The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

Yet another English novel about a country parson (or two)

English author Samuel Butler’s novel The Way of All Flesh was written between 1873 and 1884, but it wasn’t published until 1903, after Butler’s death. It’s unlikely that England would have been ready for the novel much earlier than that, since the book is defiantly critical of Christian doctrine and conservative Victorian conventions. This novel traces the lives of five generations of the Pontifex family but focuses primarily on just two of those generations: Theobald Pontifex and his son Ernest, both of whom are clergymen. The bulk of the narrative takes place during the 1850s and ‘60s. The novel is narrated by a playwright named Overton, a childhood friend and lifelong acquaintance of the Pontifex family. Overton has a bothersome habit of foreshadowing, which often amounts to spoiling the events of future chapters.

The Way of All Flesh is a satirical work in which Butler lampoons the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of the Anglican church and its clergy. In addition, he criticizes the educational system, the class system, and even the marriage system in practice in England at this time. Butler mentions Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species and recently published works criticizing contradictions in the Bible as challenges to fundamental beliefs of Christianity. He stops short of atheism, but his criticism of the church and his skepticism of Christian dogma would have been considered radical freethought by Victorian standards. This multi-generational story also illustrates a recurring pattern of cruelty from fathers to sons and its effect in molding those sons’ later lives and characters. The wryly comedic tone, though not overly done, at times clashes with the serious subject matter—such as child abuse, for example—but Butler’s comical comeuppance of the clergy is deftly pointed and amusing.

Even though The Way of All Flesh is a refreshing reaction against religion, I was still disappointed to come across yet another British novel about a country parson and his moral crisis, including lengthy debates about church policy. Why were English authors so obsessed with their clergy? Other European national literatures—French, German, Spanish, even Polish—just seem to be more concerned with real life and a broader view of it. In French novels of the same era, for example, the characters actually have sex like real people, whereas the antiseptic morality in English novels doesn’t allow the characters to even touch each other; they just seem to reproduce by spontaneous asexual blastogenesis. Though Butler satirizes Victorian stuffiness, he still buys into many traditional British ideas of class. People are born as “gentlemen” or born “low,” and the best they can do is learn their place and stay there. As an atheist, I admire Butler for boldly criticizing organized religion. I think there are better ways to do that, however, than making me sit through 60 chapters about the life of a country parson.

The final quarter of the novel finally veers away from theology, at least temporarily, into more secular matters, but it’s still rather tedious. Marital, financial, parental, and medical problems are dispatched far too conveniently to be believed. Another cliché of English lit rears its silly head: An abundance of bachelor uncles and spinster aunts just waiting, like a good deus ex machina, to bestow their wealth upon nieces and nephews. When a man has all the money he could ever want handed to him on a silver platter, and he can pawn off his children onto idyllic foster parents, imagine what he can do with his life! That’s not realism; that’s fantasy.

The Way of All Flesh is a great title, but it implies that this novel will reveal universal truths about human existence. There’s really nothing universal about this story, however, unless you happen to be a clergyman or a seminary student. The characters are sympathetic and the humor is witty, but the life lessons are contrived and unrealistic. Even so, if you can make it through the first half, the second half is moderately entertaining.