Herbert George Wells

The Wheels of Chance Annotated Herbert George Wells

The hero of The Wheels of Chance, Mr. Hoopdriver, is a irritated "draper's assistant" in Putney, a badly paid, grinding position; and yet he retains a bicycle and is setting out on a bicycling tour of "the Southern Coast" on his annual ten days' holiday. Hoopdriver survives his prevention by escaping in his imagination into a world of fantasy. He is not a expert rider of his forty-three-pound bicycle, and his inelegance reflects both Wells's own uncertainties in negotiating the English class system and his serious view of that society. Nonetheless, Hoopdriver is treated compassionately: "But if you see how a mere counter-jumper, a cad on castors, and a fool to boot, may come to feel the little insufficiencies of life, and if he has to any extent won your considerations, my end is attained." Jessie's bookish and romantic education has kept her unfamiliar of the realities of life, and her unawareness contributes to the comedy of Hoopdriver's half-clever, half-ridiculous improvised stories of life in Africa. Jessie has her own aspirations: "She was going to Live her Own Life, with emphasis."