Revelation and the Unseen in H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man

This paper examines how both the primacy of the visual and the role of spectatorship are central to the interplay between revelation and the unseen in H.G Wells‘s scientific romance, The Invisible Man (1897). The novel poses the question: What might it mean to be invisible, and to pass through the world in a body that is in all ways corporeal yet remains unseen? Through an analysis of the text, the body and skin are considered as mediums invested with personal and social meaning. The Invisible Man is discussed as a literary figure that comes to represent how the human body may be read as a metaphorically laden site.