Light symbolizes humanity’s quest for knowledge and, to use Fenwick’s words, “the conquest of nature.” Light first appears in the play’s prologue when Ellen directs the audience’s attention to the oil light at the center of the Joseph Wright painting, An Experiment of a Bird in the Air Pump, on which the play is based. Ellen explains that the light has always been her favorite part of the painting—she likes it because it illuminates the painting’s focal point, the experimenter Chiaroscuro, rendering him a deity “bathed in celestial light.” To Ellen (and to art critics) the painting is notable in that it features a human—Chiaroscuro, the scientist—as its illuminated focal point, a position conventionally (in the Western art tradition) reserved for God or saints. Critics consider Wright among the first artists to capture the spirit of the Industrial Revolution, an era that valued progress and innovation. It was a time in which society traded in their deference to God and believed in their own ability to improve their circumstances and understand the world in which they lived. No longer was life considered a mysterious, unknowable thing that only God could know and control, and no longer was humanity’s fate in God’s hands—people began to believe that humans were in fact capable of understanding life’s biggest mysteries and finding meaning in their lives absent a religious framework. So, in featuring Chiaroscuro, “bathed in celestial light,” at the painting’s center instead of God, Wright celebrates humanity’s ability to make sense of (to shed light on, so to speak) the human condition. The play’s minimalist set design further emphasizes light’s symbolism; the stage directions specify very few props or other set pieces, and instead, rooms are adorned with bare candles or lightbulbs.
Light Quotes in An Experiment with an Air Pump
I’ve loved this painting since I was thirteen years old. I’ve loved it because it has a scientist at the heart of it, a scientist where you usually find God. Here, centre stage, is not a saint or an archangel, but a man. Look at his face, bathed in celestial light, here is a man beatified by his search for truth. As a child enraptured by the possibilities of science, this painting set my heart racing, it made the blood tingle in my veins: I wanted to be this scientist; I wanted to be up there in the thick of it, all eyes drawn to me, frontiers tumbling before my merciless deconstruction. […] I wanted to be God.
But when I was thirteen, what held me more than anything, was the drama at the centre of it all, the clouds scudding across a stage-set moon, the candle-light dipping and flickering. Who would not want to be caught up in this world? Who could resist the power of light over darkness?
Fenwick: Here’s to whatever lies ahead … here’s to uncharted lands … here’s to a future we dream about but cannot know … here’s to the new century.
Light Symbol Timeline in An Experiment with an Air Pump
