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