Essay Questions

Why didn't Butler want to publish the novel during his lifetime?

Butler's inspiration for the novel was his own upbringing in a devoutly and outwardly overt Christian family and he barely disguised his own opinions or the real-life characters they pertained to. He was particularly scathing about what he saw as their self-righteous hypocrisy. Butler believed that his satire was a time bomb that would explode and reveal Victorian England for what it actually was, and was not sure that he had the stomach for the repercussions that would inevitably follow. He also held many beliefs that are perfectly acceptable today but in 1835 would have caused a scandal. Indeed, some of his opinions were so controversial that it is questionable whether the book would have been published in his lifetime in the first place.

This is said to be a book of great ironies. What do you think is the most significant irony in the novel?

The most significant irony is that the novel seems to speak the most to young people who feel hemmed in by their upbringing and who find the adult figures in their life somewhat anachronistic. The irony lies in the fact that the book that speaks to them most was written in Victorian times by a man who, by the time it was finished, was in his early fifties, about the age of the people the young readers feel that the book helps them rail against. It is more like a book or a manifesto that is written by a younger person, not an older one, and that is the appeal of it to younger people who likely do not realize the details about the author.

Is Butler a renaissance man?

The answer to this question is an unequivocal "yes!". Butler's views were popular after the publication of his book which occurred after his death, but they were not popular during his lifetime within the constraints of Victorian society. Indeed, he could foresee a time when the tightly held reigns of society would be loosened, something that those happy with the status quo of Victoriana would never have been able to entertain. He is a man who is all for development, for free thinking, for being able to take the facets of many different religions and combining them into a spiritual path, something that whilst acceptable later was unheard of, and would have been rejected, in the era Butler lived in.