On the Fringes: John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids (1955) and Technologies of the Self

The Chrysalids is set in a post-nuclear disaster future in Waknuk, a frontier-like town in Labrador, Canada. The narrative follows David Strorm, a young telepath, and his survival in and beyond Waknuk’s fundamentalist Christian society. David is joined by his youngest sister Petra, cousin Rosalind, and other children from around the district, Michael, Rachel, Anne, Sally, and Katherine, as they all try and keep their telepathy a secret. In Waknuk, and the wider Labrador, this fundamentalist Christian society vehemently opposes anything that deviates from the norm: in crops and livestock any deviation is referred to as an Offence, and it is either razed or slaughtered; in people it is referred to as a Blasphemy, and they are sterilised and sent to live in the Fringes, the furthermost border between Labrador and the Badlands. This is State sanctioned through deference to religious beliefs that extend from two scriptures, the Bible and Nicholson’s Repentances. The latter is a mysterious sacred text written in the aftermath of Tribulation, a cataclysmic event rationalised as God’s punishment of humanity.