Author | Samuel Butler |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Semi-autobiographical novel Social criticism |
Set in | England, c. 1765–1863 |
Publisher | Grant Richards |
Publication date | 1903 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Pages | 423 |
OCLC | 8742883 |
823.8 | |
LC Class | PR4349 .B7 |
Text | The Way of All Flesh at Wikisource |
The Way of All Flesh (originally titled Ernest Pontifex or the Way of All Flesh) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler that attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. [1] Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family. Butler dared not publish it during his lifetime, but when it was published posthumously in 1903 as The Way of All Flesh it was accepted as part of the general reaction against Victorianism. Butler's first literary executor, R. A. Streatfeild, made substantial changes to Butler's manuscript. The original manuscript was first published in 1964 as Ernest Pontifex or the Way of All Flesh by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, edited by Daniel F. Howard. [2]
The title is a quotation from the Douay–Rheims Bible 's translation of the Biblical Hebrew expression, to "go the way of all the earth", meaning "to die", in the Books of Kings : "I am going the way of all flesh: take thou courage and shew thyself a man." (1 Kings 2.2). [3]
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Way of All Flesh twelfth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
First generation
Second generation
Third generation
Fourth generation
Fifth generation
The story is narrated by Overton, godfather to the central character.
The novel takes its beginnings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to trace Ernest's emergence from previous generations of the Pontifex family. John Pontifex was a carpenter; his son George rises in the world to become a publisher; George's son Theobald, pressed by his father to become a minister, is manipulated into marrying Christina, the daughter of a clergyman; the main character Ernest Pontifex is the eldest son of Theobald and Christina.
The author depicts an antagonistic relationship between Ernest and his hypocritical and domineering parents. His aunt Alethea is aware of this relationship, but dies before she can fulfil her aim of counteracting the parents' malign influence on the boy. However, shortly before her death she secretly passes a small fortune into Overton's keeping, with the agreement that once Ernest is twenty-eight, he can receive it.
As Ernest develops into a young man, he travels a bumpy theological road, reflecting the divisions and controversies in the Church of England in the Victorian era. Easily influenced by others at university, he starts out as an Evangelical Christian, and soon becomes a clergyman. He then falls for the lures of the High Church (and is duped out of much of his own money by a fellow clergyman). He decides that the way to regenerate the Church of England is to live among the poor, but the results are, first, that his faith in the integrity of the Bible is severely damaged by a conversation with one of the poor he was hoping to convert, and, second, that under the pressures of poverty and theological doubt, he attempts a sexual assault on a woman he has incorrectly believed to be of loose morals.
This assault leads to a prison term. His parents disown him. His health deteriorates.
As he recovers he learns how to tailor and decides to make this his profession once out of prison. He rejects Christianity as superstition. He marries Ellen, a former housemaid of his parents; they have two children and set up shop together in the second-hand clothing industry. However, in due course he discovers that Ellen is both a bigamist and an alcoholic. Overton at this point intervenes and pays Ellen a stipend, and she happily leaves with another for America. He gives Ernest a job, and takes him on a trip to Continental Europe.
When Ernest reaches the age of 28 he receives his aunt Alethea's gift. He returns to the family home until his mother's death; his father's influence over him wanes as Theobald's own position as a clergyman is reduced in relative stature, though to the end Theobald deliberately finds small ways to annoy him. Ernest becomes the author of controversial literature.
The writer George Orwell praised the novel and called it "a great book because it gives an honest picture of the relationship between father and son, and it could do that because Butler was a truly independent observer, and above all because he was courageous. He would say things that other people knew but didn't dare to say. And finally there was his clear, simple, straightforward way of writing, never using a long word where a short one will do." [4]
A. A. Milne, author of Winnie-the-Pooh , wrote about it in his essay "A Household Book", published in a collection of his essays, Not That It Matters: "Once upon a time I discovered Samuel Butler; not the other two, but the one who wrote The Way of All Flesh, the second-best novel in the English language. I say the second-best, so that, if you remind me of Tom Jones, or The Mayor of Casterbridge, or any other that you fancy, I can say, of course, that one is the best." [5]
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Bathsheba was an Israelite queen consort. According to the Hebrew Bible, she was the wife of Uriah the Hittite and later of David, with whom she had all of her five children. Her status as the mother of Solomon, who succeeded David as monarch, made her the Gebirah (גְּבִירָה) of the Kingdom of Israel. She is best known for her appearance in the Book of Samuel, which recounts how she was summoned by David's royal messengers after he witnessed her bathing and lusted after her; David has Uriah killed and then marries Bathsheba, incurring the wrath of God, who strikes down the couple's first child in infancy before plunging the House of David into chaos and anguish.
Samuel Butler was an English novelist and critic, best known for the satirical utopian novel Erewhon (1872) and the semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh. Both novels have remained in print since their initial publication. In other studies he examined Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, and Italian art, and made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey that are still consulted.
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Michal was, according to the first Book of Samuel, a princess of the United Kingdom of Israel; the younger daughter of King Saul, she was the first wife of David, who later became king, first of Judah, then of all Israel, making her queen consort of Israel.
"...And Ladies of the Club" is a 1982 novel, written by Helen Hooven Santmyer, about a group of women in the fictional town of Waynesboro, Ohio who begin a women's literary club, which evolves through the years into a significant community service organization in the town.
Elizabeth Stanhope, Countess of Chesterfield was an Irish-born beauty. She was a courtier after the Restoration at the court of Charles II of England at Whitehall. She was the second wife of Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield.
John Butler, 17th Earl of Ormonde, 10th Earl of Ossory (1740–1795) was an Irish peer and Member of Parliament (MP). He became a Protestant in 1764. He was an Irish MP, representing Gowran between 1776 and 1783, and Kilkenny City between 1783 and 1792. In 1791, his right to the peerage was acknowledged in the Irish House of Lords and he became the 17th Earl of Ormond.
Sir Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond and 4th Earl of Ossory (1559–1633), succeeded his uncle Black Tom, the 10th earl, in 1614. He was called "Walter of the Beads" because he was a devout Catholic, whereas his uncle had been a Protestant. King James I intervened and awarded most of the inheritance to his uncle's Protestant daughter Elizabeth. Ormond contested the King's decision and was for that insolence detained in the Fleet Prison from 1619 until 1625 when he submitted to the King's ruling. He then found a means to reunite the Ormond estate, by marrying his grandson James, who had been raised a Protestant, to Elizabeth's only daughter.
Coldbath Fields Prison, also formerly known as the Middlesex House of Correction and Clerkenwell Gaol and informally known as the Steel, was a prison in the Mount Pleasant area of Clerkenwell, London. Founded in the reign of James I (1603–1625) it was completely rebuilt in 1794 and extended in 1850. It housed prisoners on short sentences of up to two years. Blocks emerged to segregate felons, misdemeanants and vagrants.
Earl of Carrick, in the barony of Iffa and Offa East, County Tipperary, is a title in the Peerage of Ireland.
Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles was the son and heir apparent of Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond (1559–1633), whom he predeceased. He lived at the Westgate Castle in Thurles, County Tipperary. He was accused of treason but drowned in a shipwreck off the Skerries in the Irish Sea, before he could be judged. He was the father of the Irish statesman and Royalist commander James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde.
Knighton Gorges Manor was one of the grandest manor houses on the Isle of Wight, located in the hamlet of Knighton, near Newchurch.
Sir Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond was a favourite of King James VI and I of Scotland and England. In 1609 the king made him Lord Dingwall. In 1614 he married him to Elizabeth Butler, the only child of Black Tom, the 10th Earl of Ormond. In 1619 he created him Earl of Desmond.
Elizabeth Poyntz (1587–1673), known as Lady Thurles, was the mother of the Irish statesman and Royalist commander James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde.
Carey or Cary Dillon, 5th Earl of Roscommon, PC (Ire) (1627–1689) was an Irish nobleman and professional soldier of the seventeenth century. He held several court offices under King Charles II and his successor King James II. After the Glorious Revolution he joined the Williamite opposition to James and was in consequence attainted as a traitor by James II's Irish Parliament in 1689. In that year he fought at the Siege of Carrickfergus shortly before his death in November of that year.
John Samuel Edmonds was a New Zealand missionary, trader, stone mason and founding father.
Elizabeth Preston, Countess of Desmond and 2nd Baroness Dingwall was the only daughter of Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, called Black Tom, a lone Protestant in his Catholic Old English family. Her marriage and inheritance were manipulated by James I to keep Black Tom's inheritance out of the hands of his Catholic successor, Walter of the beads and bring them into the hands of his Scottish favourite Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall.
Lord Theobald Butler was a British clergyman who was the youngest son of John Butler, 2nd Marquess of Ormonde and his wife, Frances Jane Paget. At the time of his birth, he was the fourth son of Lord and Lady Ormonde, and he was christened James Theobald Bagot John Butler. As a younger son of a marquess, he received the honorific prefix of Lord from birth.
Elizabeth Butler, Duchess of Ormond and 2nd Baroness Dingwall reunited the Ormond estate as her maternal grandfather, Black Tom, 10th Earl of Ormond had it, by marrying James Butler, later Duke of Ormond, her second cousin once removed. She had inherited her share of the Ormond estate through her mother, Elizabeth Preston, who was Black Tom's daughter and only surviving child. Her husband had inherited his share from his grandfather Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond, Black Tom's successor in the earldom. Her share was the bigger one and included Kilkenny Castle.