The Way of All Flesh

Ernest Pontifex is born into a deeply religious Victorian family where obedience is demanded and individuality suppressed. As he grows, he confronts the crushing expectations of his parents, religious dogma, and the rigid values of society-ultimately seeking his own path through a maze of personal failure and philosophical awakening. The Way of All Flesh is a powerful, semi-autobiographical critique of Victorian morality, tracing one mans painful journey toward self-realization in a world built to deny it.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh, which attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy.