Dystopia
Thinking conceptually
Activity 5: P.D. James, The Children of Men, 1992
Phyllis (P.D.) James was born in Oxford in 1920 and died in 2014 at the age of 94. She was
widowed early in her marriage and never married again; her husband, Conor, suffered from mental
illness and died young. James later wrote that she remembered him for the rest of her long life with
love and with grief. Some might argue the profundity and darkness of her work has its roots in her
loss: both her detective, the poet Adam Dalgliesh, and Theo, the hero of The Children of Men, are
single men who separate themselves from the world. James lived through the bombardment of
London by German V-1 and V-2 flying bombs and missiles at the end of the Second World War.
During one such air raid, she remembered praying, Lord, if you let me and my baby survive this I’ll
never ask you for anything ever again. She later wrote that this was a prayer which subsequently
haunted her for the rest of her life.
P.D.James worked as a civil servant for the National Health Service and the Police Department
from 1949 to 1968. She turned to writing in her forties. Busy bringing up a young family and
following her career, James realised she had to carve out composition time deliberately if she was
ever going to start a novel. Her first book, Cover Her Face, was published in 1964. She wrote as
P.D.James rather than as Phyllis because she realised that a gender neutral name, in the sexist
1960s, would help her sales, while her Christian name might hinder them.
Cover Her Face launched P.D.James’s career as one of Britain’s – and the world’s - most
acclaimed writers of detective fiction. James said she chose the detective genre as a form of
discipline: within that genre, she continued, it was possible to write a considered novel about the
world and its issues as she saw them. She did so through seventeen detective novels, and also
wrote three works of non-fiction and two other novels. One was Death Comes to Pemberley
(2008), a witty sequel to Pride and Prejudice in the detective tradition. The other was the set text
The Children of Men. Common to all her novels is beautiful and crafted prose, compassion and a
belief in the reality of evil. Critics and reviewers agree that P.D.James writes literary fiction. Her
concern for good writing and literature is demonstrated by the title of her first novel: a quotation
from The Duchess of Malfi.
P.D. James pursued a distinguished career outside writing and her life was marked by public
service. She served: as a member of the Arts Council; on the British Council; as a magistrate in
London and as a governor of the BBC. Bucking the trend of many dystopian writers, P.D.James
was on the right of politics and sat as a Conservative peer in the House of Lords. Her novels
suggest she was of the One Nation rather than the Thatcherite wing of the Conservative Party: she
writes with compassion and sympathy of the poor and disadvantaged. Rather than agreeing with
Mrs Thatcher’s tenet that there is no such thing as society, James’s record of public service
demonstrated that she believed that society existed and it was our duty to serve it and each other.
P.D.James was a devout Christian in the Church of England, and her belief in service – and in evil
– was underpinned and inspired by her faith. Here, again, James bucked the trend of the set
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dystopian writers in this topic area: Orwell and Wells were atheists and, in the worlds of dystopian
fiction, God is often conspicuous by His absence. James, who had a mischievous streak and a
keen sense of fun, would have enjoyed flouting the convention: The Children of Men is a
profoundly Christian novel.
The Children of Men was published in 1992 to some disquiet. The reading public wanted another
detective story from the Queen of Crime; the publishers, Faber and Faber, appeared nervous
about their novelist’s departure and assured readers in pre-publication publicity, that Adam
Dalgliesh would be back next time. In her autobiography Time to be in Earnest, James apologised
to Faber for The Children of Men, presumably because it had not sold as well as her other novels.
Faber recouped some of the money from the film version in 2006: this takes the theme of infertility
and a few other tropes from the novel, ignores the rest (and the first word of the title) and gives us
a much more violent and conventionally dystopian, apocalyptic vision. P.D.James, used to having
her work massacred on screen, generously said that it was better to make a good film which wasn't
faithful to the original novel than a bad film which was. She also indicated the film wasn't quite her
cup of tea and she didn't enjoy its ultra-violence.
Taking its cue from Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Children of Men is set in the future, in 2021. Human
beings are now infertile: the last child was born twenty five years ago. The final generation of
humankind is venerated as the Omegas (perhaps a play on the Alphas, the name of the elite class
in Brave New World). The human race is coming to terms with its untimely end, as is the hero,
Theo Faren, a history don at the University of Oxford. Great libraries are being sealed and works of
art preserved in the hope that, in the far future, someone or something will find them of value and
be curious about the strange species that created them. The Council of England (the new,
unelected government) encourages the population to continue practising sex in the hope that
fertility will return; pathetically, people gather around cats when they are delivering a litter and
celebrate the arrival of kittens as a substitute for the joy of human birth.
In the following passage from chapter 6, Theo is on his way to Evensong in Magdalen College
chapel.
Activity 5: Questions
Read and annotate the extract carefully, then answer the questions which follow. Quote
from the extract to support your ideas.
[Extract from The Children of Men, pub. Faber and Faber 2010, pages 47 to 51, from “It
happened in the fourth Wednesday…they'll have it all soon enough, why can't they wait?” ISBN
9780571253418]
1.
Re-read the first paragraph carefully. How does James use imagery to describe the doll?
How do you think James intends the reader to react? What emotions does she intend to
create?
2.
Why is “the thin drizzle” appropriate to the creation of the atmosphere in the first paragraph?
How would you describe the atmosphere and how does it compare to the other extracts in
this Delivery Guide?
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3.
Comment on the characterisation of the woman who owns the doll. How does the reader
react to her?
4.
How does James describe Theo’s reaction to the women, the doll and its destruction?
Comment on James’ style here.
5.
Dystopia often overlaps with satire as a genre. What is the object of James’s satire in the
second paragraph? How does she intend readers to react to the craze of buying dolls? Do
we share Theo’s feelings of “small pity and…greater contempt”?
6.
James does not explain why the second woman destroys the doll. Why do you think this
might be? What do you think might be her motivation for smashing it?
7.
What links can you make between the doll and its owner? How are they similar? What is
James suggesting about human nature in the world of her novel?
8.
James is one of the few female writers of dystopian fiction in the topic area. Could we
consider her portrayal of women here as sexist? Or is it the case that some people – men or
women - are as she portrays them in the passage?
9.
Theo is troubled that his emotional reaction to the cherished doll is greater than the occasion
justifies. Is this also true of the Chaplain’s reaction to the deer? Why should he be so upset?
10.
In the whole passage, James veers between passivity and violent reaction. Where is this
contrast demonstrated and what do you think its thematic purpose might be in the novel?
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