Samuel Butler Erewhon, or Over the Range

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Samuel ButlerErewhon, or Over the Range

• Published 1872

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Imaginary topoi

• From the earliest writings to the present,
  authors have been fascinated by imaginary
  locations
• One of the earliest was Atlantis, an island in
  the western ocean
• Plato speaks of it as huge, wealthy, powerful,
  corrupt

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The end of Atlantis

• The citizens of Atlantis may have enjoyed
  unimaginable luxuries
• Before becoming power-crazy and decadent
• And then disaster struck the island

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Utopia

• Written by Thomas More in 1516
• May be read on-line at
• http//www.gutenberg.org/etext/2130
• Utopia eutopia or outopia?
• A land in the Americas, ruled by a wise monarch
  motivated by reason and humanity

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Imaginary worlds

• Range from Atlantis and Utopia via Lilliput,
  Brobdignag and Erewhon to Metropolis, Bergonia,
  Cyberia and the virtual reality of
  www.secondlife.com

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From Utopia to dystopia

• Imaginary worlds fall into two groups
• Utopian states improvements on reality
• Dystopian (or cacotopian) states worse than
  reality
• Common to both as a strongly satirical purpose
• And sometimes it may be hard to unscramble the
  positive from the negative

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Samuel Butler 1835-1902

• Grandson of Samuel Butler (1774 - 1839), a
  classical scholar and schoolmaster at Shrewsbury,
  and later Bishop of Lichfield
• Obtained a First in Classics from Cambridge
• Was destined to take holy orders but questioned
  his faith when he discovered that baptism made no
  difference to peoples morality

Fell out with his father emigrated to New
Zealand (1860-1864)
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Works

• Butler returned to England in 1864
• Erewhon published 1872 Erewhon Revisited in 1901
• The Way of All Flesh (1903) attacked the
  Victorian way of life, in particular the
  ecclesiastical environment in which its author
  had grown up
• Butler also developed a theory that The Odyssey
  was the work of a Sicilian woman

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The Narrator

• Butler chooses a young and naïve narrator who has
  no idea what he is about to stumble on
• A typical would-be colonist
• Seeks to better his fortunes more rapidly than
  he could in England (1)
• In pressing on across the mountains, he his
  motivated by no more than a desire to acquire new
  land determined to monopolise (17)
• Once there, is purpose is twofold conversion or
  making money out of them (40)

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A naïve perspective?

• The narrator claims to be a young man, but
  expresses sophisticated opinions
• And has travelled widely
• Is deeply interested in the people (35)
• Makes comparisons between Erewhon and North
  Africa, Italy
• Assumes the inhabitants of Erewhon must be the
  Lost Tribes of Israel

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The qualities of Erewhon

• In some respects it is idealised
• People are very handsome, women very pretty
• the religion is humane and logical
• In other respects Erewhon mirrors nineteenth
  century England
• Prisons, hypocrisy, bogus medical practices, a
  religion that no-one really believes in, colleges
  that teach unreason and hypothetical language

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The language

• The Erewhonian tongue reverses English, so that
• Erewhon becomes Nowhere
• Yram becomes Mary
• Nosnibor becomes Robinson
• Thims equals Smith
• Ydgrun resolves itself into Grundy
• But this is not maintained throughout

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A topsy-turvy world

• The narrator chronicles the customs of Erewhon as
  any traveller would
• It soon becomes obvious that in Erewhon
  everything is different
• The narrator speaks of extraordinary perversions
  of thought (39)
• Machines are banned
• Illness is regarded as a character flaw
• Criminal behaviour is condoned and treated with
  sympathy

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The people of Erewhon

• Do their best to keep foreigners out of their
  country
• Are handsome and gentle
• Yet fall into three categories
• Beautiful and noble
• Comely and agreeable
• Snobs pure and simple (39)
• Thus Erewhon is not a clear-cut Utopia nor a
  Dystopia, but a conflation of the two

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Ugliness

• Erewhonians hate it
• They used to sacrifice ugly captives in order to
  propitiate the gods of deformity and disease (43)
• This seems to have had the consequence of
  producing an aesthetically pleasing race
• Compare eugenics
• They also spend time contemplating beautiful
  statues
• But their knowledge of music is limited and their
  musical productions sound awful melancholy
  cadences that at times degenerated into a howl
  (75)

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Illness

• Illnesses and ugliness are considered offences
• Sick people (under 70) are tried by a jury
• They are condemned to hard labour in prison
• The worst crime in their eyes is typhus fever
• Illness in young children is accepted (53)
• Butler seems to be arguing the case for eugenics
  the Erewhonians are beautiful and healthy because
  they have criminalised ill-health
• Or driven it underground (they conceal ill
  health by every cunning and hypocrisy and
  artifice which they can devise, 49)

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The trial of a sick man

• Chapter 11 describes the trial of a man suffering
  from an advanced state of consumption, almost at
  the point of death (56)
• He is blamed for this condition and regarded as a
  threat to able-bodied society
• His defence argues in vain that he was trying to
  defraud an insurance company
• He is sentenced to forced labour and two
  spoonfuls of castor oil per day, for the rest of
  his miserable existence
• There are indications that earlier ages would
  have sentenced him to death

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Reactions

• The narrator comments on the fairness and
  impartiality of the trial the sick man is given
  every opportunity to defend himself (56-59), the
  judge is a kind and thoughtful person (61)
• But is later assailed by doubts, because the
  judge paid no attention to hereditary factors
• He is clearly commenting on the way in which the
  English system punishes people for personal
  misfortunes and accidents of birth
• The travelogue is used at several points to
  discuss imperfections in the British social
  system (compare with Stevenson, George Orwell)

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Malcontents

• Erewhon harbours a minority of radical who
  disapprove of the way sick people are sent to
  jail
• They agree that society needs to be protected
  against the ill, but argue that the sick need
  only be put away, not actually punished
• These are the equivalents of Victorian reformers
  of the penal system, which was notorious for its
  harsh punishments

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Criminality

• Criminal behaviour (theft, embezzlement) is
  viewed with sympathy
• An attack of the socks is a standard apology
• The perpetrator is treated by a straightener
• Parallels are drawn with Italian and Muslim
  societies (48)
• A further reaction against the harsh Victorian
  penal code
• Also an indication that the people of Erewhon
  have devoted too much effort to the elimination
  of outward deficiencies and not enough to
  immorality

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The Straightener

• Must practise the vices he intends to treat
• Sometimes this has fatal consequences
• The treatments prescribed by straighteners are
  harsh and very painful bread and water, flogging
• Yet everyone submits to them willingly
• Even the narrator

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Ethos

• Butler appears to be imagining what our society
  might look like in 500 years time
• He often states that some years earlier, Erewhon
  was much like Europe, with machines, railways,
  public statues
• Modern Erewhon has moved on, not necessarily for
  the better

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Machines

• One of the first things that happens to our
  narrator is the confiscation of his watch
• He is shown a museum of old pieces of machinery
• It emerges that when Erewhonian technology was
  far in advance of our own, a professor argued
  that machines would ultimately supplant the human
  race, so all less than 271 years old were
  abandoned (44 118-138)
• His watch is regarded with suspicion, and his
  stories about hot air balloons are thought to be
  lies

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Progress and Education

• Erewhonians are hostile to progress, wishing to
  keep things as they are
• They believe progress leads to wars, and that
  people should not strive to be better than their
  neighbours (113)
• Many other reasons persuaded them to abandon
  machines
• Yet they waste time learning a hypothetical
  language in their Colleges of Unreason

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Hypocrisy

• The main point Butler is trying to make is to
  view contemporary society through the device of
  an alienating perspective
• Thus focuses on our hypocrisy in refusing to
  acknowledge our moral deficiencies while spending
  a great deal of time and money on treating
  physical ailments
• In Erewhon the situation is reversed immorality
  is treated, illness is punished

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Death

• Erewhonians are cremated, and can choose where
  their ashes should be scattered
• They send each other a certain number of
  artificial tears as a token of sympathy when
  someone dies
• Everyone realises that this is a symbolic gesture
  that has relatively little meaning
• In earlier times, they stuck the tears onto their
  faces with some kind of glue! (69)

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Erewhonian hypocrisy

• Many Erewhonians turn out to be deeply
  hypocritical
• They cover up their illnesses
• Even pretending to be criminals when really they
  are ill
• Mahaina has a weak constitution but pretends to
  be an alcoholic (70-72)
• Pregnant women also have to conceal their
  condition
• In their eagerness to stamp out disease, these
  people had overshot their mark (72)
• Also, the scholars and professors he meets are
  terrified of giving themselves away (115)

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The Musical Banks

• This is one of Butlers most biting satires
• There exist Musical Banks which everyone
  considers it honourable to belong to
• They have tedious ceremonies which are
  accompanied by hideous-sounding music
• The currency which they distribute has no
  commercial value
• They are almost empty most of the time, visited
  mainly by women and children
• They resemble our churches, which play music and
  preach virtues which cannot easily be implemented
  and which no one follows

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Women

• The narrator is strongly attracted both to Yram
  and Arowhena
• Cannot marry Arowhena as he is expected to marry
  her older sister, whom he dislikes
• The sequel makes it obvious that the relationship
  with Yram, who taught him the Erewhonian
  language, was not confined to language lessons

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The End

• For a time it seems that the narrator will never
  escape from Erewhon
• He has been taken to the capital blindfolded
• His love for Arowhena runs counter to the laws of
  the country
• But in the end, an opportunity does present
  itself
• Note that Butler wrote a sequel, Erewhon
  Revisited, in which his narrator returns to find
  that a new religion has been established around
  himself