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ZAPOROJAN Gheorghe

DEN TANDT Christophe, WATSON Gregory

15 October 2022

The Contrast Between Socialism and Romance in Jack London’s The Iron Heel

The following paper aims to analyze the contrast between socialism and romance in

Jack London’s “The Iron Heel”. This analysis will mainly be focused around the relationship

between the two main characters of the book: Avis Everhard and Ernest Everheard. I will

demonstrate how the social context, which is that of a socialist revolution, in which the story

of the book is embedded, prevents the characters mentioned above from living a true

romance.

But first, let us define the concept of “romance”, a clear definition will help us

pinpoint the object of this analysis. For most people, romance is associated with love,

generally between two people who are in a sexual and loving relationship with each other.

However, the word romance can also be used when describing one’s love or excitement

towards an object, a concept or a cause. In The Iron Heel we have examples of both

definitions given that we clearly have a romantic relationship between two people, the main

protagonists, namely Avis Everhard and Ernest Everhard, as well as a feeling of love or

passion for a cause, which in this case can be observed through the passion the characters

have for the Revolution they so fiercely are trying to instigate.

At first, Avis Everhard, formerly known as Avis Cunningham, was not very sensitive

to Ernest Everhard’s self-righteousness and ambitions, she viewed them as too aggressive.
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It was in February, 1912, […] I cannot say that my very first impression of him was favorable.

He was one of many at dinner, [….] he made a rather incongruous appearance. [….] In the

first place, his clothes did not fit him. (London, The Iron Heel, 4)

But upon further investigation about the wrongdoings of the oligarchy, she began to see his

point and started to adhere to his ideas. As they start working together, Avis develops this

fascination and attraction for both the body and the mind of the man that she would tirelessly

glorify throughout the book:

I need scarcely say that I was deeply interested in Ernest Everhard. It was not alone what he

had said and how he had said it, but it was the man himself. [….] I liked him; I had to confess

it to myself. And my like for him was founded on things beyond intellect and argument.

Regardless of his bulging muscles and prize-fighter’s throat, he impressed me as an ingenuous

boy. I felt that under the guise of an intellectual swashbuckler was a delicate and sensitive

spirit. I sensed this, in ways I knew not, save that they were my woman’s intuitions. (London,

The Iron Heel 22, 23)

All these elements suggest that what we are witnessing here is a romance or at least

the beginning of one and we would not be completely wrong in assuming so, nor would we be

right because the romance that the two protagonists will experience is incomplete. Let me

explain: the definition given to the word “romance” at the beginning of this paper states that,

for two people to live a romance they would need to be in a loving and sexual relationship.

The condition of love is obviously fulfilled but the second one, regarding the sexual part is not

and that is because their bodies do not belong to them. As Alessandro Portelli, Italian

specialist of American Literature and culture, points out in his analysis of The Iron Heel:
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The revolutionaries have no body, no family, no sexual life. These negations are requisites for

their being "free agents," as Ernest says; actually, they enable London to project them as

supermen with no ties and no personal responsibilities such as bind ordinary people. 1

Indeed, the nature of the cause they are fighting for requires them to completely

abandon their bodies to it. The Revolution commands their bodies, requiring them to be blank

canvas so that they can be reshaped, remodeled, to the point where they sometimes could not

even recognize each other but it mattered not because they knew it was all for one purpose:

help the cause. The agents of the Revolution carried a very specific mission: infiltrate the

oligarchy and make it collapse in order to allow Socialism to triumph. As agents, Avis and

Ernest had to resort themselves to a platonic love because going beyond that would mean

betraying the cause and placing their desires and their interests before the Revolution. And

they understood that very well:

[…. ] And then there were our sweet stolen moments in the midst of our work—just a word, or

caress, or flash of love-light; and our moments were sweeter for being stolen. [….] We loved

love, and our love was never smirched by anything less than the best. (London, The Iron Heel,

187)

This absence of the body highlights Jack London’s deep knowledge of Socialism and

his ability as a writer and a storyteller. This unconsummated romance serves two purposes:

the first is to rid the protagonists of all distraction from their mission and the second is to

prevent them from having children, who would become a burden due to the danger-filled

nature of an agent’s job.

Through this romance, we have an accurate illustration of one of Socialism’s agenda

points, whether the author intended it to be so or not is up for debate, which is “the abolition

1
Portelli, Alessandro. “Jack London's Missing Revolution”: Notes on The Iron Heel, Science Fiction Studies,
Volume 9, Part 2, July 1982, translated by Carole Beebe Tarantelli.
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of the family”2 as said by Karl Marx, considered by many as the father of Socialism, in his

“The Communist Manifesto” published in 1848. This idea of the “abolition of the family”

remained at the state of idea until 1917 when the Bolsheviks rose to power in Russia. As soon

as Lenin’s party took control of the government, they started implementing a series of new

reforms some of which bore this idea of the “abolition of the family”. The goal was to destroy

the old concept of the family, a concept the communists deemed archaic. The family, where

the woman is forced to stay home and take care of the children as the husband goes to work

every day in order to provide for them, is no more.

Alexandra Kollontaï, a prominent political figure during the Bolshevik Revolution as

well as a fierce socialist who advocated for women’s emancipation, wrote extensively on how

a family should be structured in a society ruled by a socialist government. 3 Appointed as

minister of social welfare by Lenin during the first Soviet cabinet in 1917, Kollontaï

implemented an array of measures meant to liberate women and allow them to play a bigger

role in the workplace. Out of all the measures pushed forward by the new minister, the

centralization of childrearing and cooking and cleaning interests us the most as it is relevant to

this analysis. She wanted to centralize and socialize tasks usually assigned to women and

make sure that from now on women earn money for accomplishing these tasks4. This would

give women more time for their newfound obligations, which eventually would lead to them

gaining financial freedom and emancipation from their husbands.

The family known as a unit, which was considered as a product of capitalism,

monopolized all the love of its members. All the love the mother and the father had to give

was given to the family. Alexandra Kollontaï writes that, “Modern love always sins, because

2
Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, February 1848.
3
Dean, Jodi. “Alexandra Kollontai (pt. 1): The struggle for proletarian feminism and for women in the party”,
Liberation School, 2020
4
Ghodsee, Kristen R. professor, University of Pennsylvania, “How the socialist behind paid childcare and
parental leave was erased from women's history”, NBC, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/how-
socialist-behind-paid-child-care-parental-leave-was-erased-ncna1145641
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it absorbs the thoughts and feelings of “loving hearts” and isolates the loving pair from the

collective”, modern love here is understood as love in a capitalistic society. From this

perspective we can deduce that Socialism demands that love expands itself and goes beyond

its focus on one’s significant other, and in that demand lies the contrast between Socialism

and romance. Asking its adherents to spread their love outwards, towards the community and

towards the cause, also means asking that they have to relegate their love for their partner to

the second place which is exactly what Avis and Ernest are forced to do, they cannot live a

true romance as their bodies and their instincts would like to, they are forced to smother the

feelings and desires they have for one another in order to correctly accomplish their mission.