Hester

Hester is a household robot in the short story “Compassion Circuit” written by John Wyndham…

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Outer characterization

Hester’s outer characterization is described in detail. On the outside, Hester is built to mimic Janet’s wishes:

She shook her head. ‘No. It’s going to have to look after me, too, so I think I’d rather it was a housemaid. It can have a black silk dress, and a frilly white apron and cap. And I’d like it blonde—a sort of darkish blonde—and about five feet ten, and nice to look at, but not too beautiful. I don’t want to be jealous of it…’ (ll.70-74)

Everything about Hester looks perfect, including the “enviable” (l. 109) golden hair and the plastic skin. Consequently, Janet associates her with “a big doll” (l. 115), but her husband keeps on talking about her as if he were talking about a machine.

One of Hester’s physical features is her weight, which makes it impossi…

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Inner characterization

Hester’s inner characterization is determined by her programming; she has a compassion-circuit, a feature that resembles human judgement or discernment. Consequently, Hester thinks she knows what is best for Janet and the woman eventually agrees that the robot should tell her what to do: “ ‘Oh, Hester, you are such a comfort. You know what I ought to do.’ ” (l. 234). A key feature of the story is the idea that a robotic idea of what is best is not necessarily the same as a human idea of what is best. The robot deals with Janet’s physical weakness but does not consider her emotions or her husband’s emotions.

When she talks to Janet, Hester expresses her pity for the feeble human condition:

‘We are stronger. We don’t have to have frequent sleep to recuperate. We don’t have to carry an unreliable chemical factory inside us. We don’t have to grow old and deteriorate. Human beings are so clumsy and fragile and so often unwell because something is not working properly. If anything goes wrong with us, or is broken, it doesn’t hurt and is easily replaced…