellen is drawn into the debate about her job – her past miscarriages make the issue of prenatal testing deeply personal.

Act Two, Scene 2 (1799): Armstrong tells Roget about Farleigh’s methods – grave robbing, even identifying potential corpses before they are dead. Roget is horrified: “You seek out bodies before they’re even dead?” Armstrong replies that morality kills science.

Act Two, Scene 3 (1799): Harriet’s masque is finally performed. It is an allegory of British industry conquering pastoral innocence. Susannah is humiliatingly absent‑minded; Harriet shouts at her mother. The family explodes in recriminations.

Act Two, Scene 4 (1799): Fenwick and Susannah have a genuine conversation for the first time. He admits that he married her for her beauty, not her mind. She admits that she has been “deafened by domesticity”. They reach a fragile understanding.

Act Two, Scene 5 (1799): Maria confronts Edward’s letters. She realises he has been unfaithful with Miss Cholmondley. In a final letter, she breaks off the engagement: “I am not a fool, Edward. I am my father’s daughter.”

Act Two, Scene 6 (1799): Armstrong’s seduction of Isobel reaches its climax. He kisses her; she responds. Roget walks in and sees them. He challenges Armstrong: “What are your intentions?” Armstrong sneers: “I want to see her back. The deformity. I want to study it.”

Isobel, who has overheard, is devastated. She runs off.

Act Two, Scene 7 (1799): Isobel hangs herself in the attic. Maria finds her. Armstrong enters, finds her still alive (a pulse), and – instead of saving her – he delays, hides her suicide note (which implicates him), and lets her die. He tells the family she was already dead.

Roget realises what has happened. He punches Armstrong – the only physical violence in the play.

Act Two, Scene 8 (1999): New Year’s Eve. Ellen has decided to take the job. Tom supports her choice. Phil reveals that his daughter’s condition has worsened; he is going to the hospital. Kate is triumphant.

Final Scene (1799 and 1999 merged): The 1799 characters process Isobel’s body to the garden. The 1999 characters toast the new millennium. The stage directions call for a final tableau: Isobel’s body takes the place of the bird in Wright’s composition. Ellen/Susannah steps forward and speaks the last lines: “We stand on the threshold of a new century… We stand at the gates of a New Jerusalem.”

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But the note is ironic. The “New Jerusalem” is built on Isobel’s grave.

An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson - A Newsletter Guide

 

An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson - A Newsletter Guide

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An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson
- A Newsletter Guide 

What is Ekphrasis? Classical and Modern Definitions

Before we can fully appreciate Stephenson’s play, we must understand its visual source and the literary tradition from which it springs. Ekphrasis – from the Greek ekphrasis, meaning “description” or “to speak out” – is the literary representation of a visual work of art. The term has its origins in ancient Greek rhetoric, where it was one of the Progymnasmata (the elementary rhetorical exercises that trained Greek and Roman students). In its classical form, ekphrasis was any vivid description that brought a scene before the listener’s eyes – not necessarily of art, but of battles, landscapes, festivals, or mythological events. The goal was to achieve enargeia (vividness, clarity) through phantasiai (mental images).

The most famous ekphrasis in Western literature is the description of Achilles’ shield in Homer’s Iliad, Book XVIII – a passage that has inspired countless later writers. In that ekphrasis, the shield is forged by the god Hephaestus and depicts the cosmos, human civilisation, and the cycle of life – a microcosm of the world that Achilles will never see because his fate is to die young.

In modern literary criticism, ekphrasis has taken on additional meanings. The critic James Heffernan famously defined it as “the verbal representation of visual representation” (1993). Later critics have emphasised the paragone (the competition) between word and image, the way ekphrasis attempts to make the silent painting speak, to fill in what the visual cannot show – narrative before and after the depicted moment, psychological interiority, ethical judgment, and the passage of time.

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Roland Barthes (in Image, Music, Text) argued that a text describing an image “produces (invents) an entirely new signified which is retroactively projected into the image, so much so as to appear denoted there.” In other words, the literary description does not merely report what is in the painting – it creates new meanings that then seem to have been there all along. This is exactly what Stephenson does: she looks at Wright’s painting and invents entire lives, desires, and conflicts for its figures.

Stephenson’s An Experiment with an Air Pump is an ekphrastic drama – a play that takes a painting as its inspiration and source. This is a relatively rare phenomenon (ekphrasis is more common in poetry; Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is the classic English example) but it allows Stephenson to do something unique that film and television cannot easily replicate. She does not merely describe the painting; she stages it, animates it, gives voices to its silent figures, and extends its moment forward and backward in time.

Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797)

Joseph Wright, known as Wright of Derby, was an English painter famous for his dramatic use of light and shadow (tenebrism, derived from Caravaggio but also associated with Dutch painters such as Rembrandt) and his fascination with science and industry. Unlike his contemporaries who painted classical myths, biblical scenes, or aristocratic portraits, Wright painted the Industrial Revolution – the new machines, the scientific experiments, the factories and mines that were transforming England.

Wright belonged to the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a gathering of wealthy gentlemen intellectuals committed to the sharing and furthering of knowledge. The society’s members included:

• Matthew Boulton – industrialist and owner of the Soho Manufactory

• James Watt – inventor of the separate condenser steam engine

• Erasmus Darwin – physician, poet, and grandfather of Charles Darwin

• Josiah Wedgwood – potter and industrialist who founded the Wedgwood company

• Joseph Priestley – chemist who discovered oxygen, also a radical theologian

The “Lunar” name came from their practice of meeting on the Monday nearest the full moon, to have light for their journeys home. This intellectual milieu shaped Wright’s artistic vision. He was fascinated by new breakthroughs in pneumatics, astronomy, chemistry, optics, and social theory. His paintings of scientific subjects – A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (1766), An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768), The Alchemist Discovering Phosphorus (1771) – were unprecedented. For the first time in Western art, science occupied the central position that religion had traditionally held. The awe once reserved for the crucifixion or the resurrection is now directed at a mechanical device.

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768)

Wright’s painting, now in the National Gallery in London, measures 15 by 20 feet and is considered one of his most complex and vivid compositions. The painting shows a group of people gathered around a table in a candlelit room, watching an experiment. The central apparatus is an air pump (a pneumatic engine) – a device for removing air from a glass vessel. Inside the vessel is a white cockatoo.

The scene is a natural philosophy demonstration – the kind that travelling lecturers performed in town halls, assembly rooms, and the houses of wealthy patrons. The experiment was based on the work of Robert Boyle (1627–1691), the “Father of Modern Chemistry”. In his New Experiments Physico‑Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air (1660), Boyle described placing birds, mice, eels, snakes, and flies in the vacuum chamber to study their reactions when he extracted the air. “Experiment 41” – the one that demonstrated that animals cannot survive without air – became a standard feature of natural philosophy lectures.

In Wright’s painting, the scientist (often described as a “philosopher”) controls the air pump’s valve. His right hand hovers over the stopcock, and we do not know whether he is about to let air back into the chamber (saving the bird) or to remove more (killing it). The fate of the bird hangs in the balance. This uncertainty is central to the painting’s drama.

The Spectrum of Responses – The Sublime

The painting’s genius lies in its representation of the varied responses of the onlookers. Wright captures a microcosm of human reactions to the Sublime – the eighteenth‑century term (developed by Edmund Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757) for the awe, wonder, and fear that people experience when confronted with the power of nature or with moments of extremity.

The figures in the painting represent a spectrum from emotional involvement to detached objectivity:

• The two young girls (centre) react with visible distress. One covers her face; the other is being comforted by their father. They represent the unmediated emotional response – fear, pity, horror. In Stephenson’s play, they become Maria and Harriet.

• The scientist (centre, illuminated by the candle) looks directly at the viewer, as if inviting us to participate in the experiment. His face is impassive, focused, “scientific” – yet there is also something unsettling about his direct gaze. Is he proud? Defiant? Indifferent to the bird’s suffering? He becomes Fenwick in the play.

• The young man next to the scientist watches with intense interest, his hand on his chin, his expression thoughtful. He is the rational observer – curious, engaged, but not emotionally involved. He becomes Roget.

• The older man at the left watches a pocket watch. He is timing the experiment – reducing a living creature’s suffering to a data point. He becomes Armstrong (or a composite).

• The couple at the right are absorbed in each other, indifferent to the experiment. They represent those who are untouched by science or ethics – concerned only with their own private world.

• The maid (background) looks away, perhaps disturbed but powerless to intervene. She becomes Isobel.

• The boy pulling up the cage – his role is ambiguous. Is he saving the bird (putting the cage under it to catch it when the scientist releases it) or removing the cage (accepting that the bird will die)? This ambiguity mirrors the play’s ethical ambivalence.

The art critic Judy Egerton has noted that, in making the figures observe the physical death of the bird, Wright places them within his contemporary framework of the Sublime. The viewer is also implicated: we watch the watchers, and the scientist looks out at us, challenging us to decide whether we would save the bird or let it die.

Science in the Place of God – The Overlooked Skull

A recent interpretation by art critic William Schupbach has pointed out a detail often overlooked: the glass jar on the table contains a skull, and the philosopher’s right index finger is pointing at it in a warning about the inevitability of death despite scientific progress. This undermines and contrasts with the inner illumination, or “Enlightenment”, of the rational pneumatic demonstration. Science may give us power, but it cannot save us from mortality.

Stephenson’s Ellen, in the prologue, does not mention the skull – but her foreboding about the motives of genetic therapy echoes Wright’s warning. The Human Genome Project, she implies, is the “grail” – the ultimate response to the commandment “know thyself” – but what will we do with that knowledge?

The Air Pump as Dramatic Symbol and Sign

For Stephenson, the air pump is not merely a historical curiosity – it is a didactic symbol of the vacuum of ethics. Wright’s air pump experiment provides the characters and the central debate, but Stephenson turns it into a sign with a clear message.

In the 1799 narrative, the bird survives. The experiment is controlled; the air is let back in; the dove lives. But in the 1999 narrative, the more powerful “vacuum” is the social environment of Isobel’s existence – one in which a deformed Scottish servant girl will inevitably asphyxiate. The message seems clear: the socially vulnerable will be sacrificed as science advances.

At the end of the play, Isobel takes the place of the dove in the staged tableau. In the stage directions, Stephenson emphasises that Isobel should be positioned where the bird was in Wright’s painting. The air pump vacuum symbolises the social and ethical vacuum in which the vulnerable are left to die.

The Experience of the Sublime – Ellen’s Critique

In the prologue, Ellen deconstructs the painting in detail. She notes that the composition, placement, and character of the philosopher‑lecturer is reminiscent of the Christ figure in religious paintings. With personal insight, she realises that she has wanted to be “God the scientist”. At that moment, she sees what sociologist Dorothy Nelkin exposed in her book The DNA Mystique: the religious language with which corporate science cloaks its activities.

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Stephenson clearly wants her audience to join Ellen in questioning it. On closer examination of the painting, it appears that Wright’s philosopher might also be in a divided state of mind. The painting is not a simple celebration of science – it is a meditation on its costs.