Erewhon Revisited
Glossary
"
- "On the Physics of Vicarious Existence"
- President Gurgoyle's philosophical pamphlet arguing that a person's true life resides in the impression and influence they leave in the minds of others rather than in their physical body — an idea the novel uses to satirize theological rationalizations built up around a manufactured legend.
- Related: President Gurgoyle, Sunchildism
B
- Blackmoor Street
- The shabby London street off Drury Lane where the narrator recalls spending his squalid early childhood, after his father's public disgrace left the family in reduced circumstances following the poor reception of the first Erewhon book.
- Related: John (the narrator), Higgs
C
- Chowbok
- A figure from Higgs's original journey who, upon returning to England, spread damaging rumors about Higgs among religious societies, contributing to Higgs's public disgrace and financial ruin in the years before this novel's events.
- Related: Higgs
D
- Dr. Downie
- A moderate, pragmatic Erewhonian figure who, along with Mrs. Humdrum, proposes a political and religious compromise at the Mayor's council to manage the crisis threatening to expose the truth behind Sunchildism without provoking public disorder.
- Related: Mrs. Humdrum, Yram, Sunchildism
E
- Erewhon
- The remote, isolated country Higgs discovered decades earlier (an anagram of "nowhere"), reachable only by a difficult mountain pass, whose customs of inverted morality and satirical institutions were chronicled in Butler's first novel and continue to develop, now centered on the Sunchild cult, in this sequel.
- Related: Higgs, The Statues, Sunchildism
- Erewhonian Language and Custom
- The distinct spoken language and body of custom (oaths, deposition forms, ranger protocol) that structures daily Erewhonian life throughout the novel, contributing to the satirical realism of a fully imagined, self-consistent inverted society.
- Related: Erewhon
F
- Foreign Devil
- The Erewhonian legal category applied to unauthorized strangers found within the country's borders, carrying the death penalty at the Blue Pool — the charge George and Yram work to have reduced to simple poaching in order to save Higgs's life without revealing his identity.
- Related: The Blue Pool, George, Yram
G
- George
- Higgs's illegitimate son, born in Erewhon after his father's balloon escape and raised there in ignorance of his true parentage. Now a Ranger and the Mayoress's son, George unknowingly encounters his own father and becomes the novel's central figure of quiet competence, working to protect Higgs without knowing who he is.
- Related: Higgs, Yram, John (the narrator)
H
- Higgs
- The narrator of the original Erewhon, now twenty years older, who sneaks back into the country he escaped by balloon to find himself worshipped as a deity called "the Sunchild." His secret return, disguise, and eventual flight form the spine of the novel, narrated here by his own son.
- Related: Sunchildism, George, Erewhon
J
- John (the narrator)
- Higgs's legitimate English son, born in 1871 and christened after his grandfather, who narrates the novel by reconstructing his father's secret second journey to Erewhon from what Higgs told him before dying, then makes his own journey there in the book's final chapters.
- Related: Higgs, George
M
- Miss La Frime
- Lady President of Erewhon's principal school for the higher education of young ladies, celebrated for her primer on the "Art of Man-killing" — one of the satirical details of Erewhonian education Butler introduces at Yram's dinner party.
- Related: Yram
- Mr. Balmy
- A devout, credulous believer in Sunchildism whom Higgs befriends during the temple dedication, and whose earnest faith in the Sunchild's supposed sayings gives Higgs an uncomfortable, close-up view of the cult his own escape unwittingly created.
- Related: Sunchildism, Higgs
- Mrs. Humdrum
- A sensible, socially prominent Erewhonian woman who, with Dr. Downie, counsels a compromise at the council held at the Mayor's house, favoring a quiet resolution of the poaching charge against the disguised Higgs over a dangerous public confrontation.
- Related: Dr. Downie, Yram
P
- President Gurgoyle
- An Erewhonian scholar and author of the pamphlet "On the Physics of Vicarious Existence," arguing that true life consists not in the body but in one's reputation and influence in the minds of others — a doctrine used to rationalize and elaborate the Sunchild religion, though Gurgoyle himself is regarded as lukewarm on points of orthodoxy.
- Related: Sunchildism
- Professors Hanky and Panky
- The two rival high priests of Sunchildism, whose competing and self-serving interpretations of the Sunchild myth satirize sectarian squabbling over doctrine neither man actually believes. Their attempt to buy fraudulent relics and their prosecution of the disguised Higgs drive much of the plot's middle chapters.
- Related: Sunchildism, Higgs, President Gurgoyle
S
- Southerly Burster
- A sudden, strong southerly wind and weather change (a real feature of New Zealand's Canterbury Plains, the region Butler modeled Erewhon's approach on) that raises river levels and delays John's own journey toward the pass into Erewhon.
- Related: John (the narrator), The Statues
- Sunch'ston
- The Erewhonian town, named in tribute to the Sunchild legend, where Yram serves as Mayoress and where most of the novel's action — the temple dedication, the trial, and the council at the Mayor's house — takes place.
- Related: Yram, Sunchildism
- Sunch'stonian Journal
- A fictional local newspaper whose account of Higgs's arrest and trial is quoted at length in Chapter 22, giving the reader the town's own distorted, sensationalized public version of events happening simultaneously to Higgs's private ordeal.
- Related: Sunch'ston, Higgs
- Sunchildism
- The new state religion that has arisen around Higgs's balloon escape twenty years earlier, reinterpreted by the Erewhonians as an ascension into the sun. Its priesthood, doctrines, and rival factions occupy most of the novel's satire of organized religion and the invention of sacred myth from ordinary events.
- Related: Higgs, Professors Hanky and Panky, President Gurgoyle
T
- The Balloon Escape
- Higgs's original means of leaving Erewhon at the end of the first novel, ascending by balloon with an Erewhonian bride — an event since mythologized by the Erewhonians as a literal ascension into the sun, and the founding miracle of the Sunchild religion.
- Related: Higgs, Sunchildism
- The Blue Pool
- The place of execution to which foreign strangers ("foreign devils") found in Erewhon are traditionally condemned without trial — the fate Hanky insists should await the man he believes to be the disguised Sunchild, raising the stakes of Higgs's exposure considerably above a mere poaching charge.
- Related: Foreign Devil, Professors Hanky and Panky
- The King's Preserves
- Protected royal hunting grounds near the mountain pass into Erewhon, patrolled by Rangers (George among them), where Higgs is first discovered by Hanky and Panky and where much of the novel's cat-and-mouse plot around his disguise unfolds.
- Related: George, The Statues
- The Musical Banks
- Erewhon's satirical institution, carried over from the first novel, standing in for organized religion and its currency of empty ritual — a parallel banking system dealing in worthless coin that everyone professes to value while conducting real business elsewhere. It appears here entangled with the new Sunchild cult.
- Related: Sunchildism, Erewhon
- The Provincial Deformatory at Fairmead
- An Erewhonian institution Higgs visits, a satirical inversion carried from the first novel in which physical and moral failings are treated as crimes to be corrected through institutional "deformatory" processes rather than as illness — Butler's ongoing joke about Erewhonian moral inversion.
- Related: Erewhon
- The Statues
- Ancient carved figures at the head of the mountain pass into Erewhon, marking the country's remote border. They serve as the site of key encounters in both this novel and its predecessor, including the final reunion between the narrator and his brother George at the book's close.
- Related: Erewhon, George
- The Temple Dedication
- The elaborate public ceremony consecrating a grand new temple to the Sunchild in Sunch'ston, which Higgs attends in disguise and witnesses extracts read aloud from his own "supposed sayings" — a scene dramatizing how thoroughly his ordinary escape has been transformed into scripture.
- Related: Sunchildism, Mr. Balmy, Sunch'ston
Y
- Yram
- Now Mayoress of Sunch'ston, and George's mother — the woman Higgs loved and left behind during his first visit to Erewhon. She recognizes the disguised Higgs and works discreetly to protect him from exposure and the Professors' schemes, without revealing what she knows even to George.
- Related: George, Higgs, Sunch'ston