H. G. Wells'sThe Time Machine(1895) imagines the environmental consequences of two important Victorian horticultural trends: artificial selection and selective breeding. Victorian horticulturalists glorified these techniques as steps toward the subjugation of the natural environment. This horticultural narrative of environmental control seemingly reaches its apex in the novel's future world of 802,701: Wells's Time Traveller believes he has entered an environment perfectly engineered to suit human needs. While critical attention has typically focused on the novel's humans, I use its engagement with contemporary horticulture to describe a plant-centered plotline. Building on critical work that argues for the possibility of nonhuman narrative agency, I read the novel's plants as minor characters. I argue that Wells's novel pits its plant and human characters against one another in competing plotlines, in a narrative refraction of ecological competition. Earlier ecocritical analyses of Victorian works have pointed to the harmonious entanglement of humans with the nonhuman vegetal environment. I argue that ecological competition, as exemplified both in horticultural narratives’ descriptions of environmental subjugation and in Wells's competing plant and human plots, was also a significant source of inspiration for Victorian environmental depictions.

中文翻译：

---

HG Wells 的植物图：《时光机器》中的园艺与生态叙事

HG 威尔斯时光机(1895) 想象了维多利亚时代两个重要的园艺趋势对环境的影响：人工选择和选择性育种。维多利亚时代的园艺家将这些技术美化为征服自然环境的步骤。这种环境控制的园艺叙事似乎在小说的未来世界 802,701 中达到了顶峰：威尔斯的时间旅行者相信他已经进入了一个完美设计以满足人类需求的环境。虽然批评的注意力通常集中在小说中的人类身上，但我用它与当代园艺的联系来描述以植物为中心的情节。在论证非人类叙事机构的可能性的批判性著作的基础上，我将小说中的植物视为次要角色。我认为威尔斯的 这部小说将植物和人类角色在相互竞争的情节中相互对抗，在生态竞争的叙事折射中。早期对维多利亚时代作品的生态批判分析指出了人类与非人类植物环境的和谐纠缠。我认为生态竞争，正如园艺叙事对环境征服的描述以及威尔斯竞争的植物和人类情节中所体现的那样，也是维多利亚时代环境描述的重要灵感来源。