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Kipps
Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1905. It was reportedly Wells's own favourite among his works, and it has been adapted for stage, cinema and television productions, including the musical Half a Sixpence.
The eponymous character is Arthur "Artie" Kipps, an illegitimate orphan. In Book I, "The Making of Kipps", he is raised by his aged aunt and uncle, who keep a little shop in New Romney on the southeastern coast of Kent. He attends the Cavendish Academy – "a middle-class school", not a "board school" – in Hastings in East Sussex. "By inherent nature he had a sociable disposition", and he befriends Sid Pornick, the son of a neighbour. Kipps also falls in love with Sid's younger sister, Ann. Ann gives him half a sixpence as a token of their love when, at 14, he is apprenticed to the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar, run by Mr Shalford.
The Pornicks move away and Kipps forgets Ann. He becomes infatuated with Helen Walshingham, who teaches a woodcarving class on Thursday nights. Chitterlow, an actor and aspiring playwright, meets Kipps by running into him with his bicycle, and they have a drunken evening together that leads to Kipps being "swapped" (dismissed) from his job. Chitterlow then brings to his attention a newspaper advertisement that leads to an unexpected inheritance for Kipps from his grandfather of a house and £26,000.
In Book II, "Mr Coote the Chaperon", Kipps fails in his attempt to adapt to his new position in the social hierarchy of Folkestone. By chance he meets a Mr Coote, who undertakes his social education. That leads to renewed contact with Helen Walshingham, and they become engaged. However, the process of bettering himself alienates Kipps more and more, especially since Helen makes it clear that she wants to take advantage of Kipps' fortune to establish herself and her brother in London society. Chance meetings with Sid, who has become a socialist, and then with Ann, who is now a housemaid, lead Kipps to abandon social conventions and his engagement to Helen, and marry his childhood sweetheart.
In Book III, "Kippses", the attempt to find a house suitable to his new status precipitates Kipps back into a struggle with the "complex and difficult" English social system. Kipps and Ann quarrel. Then they learn that Helen's brother, a solicitor, has lost most of their fortune through speculation. That leads to a happier situation when Kipps opens a branch of the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union (Limited) in Hythe and they have a son. The success of Chitterlow's play, in which Kipps has invested £2,000, restores their fortune, but they are content to remain shopkeepers in a small coastal town.
Kipps is a rags-to-riches study in class differences, and the novel's chief dramatic interest is in how the protagonist negotiates the intellectual, moral and emotional difficulties that come with wealth and a change of social status. Kipps is the only character in the novel who is fully developed and all events are narrated from his point of view. A narrator's voice offers occasional comments, but only towards the end of the novel does this voice speak out in a page-long denunciation of "the ruling power of this land, Stupidity," which is "a monster, a lumpish monster, like some great clumsy griffin thing, like the Crystal Palace labyrinthodon, like Coote, like the leaden Goddess of the Dunciad, like some fat, proud flunkey, like pride, like indolence, like all that is darkening and heavy and obstructive in life".
Kipps's friend Sid becomes a socialist and houses a boarder, Masterman, who argues that society "is hopelessly out of joint. Man is a social animal with a mind nowadays that goes around the globe, and a community cannot be happy in one part and unhappy in another.... Society is one body, and it is either well or ill. That's the law. This society we live in is ill." However, while Kipps admires Masterman and is in part receptive to his point of view, he tells Ann that "I don't agree with this socialism." At one time Wells intended to develop Masterman into a major character who would convert Kipps to socialism, and he wrote several versions in which he played an important role at the end of the novel.
The speech of Artie Kipps is a careful rendering of the pronunciation of the English language as Wells first learned it. Kipps never masters another way of speaking, and after much effort he reverts to the manner of his upbringing: "'Speckylated it!' said Kipps, with an illustrative flourish of the arm that failed to illustrate. 'Bort things dear and sold 'em cheap, and played the 'ankey-pankey jackass with everything we got. That's what I mean 'e's done, Ann.'"
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Kipps
Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1905. It was reportedly Wells's own favourite among his works, and it has been adapted for stage, cinema and television productions, including the musical Half a Sixpence.
The eponymous character is Arthur "Artie" Kipps, an illegitimate orphan. In Book I, "The Making of Kipps", he is raised by his aged aunt and uncle, who keep a little shop in New Romney on the southeastern coast of Kent. He attends the Cavendish Academy – "a middle-class school", not a "board school" – in Hastings in East Sussex. "By inherent nature he had a sociable disposition", and he befriends Sid Pornick, the son of a neighbour. Kipps also falls in love with Sid's younger sister, Ann. Ann gives him half a sixpence as a token of their love when, at 14, he is apprenticed to the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar, run by Mr Shalford.
The Pornicks move away and Kipps forgets Ann. He becomes infatuated with Helen Walshingham, who teaches a woodcarving class on Thursday nights. Chitterlow, an actor and aspiring playwright, meets Kipps by running into him with his bicycle, and they have a drunken evening together that leads to Kipps being "swapped" (dismissed) from his job. Chitterlow then brings to his attention a newspaper advertisement that leads to an unexpected inheritance for Kipps from his grandfather of a house and £26,000.
In Book II, "Mr Coote the Chaperon", Kipps fails in his attempt to adapt to his new position in the social hierarchy of Folkestone. By chance he meets a Mr Coote, who undertakes his social education. That leads to renewed contact with Helen Walshingham, and they become engaged. However, the process of bettering himself alienates Kipps more and more, especially since Helen makes it clear that she wants to take advantage of Kipps' fortune to establish herself and her brother in London society. Chance meetings with Sid, who has become a socialist, and then with Ann, who is now a housemaid, lead Kipps to abandon social conventions and his engagement to Helen, and marry his childhood sweetheart.
In Book III, "Kippses", the attempt to find a house suitable to his new status precipitates Kipps back into a struggle with the "complex and difficult" English social system. Kipps and Ann quarrel. Then they learn that Helen's brother, a solicitor, has lost most of their fortune through speculation. That leads to a happier situation when Kipps opens a branch of the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union (Limited) in Hythe and they have a son. The success of Chitterlow's play, in which Kipps has invested £2,000, restores their fortune, but they are content to remain shopkeepers in a small coastal town.
Kipps is a rags-to-riches study in class differences, and the novel's chief dramatic interest is in how the protagonist negotiates the intellectual, moral and emotional difficulties that come with wealth and a change of social status. Kipps is the only character in the novel who is fully developed and all events are narrated from his point of view. A narrator's voice offers occasional comments, but only towards the end of the novel does this voice speak out in a page-long denunciation of "the ruling power of this land, Stupidity," which is "a monster, a lumpish monster, like some great clumsy griffin thing, like the Crystal Palace labyrinthodon, like Coote, like the leaden Goddess of the Dunciad, like some fat, proud flunkey, like pride, like indolence, like all that is darkening and heavy and obstructive in life".
Kipps's friend Sid becomes a socialist and houses a boarder, Masterman, who argues that society "is hopelessly out of joint. Man is a social animal with a mind nowadays that goes around the globe, and a community cannot be happy in one part and unhappy in another.... Society is one body, and it is either well or ill. That's the law. This society we live in is ill." However, while Kipps admires Masterman and is in part receptive to his point of view, he tells Ann that "I don't agree with this socialism." At one time Wells intended to develop Masterman into a major character who would convert Kipps to socialism, and he wrote several versions in which he played an important role at the end of the novel.
The speech of Artie Kipps is a careful rendering of the pronunciation of the English language as Wells first learned it. Kipps never masters another way of speaking, and after much effort he reverts to the manner of his upbringing: "'Speckylated it!' said Kipps, with an illustrative flourish of the arm that failed to illustrate. 'Bort things dear and sold 'em cheap, and played the 'ankey-pankey jackass with everything we got. That's what I mean 'e's done, Ann.'"