Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in An Experiment with an Air Pump, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Morality
Human Industry and the Limitations of Knowledge
The Ideal vs. Lived Experience
Passion vs. Rationality
Summary
Analysis
The scene picks up in the main room in 1999. The room is still full of partially packed boxes. Phil is at the top of the ladder dressed in overalls. Tom is looking through old books and papers. Phil asks Tom if he’s found out anything new about the body. Tom has—according to the coroner, the bones belonged to a Caucasian female between 20 and 30, and her bones have likely been here for many years. Also, part of the skeleton’s vertebrae is missing.
That Tom has taken the effort to learn details about the person the bones once belonged to further highlights his reverence for the past. Ellen, by contrast, has actively expressed her indifference toward the bones. Meanwhile, the details that Tom has learned—that the bones belonged to a young, Caucasian woman, that they’ve been in the house for quite some time, and that part of the vertebrae is missing strongly suggests that the bones are Isobel’s. It remains to be seen how exactly she came to die. The missing vertebrae, combined with Armstrong’s passion for anatomy demonstrations, greatly implies that Armstrong may have killed Isobel and then dissected her corpse—it’s possible that this was the end goal of his seduction of her all along.
Themes
Phil muses that the bones might not belong to a human at all; he recalls a friend who found a body near Holy Island that was neither human nor beast. Tom says he’s never heard about this, and Phil explains that the authorities like to keep these kinds of things under wraps. Tom promises Phil that these bones are indeed human. Phil wonders if the girl was murdered, and Tom notes that the bones were “cut clean through […] with a knife or cleaver.”
The presence of clean, precise cuts on the bones implies that someone with medical knowledge cut the bones; this detail further suggests that Isobel’s body was dissected. Armstrong’s passion for dissections and apparent fixation with Isobel’s back makes him the most likely perpetrator.
Themes
Phil climbs down from the ladder and searches inside his tool bag, eventually pulling out a candle—“for her soul,” he tells Tom (Phil is Catholic). When Phil asks Tom if Tom believes in souls, Tom says he’s not sure. Phil says he believes in souls and also in reincarnation. He lights the candle.
Throughout the play, light functions as a symbol of humanity’s quest for knowledge. Phil’s candle—a vague nod to his former Catholicism—offers the possibility that turning to spirituality can be more effective in understanding complex facets of existence, like death, than scientific inquiry.
Themes
Phil asks about the status of Ellen’s “ethical crisis.” He’s had an idea about it: once “[scientists] can map your genes,” they’ll next want everyone to go around with a plastic card with their DNA details. And if people’s cards say they have bad genes, authorities can bar them from doing things like taking out a mortgage or having children.
Phil’s criticism of Ellen’s worth mirrors Tom’s—both men seem to think that Ellen and Kate’s passion for science is blinding them to the many ways that genetic research could harm the very people they think it will help. In other words, Ellen and Kate’s passion for genetics leads them to idealize their research and ignore any possible issues it poses—rather ironically, their steadfast commitment to logic prevents them from thinking logically.
Themes
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Kate and Ellen enter. Phil immediately excuses himself and leaves the room. Tom explains that they were just discussing the body; Ellen says she wishes he wouldn’t refer to it that way. Kate guesses the woman wasn’t murdered—it’s more likely that medical students stole her body and dissected it, which was common before the Anatomy Act, which was passed in the 1830s. Ellen asks Tom if this makes him feel better about the body. Tom says nothing. All three leave the stage.
Kate’s nonchalance implies that for her, a stolen corpse is somehow not a big deal so long as it was put to good use in a medical dissection. This scene makes it clear that Kate doesn’t believe much of anything should stand in the way of science conducting groundbreaking research. She’s willing to look past something as patently immoral as body snatching (stealing a corpse from a grave) if such an illicit act leads to a scientific discovery that benefits collective humanity. Tom’s silence, meanwhile, suggests that Kate’s cavalier attitude disturbs and offends him.
Themes
In 1799, Roget and Armstrong enter dressed in athletic clothing and carrying racquets for shuttlecock. Armstrong energetically tells Roget about seeing “[a] growth the size of a potato” in a demonstration subject’s abdominal cavity. Roget asks where Armstrong got the corpse from, and Armstrong cryptically explains that Farleigh acquired it. Roget asks if the subject was still wearing the clothes he was buried in. Armstrong accuses Roget of “playing holier than thou.”
Armstrong’s cryptic remark about Farleigh acquiring a corpse for medical dissection seems to allude to the illicit act of body snatching, wherein researchers and doctors would buy stolen corpses off the black market. When Armstrong accuses Roget of “playing holier than thou,” he’s suggesting that the only difference between himself and Roget is that Roget wants to appear morally conflicted about the experiments they conduct or observe—but in fact, so long as Roget participates in or fails to condemn the experiments themselves, he’s no more morally upright than Armstrong.
Themes
Roget explains that he soured on dissections ever since two students in Edinburgh accidentally “acquired” a corpse that turned out to be their tutor’s grandfather. Armstrong, though, argues that it doesn’t matter if the body is dead: “The dead are just meat. But meat that tells a story,” he explains. To underscore his point, he jokingly gives Roget permission “to slice [his corpse] into porterhouse steaks, as long as [he] was definitely dead.” Roget asks when Farleigh’s next demonstration is. Armstrong says this “depends on the supply” and asks Roget if he’d like to come. Roget can’t decide—the demonstrations fascinate him, but he also feels morally conflicted about them.
Most of the play’s scientists have a different point at which they draw the line—at which scientific research becomes too morally dubious to be justified. Armstrong, however, seems hard pressed to find a situation where he wouldn’t feel justified in conducting research—a point he makes clear when he jokingly gives Roget permission to cut his body into porterhouse steaks. Armstrong implies that it’s sentimental, romantic, and backwards of Roget to condemn the practice of bodysnatching—the dead, after all, “are just meat.” Because they don’t have a soul, Armstrong suggests it’s irrational, sentimental, and backwards to dignify them. That Roget fails to be swayed by Armstrong’s logic shows that he’s more willing to see the moral gray areas that science presents.
Themes
Armstrong says they’re eying “an undersized fellow” who is three feet tall and will likely die that winter. Roget is disgusted that Armstrong and his colleagues select bodies for dissection before they’re even dead. But Armstrong says that this is how it must be done for “unusual specimens,” which are rare. Roget admits he's never thought much about where the demonstration corpses came from—or has simply not wanted to think about it.
Armstrong’s admission that he and the other researchers start scouting out potential bodies for dissection while the owners of those bodies are still alive horrifically illustrates the moral issues that scientific research poses. Also, Armstrong’s interest in “unusual specimens” is another clue as to Armstrong’s real interest in Isobel. It seems more likely that he’s interest in her “unusual” twisted back—though whether this is for scientific or erotic reasons remains unclear.
Themes
Armstrong teasingly calls Roget a “romantic” and says that romantics rarely make good scientists; he thinks that stealing corpses is necessary if society wants to emerge from “the Dark Ages.” Also, in the end, the discoveries a scientist makes when they cut up a stolen corpse are the same, regardless of whether they do so “with moral qualms or with none at all[.]” Fenwick emerges just then and tells Armstrong and Roget that dinner is ready.
Armstrong calls Roget a “romantic” in jest, but it’s clearly meant as an insult. Armstrong thus reaffirms his flawed belief that passion and science are mutually exclusive. He fails to see that it is his emotional passion for science—not an objective interest in knowledge for knowledge’s sake—that drives him to study human anatomy. Still, Armstrong makes a valid point when he claims that a researcher’s findings remain the same, regardless of whether the researcher conducted their research “with moral qualms or with none at all[.]” And it’s also true that having corpses to dissect is necessary if humanity wants to improve its understanding of anatomy and improve the quality of life for collective humanity. All this suggests that all scientific research poses some degree of moral ambiguity.
Themes
The lights dim as Maria takes the stage and reads aloud her letter to Edward. She accuses him of not seeing her correctly, citing the way he mistook her eye color for blue instead of brown. She also complains about how he no longer seems interested in returning to England and seeing Maria. Also, she’s heard through a Mr Roger Thornton that Miss Cholmondely has extended her stay in India—and also has blue eyes.
Forced to confront the reality of Edward’s likely infidelity, Maria can no longer see her fiancé as the idealized version of himself she created in his absence.
Themes
