ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Prompted by Becky at Becky’s Books, I read Thomas More’s Utopia because it seemed relevant to a novel I am currently reading.  (More about that soon).

‘Utopian’ is part of our everyday vocabulary now but when Thomas More wrote his book describing an alternative political system of an imaginary island state, it was a risky venture.  In 1515 Henry VIII was on the throne, and in that year Wolsey, Archbishop of York was appointed cardinal by Leo X.  Henry VIII then appointed him Lord Chancellor, and, as it says in the Introduction of the Project Gutenberg edition I read:

…from that year until 1523 the King and the Cardinal Wolsey ruled England with absolute authority, and called no parliament.

Henry, as we all know, had succession troubles and he didn’t need any frisky political opponents making things more complicated.  Until his execution in 1535 — Thomas More managed, with deft political nous, to survive and thrive during his time as a lawyer, judge, and statesman.  His prudence included suppressing Utopia during his life time.

(It was More’s opposition to the Protestant Reformation that brought him undone.  He refused to swear an oath to please the King, and as you know if you read or saw Robert Bolt’s 1954 A Man for All Seasons, Henry’s reaction was swift and merciless.)

Utopia was published in Europe, but not in England until 1551 under the reign of Edward VI, in a translation from the Latin by Ralph Robinson.  It was generally acknowledged to be less ‘literary’ than the subsequent translation in 1684 by Gilbert Burnet, who had his own troubles with disagreeable monarchs.

Burnet was drawn to the translation of “Utopia” by the same sense of unreason in high places that caused More to write the book.

Well, even if you simply peruse the summary at Wikipedia, you can see how Utopia still applies in our time.  Utopia begins with More doing real-life diplomatic things in Antwerp, but moves to his encounter with the traveller Raphael Hythlodaeus,  exploring in some depth the knotty problem of how best to counsel a prince when he is not amenable to wise advice, new ideas or anything that contradicts his world view.  Think Henry VIII, think of That Man in America, or any shabby procession of recent political leaders who think they know it all. No wonder Hythlodaeus has such cogent reasons for staying out of public life.

More thinks that it is the duty of philosophers to work within flawed systems to improve them.

But Hythlodaeus tells More than he doesn’t think that there are diplomatic ways of influencing leaders who won’t listen, and that getting involved inevitably lends to being compromised.  As you read this, think of the political advisers interviewed in the January 6th Hearings — the ones who tried to intervene, and the ones who did not.

I do not comprehend what you mean by your ‘casting about,’ or by ‘the bending and handling things so dexterously that, if they go not well, they may go as little ill as may be;’ for in courts they will not bear with a man’s holding his peace or conniving at what others do: a man must barefacedly approve of the worst counsels and consent to the blackest designs: so that he would pass for a spy, or, possibly, for a traitor, that did but coldly approve of such wicked practices; and therefore when a man is engaged in such a society, he will be so far from being able to mend matters by his ‘casting about,’ as you call it, that he will find no occasions of doing any good—the ill company will sooner corrupt him than be the better for him; or if, notwithstanding all their ill company, he still remains steady and innocent, yet their follies and knavery will be imputed to him; and, by mixing counsels with them, he must bear his share of all the blame that belongs wholly to others.

“It was no ill simile by which Plato set forth the unreasonableness of a philosopher’s meddling with government. ‘If a man,’ says he, ‘were to see a great company run out every day into the rain and take delight in being wet—if he knew that it would be to no purpose for him to go and persuade them to return to their houses in order to avoid the storm, and that all that could be expected by his going to speak to them would be that he himself should be as wet as they, it would be best for him to keep within doors, and, since he had not influence enough to correct other people’s folly, to take care to preserve himself.’

More, like any intelligent human person, was troubled by the inequities of his society.  There is a long discourse about capital punishment for trivial theft, and how it is counter productive, because a thief who knows the punishment is the gallows may as well kill the victim who might identify him, because the punishment is the same.  In Utopia they think is it better to have the thief work, and pay compensation, but …

The downside is that the outcome to theft is a form of slavery, and it’s enforced by mutilating a thief’s ear.

Utopia is a Republic with an elected monarchy and decision-making is shared. Nobody is allowed to be idle, but they are not to wear themselves out as if they were beasts of burden. There are rules about how the day must be spent:

…dividing the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint six of these for work, three of which are before dinner and three after; they then sup, and at eight o’clock, counting from noon, go to bed and sleep eight hours: the rest of their time, besides that taken up in work, eating, and sleeping, is left to every man’s discretion…

However…

 … they are not to abuse that interval to luxury and idleness, but must employ it in some proper exercise, according to their various inclinations, which is, for the most part, reading. It is ordinary to have public lectures every morning before daybreak, at which none are obliged to appear but those who are marked out for literature; yet a great many, both men and women, of all ranks, go to hear lectures of one sort or other, according to their inclinations: but if others that are not made for contemplation, choose rather to employ themselves at that time in their trades, as many of them do, they are not hindered, but are rather commended, as men that take care to serve their country.

After supper they spend an hour in some diversion, in summer in their gardens, and in winter in the halls where they eat, where they entertain each other either with music or discourse. They do not so much as know dice, or any such foolish and mischievous games.

Feminists will take umbrage at some of what is said.  Utopians only need to work six hours a day because the women work too, and this makes for great productivity, which contrasts with other societies…

First, women generally do little, who are the half of mankind; and if some few women are diligent, their husbands are idle.

Did Thomas More never see the seven-days-a-week domestic labour of the women who served his needs???

Oh, and fashion is out.  The Mao suit in Communist China was probably modelled on Utopian clothing:

As to their clothes, observe how little work is spent in them; while they are at labour they are clothed with leather and skins, cut carelessly about them, which will last seven years, and when they appear in public they put on an upper garment which hides the other; and these are all of one colour, and that is the natural colour of the wool.

Family life is regulated, including the removal of children to fit the rules:

As their cities are composed of families, so their families are made up of those that are nearly related to one another. Their women, when they grow up, are married out, but all the males, both children and grand-children, live still in the same house, in great obedience to their common parent, unless age has weakened his understanding, and in that case he that is next to him in age comes in his room; but lest any city should become either too great, or by any accident be dispeopled, provision is made that none of their cities may contain above six thousand families, besides those of the country around it. No family may have less than ten and more than sixteen persons in it, but there can be no determined number for the children under age; this rule is easily observed by removing some of the children of a more fruitful couple to any other family that does not abound so much in them.

More contentiously in our modern world, Hythlodaeus attributes entrenched inequity and poverty to an economic system based on the ownership of property.  He is particularly critical of the enclosure of the commons for sheep farming (which we learned about at school) because the common people no longer had the village common on which to graze their flocks.  Poverty and starvation was widespread and of course it led to theft.

“Though, to speak plainly my real sentiments, I must freely own that as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard of all other things, I cannot think that a nation can be governed either justly or happily: not justly, because the best things will fall to the share of the worst men.”

1934

This is where my current reading indirectly meshes with More’s Utopia.  Experiments with shared ownership of property have been discredited since the fall of Communism and the rise of globalisation.  My current novel touches on a failed Utopia based on an equally discredited form of social organisation. It’s Eleanor Dark’s Prelude to Christopher, written in 1934 before the Nazis put Eugenics into practice.

Image credit:

Title woodcut for Utopia written by Thomas More: By Original uploader was Marcok at it.wikipedia – Utopia by Thomas More. Transferred from it.wikipedia; Transfer was stated to be made by User:Marcok., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3893696

Mao suit: Wikipedia: By User:chrislb – Erstellt nach Image:Chiangs and Stilwell.jpg, Image:Mao1949.jpg, Image:Mao.jpg und Eduard Kögel: Der Maoanzug. In: archplus 168. Februar, 2004, Ausgabe 168, archplus Verlag GmbH, S. 24–25, ISSN 0587-3452, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=947505

Author: Thomas More
Title: Utopia (Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia)
Translated from the Latin by Gilbert Burnet
Publisher: Project Gutenberg Release Date: April, 2000 [eBook #2130] edited by Henry Morley, first published in Europe in 1515, first English edition 1551.