Time Travel is About Time, Not Travel
The novel explores the notion that time travel is often presented as an experience in traveling back to the past or forward to the future. The significant element of this literary trope is not the impact of the traveling but rather the impact of the often-stultifying zeitgeist of the time. In this case, the trip is backward through time. Rather than suggesting that one can merely go back in time and instantly apply modern-day ideologies and behavior, the novel consistently reminds readers that time is not a place. The protagonist remains in Scotland and it is not the specific country that is different, it is the entire world. Claire Beauchamp must deal with an outlook toward almost everything she knows that is not just oppositional to her modern knowledge, but antagonistic. One theme the novel explores is the consequences and expectations of time travel from a reference point more grounded in the reality of culture clash than in the pseudo-scientific concept of actually being capable of traveling through time.
The Progress of Feminism
Situated front and center as the primal point of differentiation between the modern world Claire knows and the world of the past she encounters is the progress that feminism has achieved. Especially in a world where publication and popularity of the novel coincided with sudden shocking shifts in bodily autonomy for women, the portrait of the past presented to Claire is one in which it is impossible to deny enormous strides have been made in the opportunities for women and even the very reality of their gender identity. Every single aspect of what being a woman means is challenged for the visitor from a better, if far from perfect, future. From the concreteness of clothing to the abstraction of ambition, nothing in the past which Claire visits seems to hold any promise that the world of the 21st century for women will ever become a reality.
Self-Identity
The plot device of time travel is also utilized for the purpose of exploring themes related to establishing one’s self-identity. In going back through time to an era in which the reality of gender conventions is distinctly at odds with the modern world she knows, Claire essentially becomes two different versions of herself. The story allows for the truth that establishing a self-identity is very much dependent upon external conditions. Claire simply cannot continue with the identity she has established in the present under the oppressive weight of the mores and traditions of the past. She is far more limited in what kind of identity she can construct for herself in the past than in the present. At the same time, however, the story also forwards the possibility that societal limitations may actually allow for a more authentic version of identity.
