Way of All Flesh, The

Novel by Samuel Butler, published in 1903. The story tells of Ernest Pontifex, the hapless son of a clergyman, who is cruelly treated by his sanctimonious father and mother. After Ernest has been allowed to suffer long enough, he inherits money from his aunt and lives happily as a minor man of letters. The plot, however, is the merely the framework on which Butler hangs his study of bad parenting and religious hypocrisy. Butler's novelistic imagination flags but his narrator's penetrating reflections and concerns have a startling contemporary feel.