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The Way of All Flesh
By Samuel Butler

FROM a Parish helper to the London poor to a successful New Zealand sheep farmer, Samuel Butler always questioned the Victorian attitudes towards social ideals in his books. It is appropriate, then, that The Way of All Flesh was published after his death in 1903. It was completed in its original version in 1885. Depicting the lives of four generations, the narrative is by family friend Overton, although it focuses on Ernest Pontifex and his respect for his great-grandfather John. With the initial focus upon his father Theo, the novel later shows him grow after ordination into disciplinarian attitudes to parenthood which affect young Ernest. As the story progresses, the latter gives his money to a pregnant maid, becomes a priest and is imprisoned for mistaking a respectable lady for a whore. Ernest is released only to begin an unwise relationship with the maid, Ellen.