The Way of All Flesh

This novel by Samuel Butler came in at #12 on ML list and according to the introduction by Theodore Dreiser this is the book to read above many others if you are looking for a book about “downright life,” something that is a “most truthful” English novel.  While it is on the list of great 20^th century novels this is mostly because Butler didn’t die until 1902 and that is when the novel was published.  He actually finished it in 1885 and the story takes place well before that but due to the autobiographical nature of the novel he chose not to publish it while his sister was still alive.  And with good reason.   

Basically this is the story of the life of a young man raised by selfish and harsh parents and how he finally makes his way in the world.  The story is told by a friend of the Pontifex family and the main protagonist is Ernest Pontifex.   His father is Theobold Pontifex, a clergyman with a living bought in a town after his parents made it clear that that is what he would do with his life.  As in much fiction, there is always that trust fund lurking in the background so you know that things will never go terribly wrong for Ernest.  There are lots of interesting details about the class order of living among the English which is pretty foreign to our American way of life.     

There is a wealth of guilt and blackmail and other nefarious methods employed by the parents in this story to keep those darling children of theirs in line.  There seems to be zero concern or even a thought that the child might have an idea about living his life differing from the plan the parents have for him.  Here is Bulter on parent/child relations:

I suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow in autumn without ceasing to care about its sap and making the parent tree very uncomfortable by long growling and grumbling—but surely nature might find some less irritating way of carrying on business if she would give her mind to it.  Why should the generations overlap one another at all?  Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before it began to live consciously on its own account?

It might have been better if Theobald in his younger days had kicked more against his father:  the fact that he had not done so encouraged him to expect the most implicit obedience from his own children…no duty could be more important than that of teaching a child to obey its parents in all things.

Butler also goes on a good deal about the teachings of the church that Ernest is raised in and how he is expected to become a clergyman like his father.  For those expecting the end of days on May 12^th (which has now been rescheduled) and the fact that I am always fascinated about how little things have changed since many of these books have been written here is this tidbit when the children are told about the death of their paternal grandmother:

…our nurse assured us that if God chose we might all have fits of paralysis ourselves that very day and be taken straight off to the Day of Judgment.  The Day of Judgment indeed, according to the opinion of those who were most likely to know, would not under any circumstances be delayed more than a few years longer, and then the whole world would be burned…

There’s also some stuff about women’s lot in life of course.  A servant in the Pontifex house becomes pregnant out-of-wedlock and is immediately dismissed – “The bitter fact remains that if a girl does certain things she must do them at her peril, no matter how young and pretty she is nor to what temptation she has succumbed.  This is the way of the world, and as yet there has been no help found for it.”   On Ernest’s sister—“She was supposed to be very clever.  All young ladies are either very pretty or very clever or very sweet; …It was hopeless to try and pass Charlotte off as either pretty or sweet.”

Oh there’s lots more quotable Butler but I’ll stop there.  This book is over 500 pages long and I have to say for the most part I enjoyed reading it.  Ernest kind of lost me at the point where he takes his children off to some couple and pays them to raise the children which seems also to be a very English thing to do in these novels.   I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in English life in the mid 1800’s.  As Drieser says it really is a “most truthful” novel about “downright life.”

Next time:  Ernie reads Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath"