The Coming Race · Chapter
Chapter XX explained
The narrator recounts his failed attempts to learn to fly using the Vril-ya's artificial wings, guided by Zee and accompanied by the child Taë.
What happens
The narrator recounts his failed attempts to learn to fly using the Vril-ya's artificial wings, guided by Zee and accompanied by the child Taë. Zee explains that the ability to control the wings is an inherited instinct developed over generations through the mastery of vril, and that the narrator's organic defect in volition makes success impossible. The chapter also describes the custom of Gy-ei women wearing wings only while virgins, suspending them upon marriage, and Zee's softening demeanor hints at a romantic interest that alarms the narrator.
Themes in this chapter
Technology and Power
The wings and vril technology are depicted as requiring generations of inherited instinct to control, highlighting the gap between advanced technology and the narrator's inability to wield it.
Gender Roles and Female Empowerment
The Gy-ei custom of wearing wings only while virgins and excelling in aerial sports contrasts with their suspension upon marriage, illustrating a gendered transition in freedom and role.
Evolution and Species Superiority
Zee's explanation that flight instinct is an inherited racial property underscores the Vril-ya's evolutionary superiority over the narrator, who is organically defective.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Attempts to learn flight with Vril-ya wings but fails due to lack of inherited instinct; is alarmed by Zee's growing affection.
- Zee
Scientific Gy who instructs the narrator on flight, saves him from a fall, and reveals her romantic interest with softening voice and eyes.
- Taë
Child of the Vril-ya who visits the narrator frequently, finds amusement in his awkwardness, and laughs at Zee's endearing words.
Key passages
“the connection between the will and the agencies of that fluid which has been subjected to the control of the Vril-ya was never established by the first discoverers, never achieved by a single generation; it has gone on increasing, like other properties of race, in proportion as it has been uniformly transmitted from parent to child, so that, at last, it has become an instinct”
The ability to control vril through willpower was not developed by the original discoverers or in one generation; it has grown gradually as an inherited trait passed from parent to child, eventually becoming instinctual.
Zee explains the hereditary nature of vril mastery, emphasizing the narrator's inability to acquire it.
“A Gy wears wings habitually while yet a virgin—she joins the Ana in their aerial sports—she adventures alone and afar into the wilder regions of the sunless world: in the boldness and height of her soarings, not less than in the grace of her movements, she excels the opposite sex. But from the day of marriage she wears wings no more, she suspends them with her own willing hand over the nuptial couch, never to be resumed unless the marriage tie be severed by divorce or death.”
Unmarried Gy-ei women wear wings and excel in flying, but upon marriage they voluntarily give up their wings, hanging them over the bed, only to be used again if the marriage ends.
Describes the cultural custom linking female virginity and aerial freedom with marital commitment.