The Coming Race · Chapter
Chapter XXVII explained
The narrator goes for a walk with Taë and encounters a group of young Gy-ei, who treat him with chivalrous courtesy.
What happens
The narrator goes for a walk with Taë and encounters a group of young Gy-ei, who treat him with chivalrous courtesy. Taë's sister, a princess, approaches and questions the narrator about his absence, but Taë rebukes her for violating gender norms. The Tur (chief magistrate) then appears, and his ominous presence fills the narrator with terror.
Themes in this chapter
Gender Roles and Female Empowerment
The Gy-ei display chivalrous behavior toward the narrator, inverting Victorian gender norms; Taë rebukes his sister for violating the modesty expected of her sex.
Technology and Power
The Tur's serene, doom-laden expression embodies the Vril-ya's superior power, which the narrator finds terrifying.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Brooding alone, he goes for a walk with Taë and is complimented by Gy-ei, but feels terror at the sight of the Tur.
- Taë
Visits the narrator and invites him for a stroll; sternly rebukes his sister for addressing the narrator, upholding gender norms.
- Zee
Taë's sister, a princess, descends from the palace to speak with the narrator, but is chastised by Taë.
- Tur
The chief magistrate appears with a terrifying, doom-laden presence, silently observing the group.
Key passages
“I was always pleased with the visits of a child, in whose society, if humbled, I was less eclipsed than in that of Ana who had completed their education and matured their understanding.”
The narrator enjoys Taë's company because, though he feels inferior, he is not as overshadowed as he is by educated adults.
Highlights the narrator's sense of intellectual inferiority among the Vril-ya.
“No: the bearing of the Gy-ei towards males in ordinary is very much that of high-bred men in the gallant societies of the upper world towards ladies whom they respect but do not woo; deferential, complimentary, exquisitely polished—what we should call 'chivalrous.'”
The Gy-ei treat men with the same respectful, polished courtesy that upper-world men show to women they admire but do not court.
Inverts Victorian gender roles, presenting women as the chivalrous sex.
“On that brow, in those eyes, there was that same indefinable something which marked the being of a race fatal to our own—that strange expression of serene exemption from our common cares and passions, of conscious superior power, compassionate and inflexible as that of a judge who pronounces doom.”
The Tur's face reveals a calm, detached power that makes him seem like a judge delivering a death sentence, embodying the Vril-ya's threat to humanity.
Foreshadows the narrator's fear of the Vril-ya as a potentially exterminating race.