An Experiment with an Air Pump Themes

An Experiment with an Air Pump is a play that considers the morality of scientific inquiry. The play features or alludes to numerous scientific experiments that raise major ethical concerns, even as they purport to improve humankind’s quality of life. Characters like Armstrong and Fenwick in 1799 and Ellen and Kate in 1999 believe that scientific advancement is ultimately good. Though Ellen (and eventually, Fenwick) nurse doubts about the ethical ramifications of the scientific research…

An Experiment with an Air Pump is an ode to progress and human inquiry, sentiments that captivated society both at the height of the Enlightenment and in the late-20th century, which saw major advancements in the field of genetics. Many of the play’s central characters (Fenwick, Armstrong, Roget, Ellen, and Kate) are scientists who share a mutual passion for discovery and knowledge. Fenwick, for instance, is swept up in…

Throughout An Experiment with an Air Pump, proponents of scientific inquiry repeatedly accuse their scientifically disinclined counterparts of being overly sentimental fools. When Ellen’s husband, Tom, exhibits reverence for the past, Kate accuses him of being “a dinosaur” whose philosophies about life, while “romantic” and beautiful, have no place in the modern, rational world. And yet, what supposedly “rational” characters like Kate fail to acknowledge is that there’s nothing particularly reasonable about…